At -27C/-17F, with a wind chill of -38C/-36F, my brother spent hours, here – most of it outdoors – getting things done.
The first thing was the no-longer frozen ejector.
When he arrived, he headed to the barn to get some stuff and I went out to join him. Along the way, I looked towards the ejector and got quite a surprise.
The tarp was gone, the sawhorse over the ejector was half knocked over, held in place only by the extension cord for the heat tape (safely secured), and the blue jugs from the liquid ice melter scattered in the snow nearby.
I don’t think my brother ever found the tarp. That part isn’t a surprise, considering the winds we had yesterday!
When we got to the basement, things there went quickly. The bypass wires on the switch was hooked up so that we could turn it on and off manually, rather than rely on the pill switch in the tank. The only difficult part was moving the emergency diverter off the pump without making too much of a mess. We knew there would be fluid in the pipe and I had a bucket ready, but there was just no way to get the diverter off and moved over the bucket without spilling at least some all over.
After the pipe to the ejector was put back, my brother and I fussed with our phones for a bit, so that we could communicate while he headed out to the ejector, then let me know to turn the pump on. We were able to make a video call, so when the time came, he had his phone set up so I could see the ejector.
The water flowing out of there was amazing! I’ve never seen it pushed out that far before (if I did when I was a child, I have no memory of it).
There was one odd thing about it, though. Instead of being pushed out in a steady stream, the bottom of the stream sprayed downwards, getting the stack pipe wet. My brother also saw water coming up from under the cap, which means the stack pipe was full, when it should have been drained by the venturi valve once water started to flow.
In the end, my brother found a piece of pipe he cut to create a little extender on the elbow piece.
He then dug around the barn and found bits and pieces to build a wind shelter around the ejector.
There’s a 1″ thick piece of rebar he hammered into the frozen ground to secure it, so the wind shouldn’t blow it away.
That rotten old sawhorse my brother dug out of the snow has sure come in handy!
All of this took at least a couple of hours, but we now have a working ejector again! No more emergency bypass draining the tank into the back yard!
The bypass is still there, though. I told my brother to leave it. I’ll take it out, put everything away and seal that opening up again, in the spring.
Then, before he left, my brother took care of a couple of other things, as well as going into their stored items.
Then he brought over one of his taller ladders.
Yup. He climbed up onto the roof to check the vent. The one warm day my daughters could have done it, one of them was in the city with me. The next day was the storm.
After clearing the area of snow, my brother ended up bringing a chimney sweep that’s stored in the barn to see if it was blocked. The non-sweep side could fit into the vent – and yes, it was quite blocked! I had a jug of hot water that he poured in, and the one jug was enough to clear it.
Meanwhile, I’d filled a sink with hot water to drain, so we could check if all was well.
All was well in the vent.
Not in the drain pipes!
The sink started to drain fine at first, and then it just sort of stopped. My daughter stayed in the kitchen to monitor while I went to the laundry drain.
Just in time to see the filthiest water coming out of there we’ve ever seen!
My daughter stopped the sink from draining. Thankfully, there was already a towel under the laundry drain, just in case, but it still took a while for the water to stop flowing. I was just heading out the door to tell my brother what happened when I heard something give, then gurgling as the water finally drained into the main pipe.
My brother thinks that the main problem is ice stuck in the pipe and suggested running hot water for a while. I suggested that clearing the vent knocked more gunk loose, too.
Thanks to the plumber installing the rubber connector in the pipe in the root cellar, this is something we can do ourselves. My brother had a few more things he wanted to do, plus take one last check on the pump (I had already taken care of the bypass and it was back to a pill switch trigger, instead of a manual trigger) before heading home. He told me that, as he was driving out here, he was seeing a vehicle in the ditch almost every mile of the way!
So we have had a major step forward, in that our septic system is up and running properly now – in fact, better than when we first moved here, thanks to getting that rag out of the back valve!
We had another step forward with my brother getting the ice out of the vent.
There’s just one step back, as our drain seems to be clogged again. We can use the kitchen sink, but it doesn’t take long before we can hear water backing up into the laundry drain.
That’s a job for this evening.
If all goes well, by the end of the day, we’ll be able to hook the washing machine discharge pipe into the drain again, and do laundry without running a hose out the door.
We also had no way of knowing how or why we were wrong!
My brother, saint that he is, came out today to work on both the frozen ejector and the septic pump problem.
My SIL dropped him off, as he would be taking their car that they loaned us, back. The first thing he did was head to the ejector – he was here for an hour before we even saw him! He set up a low power heater around the ejector and covered the whole thing with a tarp to hold what little heat there was.
When I came out to join him, I was surprised by how much is was snowing. There had been no snow at all when I did the morning rounds and opened the gate for them. We ended up having what felt like a light snow, though it was actually heavier than it seamed, it was so calm out, the whole time.
He had spent yesterday evening running around all over the city, looking for the parts and pieces he needed for the septic pump. With the water leaking out of the filter, he concluded that the back valve was leaking. The pictures he asked me to take and sent to him helped a lot, as he couldn’t quite remember the details on the pump.
Once he did as much as he could around the frozen ejector, I helped him bring in his tools and supplies into the basement.
He came well prepared. A habit he got into when he would come here to fix things for our late father, because all Dad’s tools were scattered all over, or “borrowed” by our vandal.
First, I need to explain what we were wrong about.
When we first started having issues, I was thinking the pump itself was the problem. I thought it was about 20 years old and, which all the plumbing issues we had and with it running dry for way too long at times, I was thinking it was wearing out. It was even starting to sound worse.
I was wrong.
My brother replaced the pump only about 10 years ago, got the best pump available at the time, and he had full confidence in it.
The company that installed the ejector also thought it was the pump, with not enough pressure going through the venturi valve, causing the ejector to freeze.
He was… partially right. There was low flow, so low pressure, but it wasn’t because of the pump.
Other thoughts from various people, including me:
– that there was an air leak somewhere in the pipes from the tank to the pump. – the O ring was failing – the pipe from the house to the ejector was starting to get filled with gunk – gunk from inside the pipe to the ejector was breaking loose and clogging the venturi valve – the ground around the venturi valve was too saturated (which may still have been a contributing factor)
While it sounds like we’re talking about two problems – the frozen ejector and the septic pump problems – once we set up the emergency diverter, we got more of a sense that the problem around the pump lead to the ejector freezing. Thawing the ejector is its own problem.
With the water draining out of the filter, my brother conclude that the back valve was broken and wanted to replace it.
He was half right.
He was going to replace a whole section of connectors and a bit of pipe, removing the original back valve completely, and installing a new one, in line.
I’ve actually uploaded a bunch of short videos, because photos could not do it justice. Here is the first one. Here, the section of pipe and elbow connectors has been removed, but not the back valve.
That is a BIG chunk of fabric! The fact that the pump worked at all with that in there is amazing!
With that filter installed after we moved here, we know it had to have happened before then. I don’t know when the other filter was finally removed, because it never worked. My guess is the fabric got into the pipes somewhere in that time between filters.
The only way I can think of how that got into the system is either by getting flushed down the toilet somehow, or it fell into the tank at some point when the lid was open.
It could well have taken years to get sucked into the pipe and work its way through all the elbow connectors. There are three on either side of the filter, and even when there was just a straight pipe before this filter was installed, the elbows were still there.
Then, once it got through the pipe, it got forced through the valve, where it could go no further.
Upon removing the fabric, my brother looked over the valve, and it was undamaged.
So he just put everything back together as it was, with fresh Teflon tape on the threads.
One of the other things he did was set up the switch by-pass. Right now, we have a switch on the wall to turn the pump on and off manually – but the pump won’t run unless the pill switch in the tank is high enough to trigger it. He’d set up the wiring before, but they were tucked behind the switch plate. He set the wires to they were now outside (after I turned the breaker off, of course) and connected them, so that when the switch was turned on, the pump would run immediately.
Before starting work on the pump, he ran it to drain the tank. It had run not that long before, so there wasn’t much in there, but he wanted to make sure it was empty before he started taking off pipes and draining what water was inside the pump itself. He was going to need to test it again later, so we had to run water for quite a while, just so he could have something in there to test the pump with, once everything was back together.
It takes a long time to fill that tank.
Eventually, though, we got it to the point where he could turn the pump on and test it out.
At the very end, you can see a sudden change in the flow. That’s when the tank was empty and the pump had to be shut off immediately.
What a thing of beauty. Everything was flowing well – just like when it was installed!
Which makes me think that piece of fabric was stuck flat against the inside of a section of pipe somewhere between the filter and the pump, because that filter and pump were working great at the start, and for quite some time after.
We’ve had other problems with the system that, in retrospect, were probably caused by that piece of fabric moving down the pipes a bit further, then a bit further, then a bit further.
There was absolutely no way anyone could have known.
Oh! I just heard the septic pump turn on as I write this. I’d checked the filter earlier, and it was completely full, and I know it’s pumping fine and faster than it has in probably years!
The only down side is the vibrate-y noises from where the emergency diverter makes contact with things.
Wow. The pump just turned off. That took less than two minutes, easily!
What an excellent pump.
I am so happy to be wrong about that pump!
Once that was done, my brother disengaged the bypass, so the pump would only turn on when triggered by the pill switch. My brother wanted to test it again, but it would take a while I left a tap running in the old laundry sink, next to the pump, but I made sure the rest of the family knew to use water, flush toilets, take showers, to fill that tank enough to test it again.
Then, it was time to head outside and work on the ejector.
In the first photo, you can see the fluid level is quite high, because my brother had poured in about half a jug of liquid ice melter – calcium chloride. This won’t damage the plastic pipes, but there is a brass fitting at the bottom that could potentially get corroded, but that would likely take a long time. Once things are thawed out, we can hook the pipe back on and anything down there will get flushed away when the pump sends fluid through.
In the next photo, my brother is using the heat gun on the copper pipe to try and get the ice inside the venturi pipe – the discharge pipe – thawed more. It had been frozen to the top before. When we got there and my brother started this, it was down about 2 inches. By the time we stopped, it was down about 4 or 5 inches.
