We got this picture of the cat pile, yesterday. The only kitten missing is Susan. Both Junk Pile kitten and Pump Shack kitten are in there, too!
Right now, I’d love nothing more than to do what they’re doing right now!
We had a second Thanksgiving Day today!
Continue readingI wasn’t able to get back to working on getting the tire planter out (I can wiggle it a bit more, though! :-D ), but yesterday evening I decided to deadhead the spirea by the storage house.
I also cut them back from the grapes they were starting to encroach on again.
As I was doing that, I noticed some dead branches and figured I may as well take them out, too.
And those other ones.
Oh, and there are a few more…
Just a bit more…
The next thing I knew…
Continue readingJust before I headed out to my mother’s to help her with some cooking, my husband starts laughing out loud in the living room, calling us over.
If you’ve seen his previous post, you know why!
I managed to get some photos on the DSLR, too.
Too funny!
What a handsome boy he is!
While he was going around the platform feeder, birds would start flying over, see him and abruptly change directions. It looked like they were dive bombing him!
He so wanted to get onto the hanging feeder, but it kept moving! :-D
I don’t know what he found to nibble on up there. We saw him chewing on things a few times.
I probably don’t want to know what he was eating.
He also was standing on his back legs, trying to climb even higher, but I wasn’t able to get photos.
While Corvo was busily entertaining us, Doom Guy and The Outsider also came over and hung out at the bottom of the planter. We couldn’t get pictures at the time, but my older daughter caught this one.
He’s here all the time, now, and seems to have made himself at home.
My daughter also got a photo, a few days ago, of one of the mystery cats that sometimes shows up.
This is one of two strange adult cats that have been showing up now and then.
He seems pretty chill. :-D
Beyond getting entertained by cats at home, I spent some time with my mother, doing some cooking that will be used by home care when they come by for meal assist later on. I noticed that another jar of the chili we made for her finally got used. She told me I should take it home, because it wasn’t “fresh”, and she needs to only eat “fresh” food, for her health.
Well, she eats plenty of stuff that isn’t “fresh” all the time, so I know that’s just something she came up with to excuse not eating the chili. I explained again to her that the reason I put them up in jars the way I did, was so that it last longer. It didn’t matter. Like the chicken my sister-in-law made for her, that ended up going to the cats, she’s simply decided it has gone bad, and that’s that.
So much of the fresh food that was prepared for her ended up being thrown out, because she wouldn’t eat it for some reason, and it actually did go bad. Such a waste.
I had a chance to show my mother some photos of the clean up I did along the fence line up to the gate, because of a concern she brought up when she phoned to ask me to come over. It seems “people” have been telling her that I was not just cutting down dead branches, but taking down living trees. Now, I’ve been keeping my mother in the loop about what I’m doing, including clearing trees from the fence line, because we will need access to it to repair it. Then she started talking about her lilacs. She had planted special lilacs by the gate. I told her on the phone that they’re still there, I just cleaned out the dead stuff and the poplars that were growing in the middle of them. She seemed taken aback when I mentioned poplars, but she was really upset that I had apparently cut down her special lilacs. I assured her I hadn’t, then asked who it was that was gossiping about us that she was listening to. I found out, and was not at all surprised it was the person that is the reason we have to lock our gates. *sigh* Ah, well.
So I showed her a picture of the area by the gate I had cleaned up. Including this one.
I don’t know what kind of lilacs those are (I wasn’t sure they were even lilacs; she has the usual purple lilacs on the other side of the gate).
It turns out, this wasn’t the gate she was talking about. She thought I had cut down her white lilacs.
These ones.
We cleaned up this area, months ago.
She has seen this area since I’ve cleaned it up, so she knew what I had done with it. But when she was told I was cutting by the “gate”, she thought of the gate into the yard, not the gate at the driveway.
I’ve made a point of keeping my mother in the loop of what we’ve been doing, showing her photos every chance I get, until she is strong enough to come and see for herself. Yet, all it takes is one person, who has no clue what we’ve done or what we are doing, to start gossiping, and she starts to panic.
So disappointing.
