I honestly expected to see it being used more but, hey… if it gives the littles a place to chill without scary strange adult cats to bug them, that’s just fine! They seem to be discovering the cat cage is good for that, too.
I didn’t see any in there this morning, but things get pretty chaotic when I come out with the food. More of the littles are actually staying and eating, rather than running and hiding. I really need to watch where I put my feet!
After feeding the cats and doing my rounds, I was about to go back into the house through the sun room, when I heard little squeaky noises and paused.
Lady Hypotenose was being absolutely tackled by her littles. Where she is in the photo is right next to the door to the old kitchen. I stayed out of the sun room and just zoomed in with my phone’s camera to get some photos, then left them be! I could use the other door to go inside!
On a completely different note. While checking my email this morning, I found a notification from Canada Revenue that there was a message awaiting me at the website.
Well, there it was.
I am now officially classified as disabled by the government. Until 2030. I suppose in 2030, I’ll have to reapply? I dunno. I’ll get a letter in the mail about it. The website doesn’t give any other informaiton.
What this means is that, at tax time, I can get the disability tax credit instead of the caregiver tax credit I’ve been getting. As my younger daughter has also applied for disability and most likely has also been accepted, this means my older daughter can apply for the caregiver credit for one of us.
It also means I can apply for various supports available, and get my own disabled parking placard. My husband has one which, in this province, we have to pay a doctor to fill out a form, then send it in with a check for the placard itself, which then gets mailed to us. In the province where we were living when my husband went on short term disability, he got a prescription that we took where we had our van insured, and we were issued one without charge, immediately. It was a red, temporary one. After six months, when he went on long term disability, we did it again and he got the blue, long term one.
Other than that… I don’t know. I’ve been looking at the various supports out there, both provincial and federal, but it seems I don’t qualify for most of them. Most are aimed at people who are in supportive living or long term care, neither of which I need.
So… really, it doesn’t change anything for me other than being something the federal government recognizes at tax time.
I somehow thought there was more to it than that. I’m used to dealing with my husband’s private disability insurance. Not government stuff.
Thank God for private insurance. We’d be so hooped without it!
Yesterday evening, I headed outside a few times, just to try and get over my funk. Plus, I just couldn’t be inside and not do anything productive, even though I did rather waste the day.
The first time I headed out, I was checking on the kittens, but only saw two.
That little tabby looks so angry all the time! 😄 That’s the one I found in the garage.
I have not seen that blue eyed black and white kitten all day today. Not sure what’s going on. That is one of Lady Hypotenose’s litter.
I also haven’t seen the other two foundlings I wrote about here. I don’t know who the mother is, but it seems they’ve been moved.
I started to check on the old kitchen garden when I heard the tiniest of meows from… somewhere. It took a while of listening before I could pinpoint a direction, and it was most definitely a distressed meow.
I found Ink’s litter. They’re in the collapsed log building by the fire pit.
There’s an old tire leaning against the wall on the outside. The kitten was on it, crying out to its three siblings, above. The adult cats can get in and out of this old building fine, but small kittens like this… well, they can fall out, but they can’t get back in!
I was able to quickly grab it and lift it up to the top of the wall, where its siblings were. It did NOT like it, but it took only a fraction of a second, and it was free of the scary human. After they all scattered, I lifted my phone as high as I could and took a picture in the general direction they ran to. That’s the last picture in the slide show above, cropped down to just the two kittens that were visible.
I was happy to see that white one’s eyes were open, because in the other pictures, they looked glued shut! What I can’t tell is if the kittens are just starting to get into their leaky eye phase, or if they are getting out of it.
Later on, I took the log I’d removed the the old kitchen garden bed, where it’s being replaced with wattle weave, and brought it over. I was able to lean it in that low spot in the top log and settle it in place firmly. The kittens can now get in and out of the building on their own, rather than Mom having to try and carry while jumping down from the top, herself!
That was yesterday evening.
This morning, as I was in the old kitchen, about to prepare food for the outside cats, I saw this through the window.
Note that cat in the carrier. That turned out to be Frank. In the next picture, you can see she slammed herself into the cuddle puddle in the cat bed! The Grink is in that bed, along with Eyelet, Grommet and Sir Robin. The Grink isn’t much bigger than the kittens!