We spent quite a bit of time out there in the falling snow, using the heat gun and the copper pipe and the calcium chloride to get more of it melted down. There was no way it was going to be thawed out completely, though.
For that, we used the heat tape that came in the mail yesterday. That’s the blue you can see in the third image. The glass tape that game with it wouldn’t stick, buy my brother brought electric tape that he kept in a pocket inside his jacket to keep it warm, and that worked. We ended up using the heat tape box to hold the sheet of metal roof out of the way, as it rests right against the pipe. Being frozen to the ground and covered in snow and ice, we can’t move it away. My brother dug through his tools in the barn and found something to bend it back.
The cap and elbow were put back on the ejector, but only loosely. We want to be able to pop them off easily to check on how it’s melting.
My brother did some scrounging and dug an old, rotten saw horse out of the snow to put over the ejector. This would keep the tarp from having contact with the ejector itself. The last thing we want is for it to snap off the elbow or something in the wind.
Last of all, the tarp was wrapped around the whole thing – black side out to absorb warmth from the sun (whenever we get sun next) and tied off a bit. If we get high winds from the south, it might still get blown off, but it can’t be tied down too tightly, or I’ll have trouble checking on it.
All of this took quite some time, with a few trips to the barn or the garage, etc. to find things we needed. At one point, I needed to go into the house. As I was leaving, I caught a light whiff of septic, so I went around to check on the outflow pipe.
The septic pump must have just shut itself off by the time I got there. I could immediately see a whole lot more snow had been washed away. In some areas, the flow goes under the snow, creating gaps in the snow above in places. While there was no water coming out of the outflow pipe, I could see through one of the gaps, water that was flowing fast. The pump was definitely working well!
Before he left, my brother checked the pump in the basement one more time – the filter was full to the top and the filter basket was floating, just like it should be – then checked the outflow pipe. He was surprised by the direction the water was flowing, but I wasn’t. There’s a reason I have a retaining wall at that end of the old kitchen garden!
Now that this is fixed, and we’ve had the clogged drained fixed, we need to use our water. Especially in the kitchen and laundry. We still need to set the washing machine drain hose back into the pipe – no one has needed to do laundry yet – and I plan to do a machine clean cycle. That uses straight hot water. We’re also going to keep up the drain maintenance routine we’ve already started, plus what the plumber recommended we do with the kitchen sinks every few days. Last night, I even flushed out the access pipe to the septic tank in the old basement floor with the hose, to make sure that second bottleneck was still clear. Having the laundry draining into the septic again should actually help keep that clear, too.
By the time my brother left, he’d been here about four hours, with a brief stop for lunch, working on all this!
My brother is allergic to cats, so I had lunch with him in his car.
Meanwhile, he can return all the parts and pieces he never needed to use, and get his money back!
We’re still blown away by finding that piece of fabric stuck in the valve. So utterly unexpected.
The fact that nothing was damaged by it is pretty amazing, too.
So we were all wrong about what was going on, and that’s just fine! With some of the possible causes, this is one of the easiest fixes there could have been.
As for the frozen ejector, it’s hard to say how long it will take for the calcium chloride to work its way down to the bottom. Then my brother will need to come back and switch the pipes so we can test it out and, hopefully, be able to leave it.
We might not be using the emergency diverter all winter, after all!
Insanely awesome. Fantastic. Amazing. What would we do without him?
After a long drive home (I think it’s 6 hours, possibly 8), he stopped only to pick up a few things, then took their second car to our place. Once here, he went into the basement to look at things there (there wasn’t much to see, really) and change into his ski pants before grabbing his supplies and heading to the barn. Right about then, my SIL showed up. Unfortunately, she’s allergic to cats, so she can’t come into the house, and just stayed in the car the whole time, though we did get a chance to talk for a bit.
My brother looked around in the barn for a while, trying to find some copper pipe. The one corner I thought I’d seen some had a different type of pipe, but there was a length of pipe were I remembered, up in the rafters. My brother was able to reach it. It was only about 6′ long, though. We talked about finding a way to add a safety line, just in case, but its surface was too smooth.
He grabbed one of their super long extension cords that they now have stored in the barn and we headed out to the ejector with the copper pipe. Then, while I secured the end of the extension cord to a fence post, he ran the rest of the cord to the pump shack, which is a bit closer than the barn.
When he finished that, he headed to the car to get the heat gun, while I popped into the house. I’d found a piece of copper pipe in the basement that had a slightly wider part at the end, so it would hold a safety line. That way, if we accidentally dropped it, we could pull it up again.
Not that we ever needed it.
By the time I got there, my brother had opened up the ejector, taken a look, then put it all back again. When I got there, he popped the elbow off and removed the cap to show me what he found.
The first obvious problem was, the venture pipe was frozen right to the top. It should have been empty. When the pump turns off, any liquid in the venturi pipe drains to the bottom, which is about 10 or 12 feet down.
The 4″ pipe around it was also full, though not quite to the top. I stuck the copper pipe I had into the opening until I hit ice to see how far down it went, and it was about 8″ from the surface.
This absolutely should not have happened.
My brother put the pieces back and we headed to the house so install the diverter.
Before we did, we went to the corner of the house on the outside to find the opening. It was higher than I expected, for some reason. I still had the copper pipe I’d brought over with me (it made for a handy walking stick in the snow!), and my brother used it to punch a hole through the spray foam insulation.
From there, it was to the basement, to install the diverter.
Installing the diverter itself was an easy thing. First, he pushed the length of pipe to the outside through the hole.
He had drilled that hole himself, years ago, when they had to do some major work on the septic system, so my parents could still use their plumbing. This is the log part of the house, which is sitting on top of those joists – which turned out to be twice as thick as he expected! It took a lot to drill out that hole.
Once that end was through the wall, it was just a matter of removing the outflow pipe at the top of the pump and replacing it with the diverter.
A simple thing – yet I could not have done it.
I don’t have a heat gun.
After loosening the clamps on the outflow pipe, my brother had to use the heat gun to soften the plastic enough to pull it off. He still had to get pretty physical with it – I was rather alarmed to see the pump being moved around so much. I’d thought it was bolted down to the concrete! Turns out, it’s bolted down to some plywood. Which makes sense, as it would be easier to change pumps that way.
Once the pipe was free, however, black fluid started spilling out. All my brother could do was try to get as little as possible on the pump itself – and not get splashed himself! Me, I immediately went for the broom we keep nearby, to sweep water into the floor drain when there’s seepage in the spring. Once I got as much as I could swept away, my brother attached the diverter – making sure to remember to put the clamps on pipe, first! After softening the plastic with his heat gun a few times, he was able to get the pipe all the way on, then clamp it down.
The next thing to do was set something up to the pipe outside, to get any outflow well away from the house. The big flexible hose (it’s about 6″ in diameter) he’d brought for us before was stored in the barn, so it would have been quite frozen. He was concerned about using it, as it might crack from the cold. There were some old downspouts in the barn, though, so he went to look and see what he could find that could be used right away.
While he went to do that, I got the hose that I use to clear the floor drain and access pipe to give the floor where the fluid had spilled a bit of a wash, and swept that into the floor drain (the floor doesn’t slope towards the drain properly). While I was doing that, I heard some gurgling from the filter as it drained. This was to be expected, though, with the pipes being switched. I left it for the moment, though, then headed outside again to join my brother.
I got there just in time to see him carrying to lengths of pipe, and dragging the flexible hose behind him! He had it by one end, so that it would straighten a bit while being dragged.
I was impressed that he found two lengths of interlocking 4″ PVC pipe in the barn. I have no idea where he dug those out!
I grabbed the flexible hose from him so he could carry the pipes more easily.
The next while was spent setting up the PVC pipe over the diverter hose sticking out of the house. It was very important that the PVC pipe be right up against the house, and as high as possible, so nothing would flow backwards towards the house. The two pieces were interlocked, and we added whatever we could find to support its weight, so that it would be completely straight. The ground slopes downwards there, so that part was fine. The very end had to be raised off the ground, so that there would be no chance of fluid freezing and blocking the end.
As for the flexible hose, that got pulled out further, so that the black plastic could be warmed by the sun, tomorrow. Eventually, it will be added to the end of the PVC pipe, and the outflow will be sent well into the trees.
For now, he made sure to shovel a trench of sorts into the snow, to direct any outflow that might happen before then. Unfortunately, he dug it straight towards our little Liberty Apple tree! I mentioned that it was there, and he was saying “fertilizer!” I said that if it freezes, it’ll kill it.
I have to add, though; this is a Zone 4 tree, and we are Zone 3. With this cold snap we’re getting right now, it may well have been killed off. We won’t know until spring!
Anyhow. Once my brother saw where it was, he just dug the trench more to one side.
Once we were sure of how everything was set up, it was back to the basement. The filter was primed, and the pump turned back on.
From there, my brother headed out to shut off lights and close up doors. He also moved the car they are leaving for us over to where I had set up the extension cord for the block heater. I helped out, then went over to the gate to close it behind them.
Now, we wait.
We can use our plumbing as normal for now. It will take at least a few days before both sides of the septic tank fill and the pill switch triggers the pump. My brother was already fretting that it might not turn on at all, but I don’t see why it won’t. We’ll just have to keep an eye on things and listen for the pump.
We are all, understandably, paranoid about using our water right now. Is it safe to flush? Can we take a shower? Wash dishes in the sink?
The answer is yes…
… but… are we sure?
At least we know the diverter pipe is right here. The pipes outside are wide enough that they shouldn’t ice up, but it would be much, much easier to take care of that, should it happen.
As for the ejector…
Well, I’ll be heading to my mother’s in the late morning, so I should be able to call the company that installed the ejector and tell them what we found. Everyone was saying how I could pull the venturi pipe out and bring it inside so the venturi valve on the bottom can thaw, so obviously no one thought the whole thing could be frozen solid the way it is. Something is wrong, somewhere.