She saw the pictures, however, and I talked about the repairs to the fences that are needed, and the section with posts that will need to be replaces, and so on. She was happy with what she saw. It worked out well in the end. :-)
The Re-Farmer
Yesterday evening, while walking around the yard, I was followed by a little beast!
I was even able to pick him up and pet him for a bit. I dragged the end of a stick on the ground that he and his mother had a blast trying to catch, and I caught him (her? still don’t know). He was tense about it, but not freaking out, which is progress!
I found that the plums are now ripe.
These tiny little plums are almost all pit. If I were to do something with them, I would be harvesting them now.
I might just leave them for the birds this year.
I can think of a number of things to do with them, Continue reading
One of the benefits of moving out here is that we are close to family again. Both sides. Which, of course, makes it much easier to get together and visit and spend time together.
Being close to family is a good thing.
Unfortunately, family is why we left in the first place. Specifically, my mother. That’s a long story that doesn’t belong on this blog, but after 14 years away, things have changed and the biggest reason behind our leaving doesn’t exist anymore. Still, when my mother asked us to move to the empty farm and take care of it for her, we did have to consider certain relationship issues along with everything else. My mother is an amazing woman in many respects; intelligent, brave, strong, and a real survivor. There are just… other issues.
Today, I ended up having an unplanned visit with my mother, so we could lend her our scale. She is going for surgery in a couple of months (yay! Finally – though not for her knee replacement, yet), and the surgeon wants her to lose some weight. She remembered that there was a scale here, under a dresser that was in the hallway near the old kitchen. I told her that yes, there was a scale here, but we packed all that up. She was surprised that the stuff was not in that corner anymore and asked what was there now. The cat litter box, I told her. Oh, no! she lamented. She doesn’t like that we have cats, because then we have a litter box, and then there’s the smell and…
I had to remind her what I’d already told her about before; that when we moved that dresser, we found old cat litter (and more). Oh, but that wasn’t while she was at the farm… *sigh*
Okay. Moving on.
Once it was agreed that I would just lend her our scale, so she didn’t have to buy herself a new one, we worked out that I would come over today and finally get a visit in.
It was actually a good visit, overall, which is always appreciated. Plus, it gave me the opportunity to show her pictures on my phone. So she got to see the kittens, and some of her flowers. I showed her the progress in the old kitchen and some of the things I found. I also showed her pictures of different areas in the yard that I’ve been cleaning up.
It was so strange.
I get some very mixed messages from my mother.
We are here to take care of the place for her. Which we have been. However, we have noticed things that are a priority that she had never had to concern herself over, because my dad or my brothers always took her of them. In her mind, the priorities are the things she worked on. Like the garden. Which we’ve not touched this year and is overgrown. At one point, she told me that I was lazy, and that I was unintelligent. But when I would tell her about the work I’ve been doing around the yard, she would start telling me that I shouldn’t be doing it, I should get my oldest brother to do it. The one that lives 1 1/2 hours away. Because I, being female, shouldn’t be doing this stuff.
Today, I started showing her pictures of different areas among the trees I’d cleared out. Not even all of them; just the most recent. This included before and after pictures, of course. As I showed her a few… then a few more… then a bunch more… she suddenly sat back, looked at me and said; “you need a man around!”
*facepalm*
So, if I don’t do the work, I’m lazy, but if I DO do the work, I shouldn’t be doing it, because it’s men’s work (and let’s not even start on what she must think about my husband being disabled, in constant pain and unable to do this stuff). I don’t think she even realized how insulting she was being, even when I told her flat out, that’s insulting.
There was no sense that she felt anything positive about what I’ve been doing. I’d show her where I’d trimmed away from the storage house stairs and cleared her grapes a bit, and she demanded to know if I was watering them. Was I doing this? No, I’m focusing on that. Well, what about this other thing? No, I’m doing this, this and that, because they’re more of a priority. What am I doing about those things over there? Well, this is what I have planned. Oh, she’d never do it that way, she did it this way and it was never a problem. Gee, thanks, Mom.