What will come of that, I have no idea.
It will help knowing that the pump is far newer than I thought it was, and that it was the highest end pump my brother could get.
For now, though, it looks like we’ll have our emergency diverter set up for the rest of the winter.
It is what it is. We’ll just have to deal with what we’ve got! I’m just incredibly thankful that we had that diverter, and that my brother was willing to come out here tonight, after such a long drive, to do what he could for us.
Have I mentioned, just how awesome my brother is?
I don’t think I could say it often enough. My brother is the best!
You can see the times I took the above three screencaps, showing this morning’s temperatures. It’s coming up to 1pm as I write this, and we have not only finally warmed up to -20C/-4C, but it’s such a sunny day that the “windchill” is -15C/5F. The last screencap I took, at 9am, was just before I headed outside to feed the cats (I skipped the rest of my morning rounds), and the south facing part of the house was feeling much warmer. The wind direction just managed to be blocked by the trees to the south, which made a huge difference.
Unfortunately, we still have no septic, and the tank was not pumped yesterday, so we can’t use our plumbing. The septic truck broke down and never made it.
This morning, I tried calling one of the plumbers back – they are supposed to be available 24 hrs, according to their website. I left a message, but no one has called back.
So, we’re still using the honey pot in the bathroom. No showers and using as little water as possible to wash our hands. To do dishes, we’ve got basins on the dining room table, then we dump the dirty water outside when we’re done. We’ve even changed how we’re cooking, to try and dirty as few dishes as possible, and nothing that involves washing things, or dumping cooking water down the sink. I made a “use whatcha got” soup this morning out up leftovers – even the last bits of charcuteries meat and vegetable sticks we’d prepared extra of for New Year’s – for a hearty one pot meal.
—— pause for phone calls and messages and more calls and …. everything has changed! ——
Okay, I feel like I’m going through mental whiplash right now!
I will get to that in a moment.
Where was I?
Ah, yes. Doing dishes!
Basically, we’re being careful to have as little water going into the septic tank as possible. It can handle being at least a bit overfull – we’ve certainly gone more than a little over full just this past summer! – but we really want to avoid that.
I’m actually getting used to using the honeypot, because we can’t flush the toilet.
Yeesh.
Anyhow…
The plumber I left a message with got back to me while I was writing this. The first thing he let me know is that they are booked solid and cannot come out.
He also sounded rather upset for me. I’d mentioned the ejector was replaced about a month, month and a half ago. Ejectors are made to work in the winter. He used to install them himself. He has one himself that was installed in the 90’s, and it’s working fine. It shouldn’t be frozen. He suggested I call the company that installed it and get them to fix it. I told him I’d already talked to them, and he asked what they said when I told them it was frozen. I told the plumber that, at the time I called, we were thinking the problem was somewhere else at the time, and he was the one who suggested the ejector might be frozen. I didn’t confirm that until after. I also mentioned he’d asked me to call him back today, which I was planning to do. He told me that, when I did, to tell them they needed to come put and fix the ejector.
*sigh*
I did call the owner of the company back and basically told him what the plumber said. He was quite frustrated by that; apparently plumbers pretty regularly do stuff like that, when they don’t actually know what’s going on.
The problem is not the ejector.
The system we have works like this. The plumbing in the house all drains into one side of our septic tank. The solids sink to the bottom and, once it fills, the greywater drains into the other side of the tank. That side has a float with a pill switch in it. When it fills, the float triggers the pump inside the house. The pump pulls the greywater from the second half of the tank – this inflow pipe is where we have the filter installed, to catch any bits and pieces that might be in the water that could damage the pump – then pumps it out to the ejector. The outflow pipe runs most of the length of the basement and out the wall. The pipe, along with water pipes that supplies the heated water fountains for cattle, and a tap in the barn, runs about 300 or more feet to the barn, then turns away from the barn towards a low spot. From there, the venturi pipe creates enough pressure to draw the water up the pipe and out.
With ours, we’ve got a sheet of metal roofing to reduce erosion and divert the greywater towards a low area, further away from the barn.
That elbow at the top is part of the venturi pipe.
When the septic pump shuts off, any water in the venturi pipe drops down below the frost line and collects at the bottom of the 4″ pipe. The next time the septic pump turns on, the venturi pipe drains what’s at the bottom of the 4″ pipe first.
Here’s the problem.
There has to be enough pressure for this to happen, and that requires a certain gallons per minute rate of flow (he couldn’t remember exactly what that was). If there isn’t enough pressure, the venturi pipe can’t drain the bottom of the 4″ pipe completely. Then the pump shuts off, the water drains to the bottom, but now there’s more than there was before.
Eventually, the water level in the 4″ pipe gets above the frost line.
The septic pump, he told me, should take only about 2-3 minutes to drain the tank.
Ours takes about 5 minutes.
Except, recently, we’ve been having issues with flow.
First, the pump would empty the filter, but there wasn’t more water coming in from the tank. I would have to stop the pump, prime the filter, turn it on again, and it would work. The inflow, however, wasn’t as powerful as it had been, before.
The night before it stopped working entirely, the pump hadn’t gone off at all. The only reason it would was if we were using enough water for the second side of the tank to fill and the pill switch triggered the pump to turn on. That just didn’t happen.
So not only was the flow of water from the pump low, but there was no flow at all during one of the coldest nights we’ve had this year. Flowing water would have helped keep it from freezing entirely – at least for a while longer.
Which means that, ultimately, the problem is the pump and the flow of greywater.
Now, the pump *is* wearing out and needs to be replaced, but that may not be the problem. There may also be an air leak somewhere, affecting the vacuum. Which may have been what I was seeing, with a leak from the filter and the O ring not sealing. Or, there could be an air leak somewhere else.
Now, we could install the diverter and an emergency measure, but we still need to get the ejector thawed out, and we probably still need to replace the pump. I’ve been checking the filter regularly, and even turning the pump on for a few moments. It’s not draining, and the filter is not leaking, which – in theory, at least – means there is no longer an air leak.
Other issues could be that the pipe leading to the ejector is also getting coated with gunk on the inside and getting narrower. This is something we have been aware of and have been taking steps to try and improve. One of those was to use the Septo Bac every two days for two weeks, and we really did see a difference in how things flowed after that. Currently, we’re using Free Flow pipe maintenance twice a week; that is more to clear the pipes inside the house, but it would be beneficial for the tank and the pipe to the ejector, too.
—– Must pause for exciting news. —–
The septic guy just arrived! Our tank is being emptied right now!
We’ll be able to flush our toilet again!
I did get a peek into the tank when he popped the lid off. The level had not reached the pipe that the pill switch cable runs through yet, which was quite a relief.
That guy deserves one helluva tip.
Okay, where was I…
Right.
So there are a number of possible reasons why the ejector wasn’t able to drain properly, which resulted in the freeze.
I then got instructions on how to thaw out the ejector (that doesn’t involve ice fishing tents and heaters, as one plumber suggested trying).
I wasn’t able to pull the venturi pipe out because it’s frozen, but could rotate the cap. I couldn’t take the cap off, because of the elbow.
Well, that elbow has a screw, and it comes off.
We could take off the elbow and remove the cap.
We could then start pouring boiling water into the 4″ pipe, around the venturi pipe. However, he said to put some copper pipe down, first. The pipe itself will heat up and help thaw things out faster, but it would also help get water down more directly and further through the ice on the bottom.
Once it seems like enough ice was melted, someone could turn on the septic pump and, hopefully, it would drain the water at the bottom, and empty the septic tank.
That would take a long time, and it’s still colder than -20C/-4F out there.
—- pause for more calls —-
Oh, my goodness. More changes! This time, for tomorrow, too. I’ll get caught up to that, later.
With all this, I’ve been keeping my brother and his wife up to date, pretty constantly.
Given our concerns with the truck, another thing I had to deal with last night was how to get my mother to her medical appointment on Monday. Plus, I was supposed to come early enough to do her laundry for her. She called last night to tell me she was able to get her laundry done herself and that I didn’t need to come early. I told her a bit about what was going on (I didn’t want to overwhelm her!) and that I wasn’t sure if I could get her to her appointment. She tried calling my sister to drive her (which she didn’t want, as I’m the one who normally accompanies my mother, so I’m on top of what’s going on), but my sister starts her shift at work less than an hour after my mother’s appointment.
I passed that on to my brother as well. Today, I was supposed to run the engine a few times, so see if the problem continued, then decide Monday morning, if I’d be rescheduling my mother’s appointment. Possibly mine and my daughter’s on Wednesday, too.
I got a call from my SIL. They were going to be coming home on Sunday (today), and she offered to drive us. She would pick me up first, then we’d pick up my mother, drive her to her appointment, then she’d drive us both home again, then head home herself.
I was stunned by the offer – that’s a LOT of driving for her! Once I was sure this would not be too much of a problem for her, I gratefully accepted the offer.
Today, I’ve been messaging them the whole time, while they are on the way home. My SIL was driving, so my brother was able to respond to my messages.
When I told him about thawing the ejector and needing to look for a long enough copper pipe (I know I’ve seen some, somewhere!), he called me. I was just bundling up to go outside and check the barn.
Which is jam packed with their stuff.
I’m sure there is one long enough in one corner of the old bull’s stall, but it’s full of my brother’s gardening supplies now. I wasn’t sure if it was there, and I wasn’t sure if I could reach it! I’m pretty sure there are lengths of copper pipe in the rafters, too, but again, I’m not sure I could reach them. The centre aisle of the barn is full of tractors and snow blowers and rotary mowers, and I’m… well… short.
My brother called to tell me not to bother trying to thaw out the ejector. They would go home, then come here with both their cars. My SIL would follow later. He would take a look at the ejector, see what he could do, then she would drive him home.
They would leave one of their cars with us. It’s already parked outside, so they know it can handle the cold.
My truck should, too – it certainly did last winter! – but that’s another story….
The thing is, they were still about 3-4 hours away from home! Add in the time to come here, and he won’t get here until after dark!
But he felt he had no choice. No one is coming out to install the diverter, and no one was going to come out to thaw out the ejector. The one company would have, but they are so far away, it would be a lot more expensive, and they didn’t want to ding us with a huge bill. It’s not like they’d be coming out to fix an actual problem with the ejector they installed, that would be covered by any kind of warranty.
Plus, by leaving us with their car, my SIL won’t have to do all that driving.
Then my brother told me to sit down with a cup of tea and relax for a while. He knows me well enough to know how all this has been stressing me out.
Which is about when my husband called out, saying “are you expecting someone with a big truck?”
I’d opened the gate for the septic truck last night, and never closed it. He was able to drive right in!
He’d backed into the yard, so I threw on my parka and headed out. We went over to where I’d cleared things to make room for the truck and the hoses, and got the insulated tarp freed from the frozen ground. He then went to back the truck up the rest of the way. I confirmed how much we owed him, and told him it might be a couple of days before I can get the cash to him. He was fine with that. We’ve done this before, and he knows he can trust us.
With that, I went back inside and let my brother know the septic truck was here. It didn’t take him long at all to empty the truck, so when my brother said he wanted to call, I delayed it long enough for me to go back out, put the weights back down on the tarp, which the septic guy had put back, and put everything away.
Not before using the toilet and actually being able to flush it!!!
Ooooo… Very exciting! 😂🤣😂
While it was great that the tank was emptied, it does make thawing the ejector a bit more complicated. It will take probably a few days before both sides of the tank filles enough to trigger the pump again. Which means that, if we thaw the ejector, there’s not way to test it.
My brother thinks he should be able to use his heat gun and the copper pipe to thaw the ejector.
We’ll see how it works out, though. We won’t really know what we’re dealing with until we get that cap off and can actually see how high the ice it – or use the copper pipe to find how far it goes.
When they reach their place, he’ll grab a few tools, but we really only need a screwdriver to remove the single screw to get that elbow off.
Of course, things never turn out as expected, so who knows.
They don’t have a lot of tools at their place right now. They brought most of them here, to the farm. However, they’re scattered all over. They didn’t have time to be organized about it, but just jammed things wherever they could. My brother won’t be able to start organizing things until spring, at the earliest.
Well, we’ll do what we can with where we are at.
Meanwhile, they will be leaving a car here, and it will need to be plugged in. So I headed out to the garage to get a 100′ extension cord and set that up through the back door of the garage, so the car can be parked in the more sheltered yard.
While I was at it, I finally got to the truck and got the engine running. Then, after puttering with the extension cord, I set up my OBDII scanner.
The first thing I noticed was that the oil pressure gauge was still sitting at 0 and not moving. The check engine light was on again, too.
I did a full module scan. What I’m getting is “Engine Oil Pressure Sensor/Switch “A” High. Five times.
Looking into more detail, the scanner tells me this code frequency is “very common”. The recommended fix is to replace the engine oil pressure sensor.
Which got replaced not that long ago. Unless “switch A” is a different sensor.
I took screen captures of the results. When I’m somewhere with enough data signal to send images through text, I’ll send them to the garage.
Otherwise, the truck sounded just fine. In fact, now that the MAF sensor has been replaced, I do hear an improvement in how it starts, when using the remote car starter. Definitely smoother. I’d checked the oil yesterday, and it was fine, too.
Phew.
This post took a lot longer – and became a lot longer – than I expected!
As of right now, I’m basically just waiting for my brother to arrive and will accompany him to the ejector.
My brother is the best. So is his wife! I am so glad my mother transferred ownership of the property over to them. I don’t know what we’d do without them!
Well, my daughter and I did manage to get out and run multiple errands today.
Way too expensive ones.
Last night, however, I got a message from my brother, letting me know he was planning to come out. He had some stuff he needed to do with the vehicles he’s got parked out here now, including the tractors. Unfortunately, he was expecting to be here at a time when we would probably still be out and about. I let him know that, and that we would likely miss him entirely. He doesn’t need me to be there, but I do enjoy his company, and would help him, if I could be of any use to him. Ah, well.
Before we headed out, of course, the morning rounds were done. The wind was from the south and bitterly cold, so I didn’t quite get the full rounds done. According the the weather app, we were at -7C/19F at the time, with a windchill of -14C/7F. I don’t know which weather station had that reading, but it felt WAY colder than that in the wind. It was blowing in from the south, too, we were getting the full brunt of it.
With the cold temperatures, the outside cats’ kibble in the sunroom has been disappearing fast, as well as in the shelf shelter bowls, but the kibble house and under the water bowl shelter trays have been building up. It’s just been too cold for the cats to eat it, even as sheltered as they are. They’ll get to it when things warm up, but for now, they’re avoiding those trays as much as they can. The catio food bowl gets emptied, though!
The outside heated water bowl was completely dry, and the sun room water bowl had just layers of ice shards left. The cats were really appreciating having warm water to drink!
I actually am using hot water from the tap these days – with the new powered anode rod in our hot water tank, there is no longer a smell, so we aren’t shocking the tank with hydrogen peroxide anymore. That means we no longer need to get the kettle going every time.
I was concerned about the isolation kitties. Especially Eye Baby. His eyes and nose are leaking so much, and he’s still such a small kitty. It’s cold enough in there, even with the heat lamp set to face the back of the shelter and the overall temperatures increasing, that the wet cat food we’re giving them is mostly frozen. It’s right next to a sliding window, so that corner is colder. The kittens, however, have been hanging out on their lounging shelf directly in front of where the heat lamp is now facing, so they are obviously noticing a difference and taking advantage of it. They simply need more heat than what the 150 watt ceramic bulbs are capable of.
With that in mind, our first stop on the way out was the feed store. I got a couple of 40 pound bags of kibble for the outside cats – they had a different brand that I tried this time – and I found their heat bulbs. They didn’t have the ceramic ones, but that didn’t surprise me. Those are usually sold for terrariums. They had 250 watt incandescent bulbs in red or white. The white was slightly cheaper, so I got those. They came in a two pack, too.
They did not have any heated water bowls. When I asked, the guy said there had been one this morning, but it was no longer on the shelf. Someone beat us to it!
I did order another 4 pounds of lysine.
Once done there, we stopped at a gas station to top up the tank and get some energy drinks for the road – neither of us got much sleep last night! As I was about to go inside after filling the tank, though, I spotted a bird, on the pavement near the sidewalk along the building. Just sitting there. Frozen! I ended up getting a paper towel and put it in the garbage can. Poor thing. It may have been frozen solid, but I still didn’t want a car driving over it.
After the gas station, it was off to the nearer city.
Our first stop was the Walmart area. My daughter had her own shopping list, so she went in ahead while I hit a Staples in the same parking lot, first. My daughter has been updating her resume and wants to print it out, but my printer is out of ink in two colours – almost all from the automatic head cleaning. I’d last bought the XL size of cartridges, because that was what I could afford at the time, and those have very little ink in them. When a colour runs out, the printer won’t even print in black only, which is so frustrating.
Oh, I just remembered… the printer has been printing as if a portrait oriented file is being printed in landscape form. It didn’t do that when we first installed the printer on my new computer, but suddenly switched, and we have not been able to figure out how to fix it. All the settings are telling it to print as normal. If that’s still happening, we still won’t be able to print her resume! It would be practically unreadable.
Well, I’ll be doing test prints and cleaning the heads after the ink is installed, so we’ll see.
As for the ink, I was able to get the XXL size, with double the ink in the cartridges, as a 3 pack. I couldn’t have gotten the XL size even if I wanted to, as they only had those as individual packages – but no individual package of the XXL size!
One package of ink cost over $124, after taxes and enviro fees.
*choke*
The individual XL size cartridges, with half the ink, were almost $30 each. Add in the enviro fees and taxes, they wouldn’t have been much cheaper.
Ouch.
After leaving the ink in the truck, I met up with my daughter and we started out with breakfast (even though it was almost noon by then) at McRaunchies. Then we went our separate ways with our shopping lists. I had just a few things on my list, but I did get a few extras. One of the things I almost forgot to get was a new 12′ extension cord – an outdoor one – to replace the old one that the sun room heated water bowl was plugged into. That cord has been there since long before we moved here, and is just a household cord. After finding the melted spot on the bottom of the heated water bowl, I figure it was time for an upgrade, with something that can handle how cold it can sometimes get in there.
My daughter wasn’t able to find most of what was on her and her sister’s shopping list. My list had more kibble for the inside cats, bread and eggs, but I got more canned soup that was on sale, some items my husband requested, and a few odds and ends. I even found some affordable breakaway collars to replace the lost ones on the outside neutered cats, and a couple of inexpensive cat toys for the isolation kitties. I actually got quite a bit for the $160+ I spent there.
No heated water bowl, though.
So after paying for our stuff, we tried the Canadian Tire across the street.
They didn’t have any, either.
Well, I still plan to hit the feed store in the town north of us, as it has more retail stuff. I know they have heated bowls. I just don’t know if they have the smaller size I’m looking for, since the big ones seem to die a lot more quickly. I will be rescheduling to pick up our beef share in that town, next week, so I can check them out, then.
Since my daughter didn’t find everything on her list, we then went to a regular grocery store. Enough time had passed by this time that I was starting to get hungry again, so while my daughter went hunting for stuff on her list, I got some food we could eat in the truck – and a fruit cake as a treat for my husband. Just a little one. The size I used to get for him, which isn’t very big, either, has increased in price by almost 50%. Even the smaller one I got was more expensive than what the larger one used to cost. It’s a good thing my husband is the only one that likes fruit cake!
When my daughter was done her shopping, we had one more stop to make: a nearby liquor store. The girls want to make boozy eggnog, and we’ve got everything but the booze to make it!