It’s an odd position to be in. I’m am glad that we moved out there, even with all the problems that came with the move. I’m enjoying the work of getting things cleaned up, fixed up and cleared out, that hadn’t been done for so many years. Every area we’ve worked on looks and feels so much better, even if there is still much work to do. As I walk through different areas that I’ve cleared in the yard, it feels so much more open and airy and welcoming, and I can hardly wait to keep going. Right now, I’m holding back until my birthday gift gets here. Which was supposed to be delivered on Friday, but now when I check the tracking, there’s no date and it’s back to “in transit” at the city. Turns out that we are “in a remote area where delivery does not happen every day”. No kidding. I should be receiving notifications now, though, if not a call, about delivery. I might have to pick it up from a depot in the town my mother lives in, but we’ll see. Until then, the clearing of the trees will wait.
The main thing is, while we are taking care of the place for my mom, it is becoming more and more our home. My mother somehow thought that we could just leave everything behind and move into the house as it was, because everything was already perfect, and she’s still not understanding that no, it wasn’t perfect. Not even close to perfect. And we are finding things she knew nothing about that need to be dealt with.
I think, in a way, she never will. And certainly I know that I will never be good enough, or do right, in her eyes. But I do wish she would, if not appreciate the work that’s being done, stop telling me that I shouldn’t be doing it, because I’m female.
Ah, family.
The Re-Farmer
Ugh. It feels like it’s been a long day already, and it’s not even noon.
I got home from taking my mom to the hospital for her injection early enough to do that outside cat stuff, so I got a bit of feline therapy for stress reduction.
It was much appreciated.
Nasty Crime Boy was even extra friendly today, gracing me with licks and love bites on the fingers; his way of showing affection. Butterscotch and Rolando Moon all let me pet them, too.
I think I’m ready for a nap.
The trip with my mom was fast. I got there early and she let me put her brace on, which is a huge step forward. Then she got in my van and tried to take the frog off my dash. It didn’t come off (yay Fun Tack!). Instead I got yelled at for worshiping frogs, being brainwashed by negative and evil people, and how things like frogs and snakes are ugly, therefore they are of the devil. I should have Jesus things on my dash, and not worship frogs. I told her I don’t worship icons.
Thankfully, that didn’t last long and we didn’t talk at all for most of the trip in.
Once at the hospital, she didn’t even have to leave the waiting room. A nurse came in and gave her the injection right there, and we could leave right away. I did confirm we’re coming back tomorrow. Her eye is looking better, but I can see a couple more days of this.
Which is not making my mom happy.
If she were unhappy because it’s hard on her body, or she’s tired (and I can see that it is taxing on her, physically) and so on, that would be great. But that’s not what she complains about. It was back to wanting a second opinion and eventually got around to the doctor not being able to speak English well (she speaks English just fine; she just has a strong accent) and other criticisms of the doctor herself. It’s all about race.
*sigh*
Even when I got her home, her racism came out, all because of a stamp on some mail she got, honoring a black woman. I even looked up who she was and read out some of her accomplishments, but nope… that just made it worse.
*sigh*
I was glad to leave.
Maybe tomorrow she will be better.
I’m going for a nap. After I get some more fur therapy.
The Re-Farmer
Oh, what a long day it’s been!
Wait… what do you mean it’s not even 6pm yet?
:-D
Actually, it wasn’t that bad. Just longer than expected.
Before heading out to drive my mom to the doctor, I was able to get a few quick pictures – though the camera wanted to focus on everything but the cat…
This is the tree Butterscotch got stuck in a while back. It’s almost like she’s going “I can do it… just watch me…” :-D
I left earlier so I could help my mom to put on her knee brace. I got there and even pulled up to the exit nearest her apartment – only to have her calling me from the main doors. Yup. She was out early, ready and waiting. I mentioned the brace, but no, it’s okay, she says, as she climbs into my van.
My mom is tiny. My van is not. It’s a bit of an effort for her!
The drive in was… illuminating… as my mother expressed her discomfort about being taken off the blood thinners for her heart. I had to explain that the injections were another kind of blood thinner, but something that wouldn’t make her bleed. But she was still uncomfortable with the change. Ultimately, though, she did say it out loud; her discomfort was a matter of racism on her part – though phrased to show she believed the change in her medication was due to racism on the doctor’s part.