With all the errands done, we started heading home. My daughter updated her sister was we got closer. We were maybe 20 minutes away when I asked if my brother was still there, and we were told he was snow blowing! I thought he might do that. There was a lot of stuff in the way of his snow blowers, though, so I wasn’t sure. I know my brother well enough that he would take advantage of the trip to do as many things as he could, before he had to leave.
When we got to the gate, he was still at it, though I could see he was having issues with the snow blower.
My daughter opened the gate for me and I drove the truck up to the house for unloading. With both sun room doors tied closed, I had to go through the house to open them, so we could unload the outside cat kibble straight to the sun room. I also made sure to turn off both heat lamps, to let the ceramic bulbs cool down so I could switch them with the new bulbs.
It took them a while to cool down!
Everything was unloaded, the outside cats were fed and I parked the truck, and they were still too hot to remove. I didn’t want the isolation kitties without heat, though, so I found some thick work gloves and used those to remove the ceramic bulbs.
Here is the before and after, for the isolation shelter.
Poor Eye Baby. He is not looking well at all. Kohl has been trying to get through the window while I pet her, not so much to escape as to get warm cuddles! Which I couldn’t do, since that would be taking her out of the shelter and into the wind.
The fluffy boy wouldn’t let me touch him. Eye baby just sat on the shelf, ignoring me.
Once that was done, I went out to see my brother. He had already put the snow blower away and was about to leave! He said he made a bit of a mess, though I didn’t see it as such. He told me the snow blower has transmission issues and it keeps stopping. There’s a trick to getting it moving again. Not something I’m going to touch! Perhaps we’ll eventually be using his snow blowers, too, but not until after he’s had a chance to show me how to run them, before or after he’s done the fixes they need. So far, little Spewie is enough to do the job we need.
My brother cleared a vehicle wide path to the barn, plus did a few passes in the inner yard, before I blocked the way with the truck to unload it. He also widened the driveway a bit, and even fiddled with the gate, as the two sides were no longer straight. When the ground shifts in the winter, the posts on either side move. When he redid how the gate was hinged to the posts after our vandal damaged the original hinges, he did it in such a way that they can be micro adjusted. He even used a level to make sure the two sides were exactly straight!
That was so sweet of him!
It’ll probably shift back again in the summer, though. 😁 No matter! If it does, they can be adjusted again.
I basically had time for him to update me on the stuff he did, and give him a hug, before he was gone. He needed to hurry if he was going to get home before we lost our light.
After closing up the gate behind him, I came back to the house and could see the isolation kitties by the light of the new heat lamps. I definitely got the impression they are feeling the difference!
I then remembered to give them their new toys. I imagine it would get pretty boring in there for such young kittens. At least when they’re warm enough to play, instead of huddling together for warmth!
I went through the sun room to tie off the doors again, and found several cats under the new heat bulb in there, too! I tried to make sure there were some smaller kibble bowls under the heat lamp. There were three cats around one small bowl under the lamp, instead of at the big tray of food, nearby! 😁
In retrospect, I do regret not getting 250 watt bulbs, right from the start.
Ah, well. Live and learn.
All in all, it turned out to be a productive, if more expensive than planned, day.
It was stuff we needed, though, so it is what it is. 🫤
As I close this off, I checked the weather again. We’re at -7C/19F again, but this time, the wind chill is listed as -22C/-8F. THAT is more like how it felt, this morning!
We’ve got a couple of days with expected highs of -2C/28F coming up before things start getting chilly again. The day after tomorrow, we’re supposed to get more snow. We shall see how that works out in our area. Long range forecast now says the above freezing temperatures will start after Christmas, instead of before Christmas, though Christmas day itself is supposed to be just below freezing. We’ll see how it turns out.
This year, we’ll be having a very quite Christmas and New Year. None of us have the spoons for much activity, this year.
It’s been an oddly difficult year.
Ah, well. It is what it is. We work with what we are given!
As my late father would days, “what else can you do?”
I don’t mean that in a good way, but I have to say that I am very grateful. Things went wrong in the best way possible, if that makes any sense!
Today was my day to go to Costco for our second stock up shopping trip. Shopping there on a Saturday is definitely better than on Black Friday! Still, I wasn’t looking forward to it. I just don’t like shopping in general. On top of that, while today was warmer than yesterday, the winds were still pretty high. But, it needed to be done, and it really wasn’t all that bad out, as far as winter weather goes in this area.
My mother called last night and we arranged for a grocery shopping and errands day on Monday. However, she mentioned being out of milk, so I told her I would swing by the grocery store in her town on the way out, and get some for her. She asked me to get her something to go with her tea, too. 😊
So that was my first stop of the day. While at the grocery store, I picked up a sandwich and a drink to tide me over until I got to the city.
I am so glad I did.
My plan had been to stop at a shopping mall near the Costco first to grab lunch at the food court, then do the shopping. As I was getting closer to the city, however, I began to notice the sound of tires on the road was getting louder. I had the radio on, and it was loud enough to be heard over the music, which is not usual.
I couldn’t think about it too much, though, once I made my first turn onto the highway bypassing most of the city. At this point, I was no longer driving with the wind at my back, but was getting blasted from the side. The truck was being buffeted quite a lot, until I finally reached my exit.
At this point, I turned off the radio and was listening to the tires. It still sounded like tires on the road. Just louder.
When I got to the mall, I found myself having to drive through the parking lot, trying to find a spot. It was really full, and I couldn’t find any, even far from the building. However, that sound was really bothering me. There is a Canadian Tire between this mall and the Costco, so I headed for the Canadian Tire. Just to make things even more interesting, by this time I was really needing a bathroom.
Thankfully, I found a parking spot near the Canadian Tire auto service area. When I got out of the truck, I quickly checked the tires. They looked find, but there was a lot of ice built up on the mud flaps. Could that be all it was?
I didn’t stop to find out and ran inside to use the bathroom, then messaged my family about the status of things. I messaged my brother, too. I had messaged them earlier about the possibility of meeting for lunch. My SIL had gone out of province and wasn’t back yet, and my brother was running errands. When they bowed out, I responded and said, just as well, and explained why.
After that, I went back to the truck and knocked the ice free from all the mud flaps. From the gouges in the ice, there was no doubt that it had been rubbing against the tires.
By the fourth tire, the scraper on my snow clearing brush broke off. That piece of ice beside it in the photo was probably the biggest of them all.
I then got into the truck and started backing out, thinking I could head back to the mall and get food.
Which is when the other noise started.
As soon as I started moving, there was a sort of screeching, rubbing, grinding noise.
I stopped and moved back into the stop, and the sound continued when I was moving forward.
I was not going to drive anywhere with that noise!
I thought that maybe it was just ice somewhere in there, but it wasn’t worth taking a chance. We only have the one vehicle!
Back into Canadian Tire I went.
After waiting in line for a while – there were a lot of people around – I told a guy what was happening and asked about getting it checked. He told me that they were really busy, and it was unlikely they’d be able to check it for at least 6 or 7 hours.
!!!
So I asked where the next nearest garage was and he told me about a couple of them.
I wasn’t about to drive the truck, though. After looking up on my maps app, I found which one was closest and headed that way.
Walking straight into the wind.
Thankfully, I was dressed for the weather, so I was fine. I made sure to wear my down filled parka today. It may be old and ratty, but it’s very warm.
I just checked, and the distance I walked was a little over half a mile.
I talked to the guy behind the counter, explaining the situation. Unfortunately, they were really busy, too. They closed at four and, even if we got the towed over, he couldn’t guarantee they’d be able to look at it before closing. The truck would be staying there for the weekend.
So I thanked them and decided, 6-7 hours isn’t that bad.
I was going to message my family but found my brother had tried to call me while I was walking, so I called him back. It turned out he was in the area – stuck waiting for a train! – and wanted to meet me. I told him I was going back to the Canadian Tire and why.
Amazingly, I got there before he did.
This time, I had the wind at my back, so it was a much more pleasant walk.
Once there, however, I found I was too late. They were now booking for Monday.
Meanwhile, I was concerned about the budget. There was only so much we could absorb. So I ended up calling my bank to talk about that. I ended up sitting in the truck to have the privacy and quiet to make the call.
I got an automated message saying how long the wait was expected to be and was able to choose a call back option.
I just finished on the phone when my brother called. He was in the auto service area, looking for me! When I told him where I was, he told me to stay there and he’d meet me.
When he got there, he asked me all sorts of questions, then got me to try moving the truck back a few feet, then forward again, while he listened.
He was able to narrow the noise down to the front tires (from the inside, the sound seemed to be all around). He also thought it sounded like metal on metal.
*sigh*
He wanted to try and look under, but didn’t want to lie on the snow. I had a tarp in the back, though so we brought that out. He looked, then had me move the truck back again, while he was looking under it.
After he got up and got me to more forward again, he told me everything that he could see looked in really good shape. The only thing he could think of that could be making the noise was the bearings.
I’ve had to replace a bearing before, and it didn’t sound anything at all like this.
If it is the bearings, he thinks it would likely cost around $1000.
!!!
He also said that when I was going in reverse, the sound seemed to come from the front driver’s side tire – but when I moved forward, it seemed to be coming from the front passenger side.
At that point, the only thing to do was to book the truck in. He said he would lend us a car – or I could possibly spend the night with them.
When we got back in and talked to the guy at the counter, my brother was able to tell him exactly what he saw for the notes.
Just checking the truck is going to cost almost $200 in total.
It’s now booked for 7am on Monday. I’d say that’s their earliest slot that no one else wanted. I won’t be in the city and the truck is staying in their parking lot, so it doesn’t matter to me. He did say that they will try and see it tomorrow, if possible. Otherwise, Monday it is.
While this was going on, my phone vibrated but didn’t ring. I don’t know why my phone doesn’t ring for incoming calls. It is set to both ring and vibrate, but there’s never a ring. Anyhow, it was CIBC trying to call me back. My brother and I were heading for the doors when I felt my pocket vibrating, so I took the call.
Long story short on that one: I spoke to 5 different people for 1 hour and 11 minutes. During this time, I followed my brother to his car, we sat there for a bit until I was on hold again, he drove me to his place, made a pot of tea and got out a lunch to heat up, all while I was either on hold or being transferred and put on hold again.
In the end, though, it was done. If necessary, we will have back up funds to finance the cost.
*sigh*
Meanwhile, my brother still had errands to do – and was going to be meeting my SIL at the airport! She was in the loop with messaging and we even spoke on the phone while having lunch. I am so glad I got that sandwich earlier, or I would have been dizzy and nauseous from hunger by that point! The hungrier I get, the sicker I get, but the more I lose my appetite. It’s really weird. The more I need to eat, the less I want to eat.
Anyhow.
During the drive to their place, the weather got really bad. By this time, it was past 2, so going to Costco was not going to happen. We would be losing light, soon, so I wanted to go straight home.
My brother then moved the car he drove so I could take their other car out of the garage, and we went our separate ways.
I don’t know what I would have done without my brother’s help! I’d still have talked to the bank, but likely would have had to find a hotel or something, and I don’t think there are any in this area.
By the time I was heading home, though, the road conditions and weather were excellent, so I made a stop at the small Walmart along the way. I figured I could at least pick up some butter and toilet paper.
I messaged my family and my daughter added a couple more things to the list that we would need soon.
They were out of butter, other than the expensive stuff sold in sticks, but I got a few other things. I even got some more kibble, just in case.
Then I loaded the car and started messaging my family to let them know I was soon to be back on the road, when I realized, I forgot the toilet paper! 😄😄 We aren’t out, but it would have been good to have extra, just in case.
Meanwhile, I also got messages from the Cat Lady while I was driving to the Walmart. I answered her and told her what was going on.
Finally, I was on the road home again. Since I had the cat food, I had arranged for the sun room doors to be untied so I could go in that way with them.
Which is why I found the kitten.
The tiny little grey and white kitten that wasn’t getting any bigger, lying on one of the patio blocks in front of the shelf shelter.
😭
I can’t say it was a surprise, since she was obviously not thriving. With the cold we’ve been having, it was probably just too much for her tiny body. There was nothing obviously wrong with her. She didn’t seem sick, no injuries, just… not thriving. I knew that if we were going to lose any to natural causes, she was the most likely.
It still really sucks. Yes, we have too many yard cats, but it’s always sad when we lose them – and we lost so many this year!
I couldn’t even bury her. I had to put her in the branch pile for cremation.
*sigh*
So, that’s our situation now. I’ve got my brother’s car again – he was telling me that, at this point, I’ve driven their “new” car more than he has! – which is such a Godsend. The fact that I was able to get the truck parked right at the garage is another thing to be grateful for.
Meanwhile, we’re going to have to change things up next week, since we have no way of knowing when we’ll get the truck back. Even if they check it and find the problem, they may not be able to actually repair it right away.
The Cat Lady has already said she will reschedule the spays on Thursday. I may or may not have to reschedule with my mother on Monday, but if we don’t get the truck back on Monday or Tuesday, my daughter and I will have to reschedule her doctor’s appointment and my eye appointment, which are both on Wednesday. Which we might have had to do anyhow. My daughter still has her dizzy spells and might not be able to drive me home from my eye appointment, even if we had the truck, and my brother doesn’t want anyone but me driving their car.
Oof.
What a day!
For all the things that went wrong, I can still say, they went wrong in as good a way as possible. I didn’t break down on the road, or while I was running errands for my mother or.. or… or… There are so many ways things could have been worse.
Meanwhile, I am safe at home and, thanks go my brother, we have transportation.
Life is good, and we have much to be thankful for.
With today being an inside day, I did finally start working on editing the garden tour video I have planned.
Then I got a message from my SIL.
My brother was soon to be on his way to our mother’s, to put her AC away for the winter – something he hasn’t had the time to do for weeks. Did I want to be there?
Of course!
Being able to see my brother is always a joy.
However, my presence would also help prevent some of the nasties my mother likes to throw at him when no one else is around.
By the time I headed out, the predicted rain had hit us, and it was pouring! The driveway was already full of water. It was also full dark by then, so the drive to my mother’s town was NOT done at highway speeds!
I left our place not that long after he left his, and he still got there before I did! I didn’t realize that until he phoned me, asking if I could pick up some milk for our mother. The grocery store was closed by then, because it’s Sunday, so I made a dash to a gas station to get some milk for her. By the time I got inside, he was almost finished, so there wasn’t much left for me to help with.
Then we sat for a visit and a chat.
A somewhat serious chat.
It turned out our vandal showed up to visit my mother recently. My mother didn’t remember the exact day, but it was a day when her Meals on Wheels arrived, so we know it was at least on a Monday, Wednesday or Friday.
She was all impressed that he’d brought some chicken drumsticks for lunch, though he ate them himself because she had her meal delivered while he was there.
Her big surprise was when the social worker that volunteers to deliver this not only knew our vandal, but greeted him with a big hug.
There were a few other things she crowed over with his visit, which really bothered my brother and I. It doesn’t seem to matter how badly our vandal acts; all he has to do is bring some chicken or go to a town meeting she approved of, and she can’t say enough good about him.
The conversation did remind my brother that he had another “carrier message” voicemail notification from his phone. He’d deliberately not listened to it because the only calls like that have been from our vandal, even though his number is blocked, and my brother just didn’t need that stress in the middle of everything they’ve been doing with the move.
So he brought up the message, and all three of us listened to it.
Yes, it was from our vandal.
Wow.
It was absolutely vile.
Some of the things he was saying about me and my daughters were just disgusting, mostly centered on our weight, the fact that we don’t “work” (meaning, not having outside jobs he considers real jobs), and involved a lot of swearing.
There were a number of other things that showed he was just making things up in his own head, some of which left us scratching ours, trying to figure out how he came to those conclusions.
He somehow found out about my saying something on Facebook – my personal page – about our hot water tank and went on a bizarre tangent about that. Apparently, if we had outside jobs, the tank would… not break? Magically fix itself? I have no idea.
He has obviously noticed that there are a lot of commotion and things showing up here at the farm. He made a comment about it, lamenting that he can’t come over to see, because he would instantly end up in prison.
That’s not how things work, but if it keeps him away, I’m good with him believing that.
He has no idea what’s going on, and it seems to be driving him bonkers.
As horrible as the things he was saying was, my mother needed to hear it. The version of him that shows up at her place lately is not the real him. These phone messages are the real him. He is absolutely obsessed with his hatred of me and my daughters (he seems to forget my husband exists). He used to direct this hate at my brother, and still tries to say that our late father wanted this property to be bequeathed to our vandal, not my brother. Meanwhile, we have a telephone message my father left on my brother’s answering machine, shortly before he died, saying he wanted it to go to my brother.
Thankfully, ownership has already been transferred to my brother, so it is safe. There is nothing about it in my mother’s will for our vandal to try and contest.
This was quite a wake up for my mother, to hear all this. This message would have been left shortly before or after he had visited my mother in person. She should not be allowing him in. Perhaps after hearing this, she may stop. Unlikely, but it’s one more reason it would be better for my mother to be in a long term care facility, as she wants. Our vandal doesn’t have to know where she is, and if he does find out, he can be on file as not allowed to see her.
It also got us to talking about what he seems to be trying to do. He somehow seems to think my mother can still give him the farm, as if she could somehow take ownership back from my brother. Our vandal has his own acreage, and oodles of equipment and out building and vehicles… he is quite well set up. He doesn’t need this place, nor anything on it.
It’s not about him wanting it for himself so much as to make sure I don’t have it – even though it’s my brother that owns it. He is a shining example of what it means to “covet” something. To covet is not just to want something that someone else has, but to take what someone else has from them.
So… Marxism on an individual scale. 😄
Even my mother was able to understand this.
All in all, it did put a downer on the visit but, considering how my mother responded to our vandal showing up at her place, it was really important that she hear it, and that we could talk about it with her.
We couldn’t stay too much longer, though. My brother no longer takes vacation days on Mondays, now that the move is done and the new owners have taken possession of the property they sold, so he had to get back home. Their new place is slightly closer, but it’s still at least an hour’s drive for him. Plus, there was a break in the rain that wasn’t going to last long, so I wanted to get home before it hit again, too.
I will be back to help my mother with her grocery shopping and errands soon, but she needs this far less often, now that she’s got the Meals on Wheels deliveries.
The weather predictions for the next while look pretty mild, so hopefully I’ll get more done outside. Tomorrow, however, I’m hoping to get the truck loaded up with the bags of aluminum again, and this time actually make it to the scrap yard! The rain is supposed to continue until about 10am tomorrow, but I’ve got a tarp over the sorted bags, so that should make loading the truck less unpleasant!
We shall see what the day brings.
Meanwhile, time to get back to editing some video…
I hadn’t heard from the garage about the status of our truck, but today was my day to do our first stock up shopping trip (which will get its own post later). Once I was in the city, I texted our mechanic and let him know I had a reliable signal, so he could update me whenever he had the chance.
Long story short, it was fixed and getting its oil change, and would be ready soon.
Yay!
Now, to get the truck, I was thinking I would have to do it another day, as I would first be driving to the city to get my SIL, then we’d drive back to the garage, pay and get the keys, then my SIL would take their car to their home and I’d take the truck to ours.
Well, after much messaging between my brother and his wife, and the garage, it was worked out to get it done today! My brother was bringing one last load here to the farm, with my SIL coming along to help me get the truck, but they weren’t going to make it until well after the garage closed.
With a discount for paying in cash, the total was $320. On the way home from the city I still had to stop at the feed store for a 40 pound bag of cat food to tide us over until my husband’s main disability pay comes in. A branch of my bank is in the same town, so I got the cash, then drove to the garage to pay for the work and get the keys before they closed, leaving the truck until I could come back with me SIL.
I was able to briefly talk to the mechanic about the truck. It turned out to be probable the best of all possible scenarios.
The oil pump’s sensor needing replacing.