That didn’t go over well with me.
While certainly not the worst of conversations with my mother, it definitely had some moments.
At least this time, she didn’t basically accuse me of worshiping frogs. I have decorations on my dash, including scrapbooking adhesive beads, sea turtles, tortoises, a rock fish – in my previous vehicle, I had a much more elaborate display, but the surface is different in this vehicle, and they don’t stick as well. I also have 1 frog on the dash (I had more, but they fell off) and 1 toad, in my dash, next to the gauges. I did this because I was spending so much time driving around and waiting in the van, I made it into my happy place. At Christmas, I even had a tiny Christmas tree with battery operated lights.
My mom just saw the frog, and I guess to her, what I was doing was like when people put little religious statues on their dashes; so it meant that if I had it on the dash, it was because I worshiped it.
But not the turtles. Just the frog.
She doesn’t like frogs.
After we got to the hospital, we found out where they told us to go was not where we needed to go. It was all within feet of each other, at least, and the right people were informed that my mom was there for her injection. We didn’t actually wait for long before a nurse came and took her into a consultation room, along with the blood pressure machine, took her vitals then prepped for the injection. After some questioning of the nurse about the doctor and so on (my mother is pretty good at hiding her racist motives behind these questions), she had to be told again that the injection was another kind of blood thinner, so her heart was still being treated. She asked about having the treatments transferred to the hospital closer to her, and the nurse said she would look into it, and directed us back to the waiting room.
If it hadn’t been for that, we would have been able to leave right away. As it was, because the doctor was in clinic, seeing other people, it took a while.
My mother was remarkably patient, though, even when the not-quite-there lady came back wanting to watch her show, which wasn’t going to start for another 20 minutes, and kept asking us if we watched it, did we know what channel it was on, and where were we from?
When the show did start, she fell asleep.
Altogether, we waited for probably 1 1/2 hours. Eventually, the noise of the TV was too much for my mother, so we moved to a table outside the waiting room that’s reserved for inpatients. Which turned out to be a good thing, because the doctor happened by, recognized us, and came to check on my mom, right then and there.
Which also gave us the opportunity to clarify about the medications and the requested transfer. The doctor wants my mom to keep coming back, rather than transfer to the closer hospital, so that the same people will keep monitoring her eye.
I’m good with driving her.
My mom was pretty tired by then, though, and glad to finally leave. She’s not happy with the situation – especially after I told her that it’s likely she’ll need to come back until the end of the week, before her eye clears. I don’t think she’s getting that this is just her first day of getting the injection instead of her pill, and it’s going to take a while.
I am so glad I have been able to come with her for these. Before going home, she needed to get some prescription refills, and she completely misunderstood the doctor, thinking that ALL her prescriptions were being changed, not just the blood thinners, and so on. Though I explained various things to her, she kept having to get them explained again by others.
It got very exhausting. For both of us!
But I was able to help her get some grocery shopping, too, and carry them in for her. By the time she got home, she looked more than ready for a nap! I do hope she got one.
Tomorrow should, hopefully, just be a quick trip in for her injection, then home again.
And this time, I hope to get that brace on her leg!
It was good to get home. My daughters were in the process of baking more bread, and taking care of the critters. Even got some photos for me.
Mama and the twins had come by, and were very active about it!
While Nasty Crime Boy was very interested in something going on above Eunice, the Barely Upright Snowman.
As for me, it’s all I can do not to go for a nap right now. :-D
The Re-Farmer
An unusual day, today – I didn’t take a single photograph! I was away most of the day, and don’t even know if the deer visited.
I had an appointment in another city; it’s still an hour’s drive away, but a much smaller city, so once there, it’s quicker to get places. I left early, so that I could go to where I could print out photos for my mother, along with some 8x10s for ourselves to frame. I chose a lot of images to show her when I visit – my daughter will be coming along with her laptop – but printed out “only” 14 of them for my mother. Along with the deer she asked for, I included some birds and cats, and even one of my daughters with their completed snowman.
The staff member that helped me commented on the photos, so I told her a bit about our set up, and that they were all taken through our living room window. I picked the 1 hour pick up option when I was done, thinking I would pay for them, go for lunch, then come back – glad that I’d left as early as I did.