He said this is so common, he changes out about one of these every week – which is a lot for a town this size.
There is no damage to the engine at all, which is a HUGE relief.
From there, I finally went home to unload the shopping of the day, then had a quick supper. I took advantage of the daylight to work on a garden bed until my brother and his wife arrived. She and I then left pretty much immediately to get the truck.
Their car is a sweet ride, but it sure felt good to be driving our truck again!
After a quick stop to add a bit of gas, I headed home – absolutely paranoid about all the gauges and lights and warnings a long the way!
It was fine. Apparently, this is why the check engine light had been on, too.
Once we got back, we helped my brother unload. When things were mostly done, my SIL headed home ahead of him – it was already full dark by then. While this is the last load for the farm, they still have a few more things to take care of on their property before the new owners officially take possession of it.
I continued helping my brother until it was all done. The only down side was when I popped the tailgate back onto the trailer. It’s made to slide down channels on the sides, but if it doesn’t drop straight, one end tends to catch. That happened and when I got it loose, it dropped straight down.
Right onto the tips of two of my fingers!
One of them is now quite swollen, making typing rather difficult! 😄
Once everything was closed up and put away, my wonderful, awesome, amazing brother took the time to work on our hot water tank!
The first thing he did was use a different handle for the socket, and was able to get the old anode rod out, while I held the tank in place as best I could. Once those tanks are empty, they are really quite light!
The anode rod was longer than there’s space above the tank, so he had to bend it to get it out. It was quite covered in crud, of course. I honestly expected it to look worse.
Once that was done, it was a relatively simple matter to install the powered rod (not an affiliate link). This is how it looks now.
The rod itself is a lot shorter than what we pulled out, so that made it easier to install. It sticks out a lot further than I expected. There is a ground wire now attached to one of the screws around the top of the tank.
Then it was time to remove the elements.
When he tested it with his meter before, the top one was out. He didn’t have his meter with him this time, but I was sure the bottom one was also burnt out.
After removing the wires, it was quite easy to get the top element out. After making sure the threads were clean and clear, the new element was installed and wired up again.
Then it was time to take out the bottom element.
Wow. That was… something.
It wasn’t difficult to unscrew it, but once my brother starting trying to pull it out, it did NOT want to come out. It was completely covered in crud! He kept having to twist it back and forth to break off the crud and try to pull it out, little by little. It turned out to be longer than expected – and then there was a bend at the end!
Once he got it out completely, we could see that it was supposed to be bent back on itself, but it was so full of crud that, as my brother pulled it out, he actually straightened the element out in the process.
After he pulled it out, he bent it back like it was originally supposed to be – sort of.
Here are all three parts. Instagram cuts off part of the photo, so you can’t see the tip of the anode rod, which has even more crud on it than the rest.
The straight element it from the top. That’s the one that was dead when my brother tested them. How the bottom one was still live at the time, I have no idea! That one was so encased in crud!
The new powered anode rod is supposed to keep that from happening again. Or, at least, not so quickly. This tank was installed only a year ago! The shorted life span of any of the tanks we had – though the previous ones started leaking from their bases somewhere inside, and this one hasn’t.
Once everything was installed, it was time to start filling the tank.
When there was enough water in it, we allowed it to drain out the bottom, to take some of the crud out with it. We didn’t see a lot, though.
As the tank filled, we ran the hot water at the old laundry sink in the basement, while my daughter ran all the hot water taps upstairs, to get the air out of the pipes and clear out more crud. Once the tank was full, we did it again, before finally asking my daughter to turn on the breaker. We also plugged in the powered anode rod.
My brother waited a while longer, checking the elements to make sure nothing was leaking, etc. He couldn’t stay until the entire tank heated up, though, and left soon after.
We do now have hot water, though! In fact, it’s now so hot, we might want to turn the thermostat down on the tank!
No more heating pots and kettles of water, for dishes and sponge bathing!
We’re all so paranoid of things breaking, though, no one has dared to take a shower, yet. 😄
Meanwhile, with this new powered anode rod, we should also no longer have that sulfur smell from the hot water. We’d been treating the tank with hydrogen peroxide to get rid of it, but it never lasted long. Eventually, we just stopped bothering, and put up with the smell.
I am so glad my brother was able to take the time to help us with this. Especially when they have so much going on with their move right now. In retrospect, while we might have been able to do it ourselves to a certain point, when it came to getting that bottom element out, we could not have done it. I’ve lost so much grip strength due to arthritis, I couldn’t have done it. My younger daughter injured her wrist while installing the tub surround, and both my daughters have all the joint issues that comes with PCOS. My husband, of course, is the most broken of all of us, and shouldn’t even be doing the stairs.
My original plan for today was to get a garden bed ready to plant garlic in.
I ended up going into town, instead. My daughter’s transfer from PayPal went through, and she sent me the funds for two new heat elements for the hot water tank. Then, since I was in town anyhow, I make a quick stop at the grocery store to refill our big water jugs.
We still don’t have hot water, though.
Using the large socket set my brother loaned us, we first tried a practice run on removing the anode rod from one of the old tanks.
It would not come loose, no matter what. The socket wrench in this set had an extra long handle, so torque wasn’t the problem. It could also slide so that you can grab it from both sides of the socket.
Nothing.
This was an old tank that died a year ago, so perhaps that was part of the problem?
The current hot water tanks’ breaker is off, but I still double checked before setting it to drain completely. After a while, we tried to take out the original anode rod.
Nope. It was not moving. We also had the extra challenge of the tank trying to spin around, but not being able to hold it in place as easily as with the tank was wasn’t right up against a wall.
So that got set aside. I’m going to have to ask my brother for help with that.
We popped open the panels to access the elements, but ended up not doing anything. I just don’t want to take chances with anything electrical and, since we need my brother’s help anyhow, it would just be easier on my mind to leave it for him.
What I could do, though, was start setting up for the powered anode rod. It came with a 12 foot power cord. That was long enough to reach the outlet the sump pump is plugged into. I set up hooks to hold up the cord along the floor joists for the bathroom floor, while also keeping it away from the various water and drainage pipes, and still have a bit of slack at either end.
At times like this, it’s handy that the old basement’s ceiling is more than a foot lower than the new basement. Short little me can reach without any problem!
Meanwhile, we were kept up to date on how things were going for my brother and SIL. By the time they loaded the two trailers, their truck and their friend’s SUV, it was past 4pm by the time they could leave!
I made sure the gate was open for them. Then, when it was getting close to the time I expected them to arrive, I headed outside. I wasn’t going to be able to start preparing a garden bed to plant garlic in, but I could at least work on the small bed the Crespo squash was planted in. The A frame trellis, with its cross piece broken by the weight of a squash, and its netting was still there. I got the A frame parts and pieces unsecured and set with the stakes from the beds in the main garden area. Once all of the stakes, posts, nets, ties, etc. are gathered up, they’ll be sorted and bundled before being put into the old garden shed for the winter. There are a lot of broken bamboo stakes this year, but I might be able to use some of them for other things.
Once the stakes used to make the A frame trellis were set aside, it was time to clear the net of squash vines and pole beans. That took the longest to get done!
Once the net was bundled up and set with the rest of the stuff for winter storage, I pulled the rest of the squash vines out of the bed. The compost ring is, handily, right beside this bed.
I was just pulling the supports for the peppers in the bed beside it, when vehicles and trailers pulled in. By the time I set the supports aside and joined them, they already had one trailer backed up to the barn, both sets of doors open, and were already unloading.
With the four of us working together, unloading went very quickly, all things considered. Still, with two trailers and both vehicles loaded, we lost light quickly.
Not as brilliantly orange and red as yesterday, but still very dramatic and gorgeous!
With the possession date on their sold property coming up fast, they just put everything into the barn, even though some of it will need to be moved out to their storage trailer and the old bread truck that will become a workshop. My brother is going to have to sort through and organize things later one. That’s going to be a huge job!
Even with all this going on, they had us in mind. Yesterday, we had the extra lumber that they gave us for our small building projects, as well as a heated water bowl from when they had dogs. Today, it was traps! They have two live animal traps. One is smaller; they used it for squirrels getting into their sheds. It’s big enough for a small cat. The other is a larger, two door trap that’s the next size up. After putting those in the garage, I made sure to message the Cat Lady. She was going to lend us a trap so catch the feral females for spaying, but the last person they lent it to hasn’t returned it. Now, we have two! That will come in very handy over the winter. The goal is to trap and spay as many of the feral females as we can before they go into heat in the spring.
If all goes well, the cat isolation shelter will get good use this winter!
Once everything was unloaded, they had to leave right away. Hopefully, tomorrow will be their last loads out here – at least, the last ones that need trailers to haul out!
Which means my goal of getting a garlic bed prepared and planted has been shifted to tomorrow.
It’s supposed to be warmer tomorrow, anyhow!
Another delay, but considering it meant getting that much closer to having hot water again, plus helping my brother and SIL out, it was worth it!
But that’s what she told me when I got a call from her this morning.
This is starting to become a common refrain, unfortunately.
My schedule for today included heading to my mother’s nice and early, so I could drive her to the city. She had an afternoon appointment for another eye injection *shudder* to try and stop the bleeding of her wet macular degeneration and maybe – just maybe – improve her vision in that eye.
I tried to get more information about what was going on, but just got repeats of her usual. Her breathing. She only got 2 hours of sleep, and it’s because of her pills (it’s not because of her pills). Her chest pains (acid reflux). Pain in general. Even her incontinence. She’s convinced she is dying.
On the one hand, I get it. I totally get it! She feels like crap, and the idea of driving 1 1/2 hours to an appointment that would take at least an hour, then another 1 1/2 hours drive back, would seem overwhelming.
She’s 93 years old with busted up knees.
Yeah, I get it.
On the other hand, she has no understanding of just how good she is doing. I mean, she’s really amazing. At this age, her sister was already in the nursing home, being shuttled around in a wheelchair, and falling deep into dementia for several years. There are people far younger than her that are doing far worse.
Plus, canceling and appointment like this at the last minute is a big deal. There is only one place that does these treatments, and if she wants to retain any vision in that eye (she did say she was noticing an improvement), she needs these treatments.
Her response was, what does it matter, if she’s going to die, anyway?
She tried to guilt me, saying that I didn’t believe her. I told her, it’s not that I don’t believe her, in how she feels. I’m trying to understand why she thinks she’s dying. Because, really, there is nothing new in her complaints. That’s what I keep trying to get to. What is happening that’s different, that’s convincing her she’s about to die any at any minute.
In the end, she said she wasn’t going to say anymore and was going to say good bye, then she hung up.
At which point, I messaged my brother and his wife to let them know the situation. They are so busy right now, it’s the last thing they need to deal with, but they needed to know.
In the end, I decided that I would go to my mother’s place, anyways, and talk to her in person. If she still refused to go, I would phone the clinic and cancel the appointment from her place.
I meant to leave early, but so many cats were following me to the car, I had to ask one of my daughters to very noisily feed them.
It was Syndol that would not stop following me to the car. I kept moving him away, and he kept coming back. I finally had to carry him all the way to the house, where he finally noticed the kibble and went to eat.
So much for leaving early, but I was at least on the road at the time I was intending to be.
While I was driving, my phone started ringing. I couldn’t answer, of course, but I’d told my brother that I would be on the road, and I figured it might be home.
It was.
When he couldn’t reach my by phone, he sent a quick message. He’d phoned her, they had a good talk, and she will go. He called her in between meetings at work, so he had to be brief. By the time I parked and could check messages, my SIL added that my brother had finally told our mother that they were selling their place, just so I would be aware.
So when I got to my mother’s apartment, she was up and ready and waiting.
She then launched into giving me all sorts of instructions on what to do and where to find things when she died. I honestly think she expected to die during the drive in.
She did mention my brother’s call, but as she was giving me instructions, including about her finances, she brought up my brother, and how he has the farm, but he wants her money, too. I sold her, the only person that wants her money is our vandal, and reminded her of the legal steps my brother had taken to protect her from our vandal. She just scoffed, then said that my sister was the only one who didn’t care about my mother’s money.
Which is weird, but she does like to try and play us against each other.
I’d worked out a time when we had to be on the road by, to get to her appointment, and we ended up leaving almost 20 minutes earlier.
She did walk very slowly to the car, lots of panting and pausing. It was a struggle for her to get into the car, and then she sat there, panting.
She really did play it up.
Her struggle to get into the car was very genuine, though. If we were using the truck, I probably would have had to practically pick her up to help her in!
She made a comment about her breathing as I was getting in, but then pretty much stopped the act at that point.
As we were driving, she started telling me things like, she’d talked to some of her neighbours in her building, and one of them had the same thing she did (at least that’s how my mother understood it), she didn’t go anything, and it went away. Then my mother told me about a Jehovah’s Witness that used to come visit (how many decades ago was this???) who talked about losing vision until she prayed and God healed her, and her vision had been fine ever since. She also told me about how, years ago (how many years?) she remember she had black spots floating around in her vision. She never went to the doctor, never did anything different, and they went away.
All I could say, really, was that these are all different things. That’s great for them, but that has nothing to do with you’re specific situation.
Also, for someone who was complaining about getting only a couple of hours sleep, she was very talkative and alert. I suggested she could try napping during the drive, but she wanted to enjoy the scenery…
Anyhow.
She told me she’d gone to bed at around 11, woke at 2am and couldn’t get back to sleep, no matter what, and it was because of her pills. I told her, we know it’s not the pills. It could be anything. Even just busy brain or stress. Oh, but you don’t know what I’ve lived through…
???
Eventually, she brought up about my brother selling their property, and that they were selling it privately, not through an agency.
I’m not sure what reaction she expected from that.
I reminded her, I had told her, my brother is preparing for retirement.
She did bring up about him not selling the farm – the property we are on – and I told her, he can’t sell it. That was part of my father’s will.
She dropped that, too.
Overall, though, the conversation during the drive actually went pretty well. She kept commenting on the traffic. She still seems to think traffic should be like when she and my father lived in the city until the mid 60’s.
I’m glad we left as early as we did, though. It’s construction season.
If we’d left when I originally planned, we should have arrived about half an hour early. Leaving when we did, we should have arrived as much as 45 minutes early.
We got there 10 minutes before her appointment.
They took her in almost immediatley.
The next while spent getting her eye dilated while the tech tried to get images and video of it.
Normally, during these tests, they ask you to focus on a green X, or a picture of a house, or some such thing, in the middle of the device over the eye they are looking at.
With macular degeneration, that’s not possible. She can’t see the middle of anything.
So the tech instead set up a tiny green light on an adjustable arm in front of her left eye, and asked my mother to try and focus on that.
My mother kept getting distracted.
What do you mean a green light? It’s white?
There’s a dark spot in the middle.
The light isn’t on…
After a number of attempts to get video, I finally started to explain, they just needed her to look at that spot. It didn’t matter what the colour was, or anything else. It’s the location she needs to focus on.
I think she finally understood that, but by then, the tech was done!
She was then sent to a waiting room before the next stage, but the doctor requested one more image. He needed a specific location photographed, so he could compare with an image taken last time.
That, at least, was quick!
We do have good news.
The bleeding in her eye seems to have stopped. There is still a bit of blood in there, but mostly there is scar tissue right in the middle of her vision.
Then he asked her if she wanted to continue treatment!
She deferred making a decisions (which is her usual way), wanting him to make the decision for her. Which he couldn’t do, of course. He did say he would recommend still getting the treatments since, if they are stopped now, the bleeding might resume. I finally said we should at least do a treatment today, and we decide about further treatment later.
Meanwhile, my mother launched into how she’d had these black spots floating in her eyes, (I told her, this is not the same thing, and the doctor repeated that) and they went away on their own, etc. The doctor told her, this is not going to go away on its own.
She dropped the subject.
So they went ahead with the treatment, with a light freezing of the eye, adding antiobiotic drops, and finally the main freezing. That one needed 7 minutes, and my mother was asked to hold a tissue over her eye and just relax for a while.
As we were waiting for the freezing, the doctor and the tech – plus a third person that was in training – started looking at other files. They spoke quietly, but I could hear bits and pieces, and could see some of the images they were looking at.
All I can say is…
My mother is doing really great! She is there at a time when she can actually get treated, and the damage is relatively mild. At one point, I could hear them lamenting that there was absolutely nothing they could do to help one particular patient. She had simply waited too long to get checked. As quiet as they spoke, I could still hear the pain in their voices.
The doctor had a timer going, so they were soon back working on my mother. She got her injection, and was reminded that she will have redness, which is normal, but if there’s any pain, she is to come back right away.
As for the next treatments, he told her she no longer needs to come back in 4 weeks, but maybe 4 or 5 weeks. I checked my calendar and saw that my husband is rebooked for his CT Scan in 5 weeks, so it would have to be 4 weeks for my mother.
The doctor was very understanding about the long drive in, and that the next treatment would be winter driving. There is simply no other clinic like this that’s closer. One is planned for the town we are closest to, but that’s all it is at this point – plans.
Once he was done, that was it. We just needed to book the next appointment, then go.
By that point, we were both hungry – my mother hadn’t even eaten breakfast! – but neither of us were up to trying to find a place to eat in the city. We talked about where to go in her town and she wasn’t enthusiastic about her choices. Then I suggested we stop at the gas station where I could pick up her favourite fried chicken and wedges.
She was quite excited over that idea!
So we had a good drive home – traffic was a lot lighter, and we were no longer in any construction zones.
I picked up the food and got her home. She was pretty famished by then! I got enough that she could have another meal out of it later.
After that, there were a few things she needed help with. One was a letter from the government that she didn’t understand. Another was helping her write out a check to pay for her ambulance bill, from her trip to the ER a month or two ago. It didn’t come with a return envelope, though – they expect people to pay via etransfer, credit or debit. She didn’t have a suitable envelope, so I ended up taking that home to get ready to mail, which I will do tomorrow.
As we were talking, she mentioned that she needed her laundry done. She hasn’t been up to doing it herself, and it’s been piling up. She said she hoped to “hire” my sister to do it – but my sister and her husband are coming home from out of province tomorrow, and tomorrow is my mother’s laundry day on the building’s schedule.
I also noticed, her fridge was looking empty.
But she never asked me for help. I even asked if she needed shopping, but she said the only thing she needed was milk.
Okay…
That was it!
I left soon after. I’ve got her check ready to mail and have my own parcel to pick up at the post office.
I really, really need to get more work done outside. Tomorrow was going to be my first day in quite a long time where I didn’t need to go anywhere, and could get back to it.
*sigh*
I’ve just arranged to go over to my mother’s tomorrow, to do her laundry and, if she puts a list together for me, her grocery shopping, too.
The long range forecast has changed, again. The snow I was seeing in the beginning of November seems to have gone away for the most part. We’ll even have some warmish days. If the weather holds, I should still be able to get things done.
We shall see.
Meanwhile, we’ve had no word from the garage about the truck, which means no one has had a chance to look at it yet.
I also had a chance to talk to my brother this evening, and got to hear the rest of how his call with her went. He had so little time to make the call, he basically just told her, go to the appointment, and that I was already on my way to get her. When he mentioned that yes, they are selling their property, she launched into her usual lecture about how the value of land only ever goes up, etc. He just let it slide and had to tell her, he needed to get back to work.
When I talked to him this evening, it was after he’d had a very long day at work (he starts at 5am), and was at the property, packing up shed contents. They’ll be coming out here this weekend with the stuff they are keeping, but they are also sending stuff to auction.
It’s a huge job, that’s for sure!
So we will be at least seeing my brother and their friend on the weekend, with trailer loads. I honestly don’t know where he’s going to be putting things at this point! Most of the sheds here can’t be used anymore.
The Re-Farmer 