Turns out that the 8x10s were done before I even finished paying for them, and the 4x6s for my mother were in process. The other staff member at the counter that processed my payment brought over the 8x10s and commented on them – two deer close ups, and a redpoll on a twig. There was another customer using one of their machines that heard me talking about the deer, and very excitedly asked if she could see my photos! :-D Turns out she gets deer in her yard, too, but isn’t able to get photos of them. So she was really excited to see them.
That done, I had lunch and hung out until it was time to find where my appointment was. It was my first ever counseling session, to talk with someone about the stress issues I’ve been having, even after leaving the toxic environment that was causing it. Thankfully, I’ve been able to consult with my lawyer and another expert, so I’ve got a plan of action, should things come to a head. I told the counselor that I seriously considered cancelling the appointment because that, alone, made a huge difference in reducing the stress levels. However, I told her I’ve also seen many people over the years dealing with stress and not going to someone for help with it and, over time, it ended up causing them more problems, whether it was not getting grief counseling after a tragic loss, or domestic situations, or for any number of things. I didn’t want to be “that person”. Despite the push in recent years to encourage people to view their mental health the same way as their physical health, there is still a huge resistance to actually seeing a professional about it, largely due to stigma. Me, I’ve reached that stage in my life where I really don’t care what anyone thinks of me, and if they give me grief (or bully me in any other way), I am no longer the shrinking violet that backs off and slinks away, like I used to. Now, I stand up and challenge people who do that, no matter who they are or what status or titles they might have.
Bullies really don’t like it when people stand up to them. Unfortunately, it happens so rarely, they usually get away with it, and just move on to the next “victim.”
Or in other instances, try to exact their revenge though other means. Which is basically the problem I’m having now.
I think it was a good session. There really isn’t a lot she could do for me, but she was able to give me some resources, ask questions and listen to why I was there, and I am welcome to book another appointment any time I feel I need to.
I was done early enough that I could go and visit my sister at her farm. I haven’t been there in years. It was good to see her, and the changes they’ve made in their house since I was last there.
I showed my sister the photos I’d printed out and, since I had the USB stick, I brought that out for her to look at the rest on her computer.
She was surprised by a photo of a redpoll like the one pictured her.e
The surprise being the yellow/copper cap, rather than a red cap.
For some reason, my thought was that this was the difference between the males and females; the males have the red cap, the females being less bright, so they had the yellow cap. I’d forgotten that the males have a red chest as well as the red cap, while the females have just the red cap.
So what is the one with the yellow cap? It’s clearly the same bird. There’s no other real difference. I had a photo of one with a red cap, too, so we compared back and forth, and they’re the same, except for the colour of the cap. We were seeing a lot of the ones with the yellow cap; it’s partly why I originally misidentified them as chipping sparrows, because in my own bird book, which doesn’t have redpolls at all, this was the one that looked the most like it.
She dug out her bird book, but it has illustrations only. Male, female, juvenile. The juvenile has no bright colours at all.
After talking about it, her conclusion was that they might be juveniles that are in a transition stage from having no bright cap at all, to their adult colours. She is probably right.
If any birders are reading this and can fill me in, I’d love to hear from you!
I wasn’t able to stay at my sister’s for long, unfortunately. My husband had called in some prescriptions. I wasn’t sure when the pharmacy closed, and it was nearly an hour’s drive away. I wanted to get my own medical insurance coverage set up, too, now that we’ve been assured my coverage is all set.
It’s a good thing I left when I did. I got there 15 minutes before they closed.
I still don’t have insurance coverage.
The first person tried to set it up on my file, but couldn’t get it to work. So someone else came over to the computer to try other things. She couldn’t get it to work, either.
So, it’s back to talking to my husband’s employer and their insurance carrier.
At least I was able to get his meds, though when it was rung in, the pharmacy was officially closed.
By the time I got home, I’d driven about 200 km in total, and had been gone for more than 7 hours. About 2 1/2 hours of that was just driving.
Yeah, that’s a bit of a down side to living in the boonies. :-D
The Re-Farmer
The Re-Farmer 