Frank didn’t stay, though.
As I was going around to all the food bowls and trays, I was watching Frank. She was in the water bowl shelter, checking out the cat beds and box in there. She was in the sun room, checking out the cat carriers. She was going from place to place, poking around and moving on.
I realized she had to be looking for a place to give birth.
I messaged my daughters and asked them to put fresh puppy pads in the cat carriers in the sun room, in hopes she would use one of those.
The sun room littles have discovered the cat cage. They are really skittish and quick to run away, but I’ve been seeing four of them consistently.
Three of Lady Hypotenose’s babies were snuggled in one of the beds in the cat cage – I put a small bowl of food in there for them, too. They started to use the cat bed in the other cube as a littler, though, which was something I needed to deal with later.
Angry kitten, meanwhile, was snuggling with Grommet in the shelf at the window.
I could not see the black and white anywhere. Hopefully, it’s just under the counter shelf. Even Lady Hypotenose seemed to be looking for it!
I pretty much finished off the kibble with the morning feeding, though, so I headed out after breakfast. I decided to go to the feed store in the town north of us, instead of my mother’s town. I got two 40 pound bags, which should last us two weeks. After picking that up, I went into town and checked out their Red Apple store. I found a cat cave of a particular design I’ve been looking for for a while – one that doesn’t collapse easily. I was actually thinking to pick up a clear storage bin and finding a way to turn that into a secure cat cave a mother might like to give birth in, but the only ones they had that were the right dimensions was insanely expensive. The fabric cat cave I found was expensive, too, but I haven’t been able to find it anywhere else, so I snagged it, anyhow.
After a brief stop at the grocery store across the street, I headed home.
I saw Frank moving around the yard, and the first thing I could see was the blood on her back end. She had clearly just given birth – and yet, there she was. Not only was she going around the yard, but she was roughhousing with Sir Robin and Havarti, too!
That is not the behaviour of a cat that’s just given birth so recently, I found drops of blood on the floor of the sun room.
I still set up the new cat cave, in hopes she will find it and move her babies there. Given her state, I thought they had to be close by and checked all the usual places. Nothing. I was even bracing myself to find remains. None of that, either.
Given her behaviour, I strongly suspect she lost her litter.
One of the sun room kittens and Lady Hypotenose, however, have discovered the new cat cave and checked it out. I might find other littles in there, instead!
Meanwhile, I took out the cat bed the littles had started using as a litter box and put in an actual litter box. I used a garden hose to wash out the cat bed as best I could, and it’s now hanging on the line. I don’t expect it to dry anytime soon, though. We’re under a severe thunderstorm watch right now, so it’ll probably get rained on.
In fact, I think I’ll check on the outside cats and see if they need a kibble top up now. It’s early, but if the weather apps and warnings are right, a thunderstorm will be hitting us around the time I would normally be heading outside to do it. I did top up the kibble after refilling the bin, though, so they should be fine.
In the first photo above, you can see our growing pumpkin now has a sling to support it on the trellis. Or, more accurately, to take the weight off the plastic trellis netting so it won’t snap. The weight is now being held by the vertical supports for the permanent trellis, plus I wrapped garden twist ties around the strand of the netting holding the most weight, to strengthen it and put some of that weight onto the horizontal support bar above.
The next picture is of the Hedou Tiny Bok Choy seeds I gathered. I keep getting that name wrong, but I looked up the old post from when I got them as free seeds with an order from Baker Creek, back in 2022, for our 2023 garden.
The seeds in the container are actually from today’s pods I gathered, plus some I gathered earlier, as the pods dried out earlier. We will have plenty of seeds to plant this fall, for next year.
The funny thing is, we’ve never actually grown any of this variety of bok choy. The first year I tried them, they were in the bed by the chain link fence, before we know how destructive those Chinese elm seeds were. The entire bed was completely choked out. Yet, a couple of little bok choy survived and promptly bolted. All of two plants. I left them be and collected the seeds. They got planted last fall, in the “greens” mix of seeds planted in the old kitchen garden.
The problem was, the mix was scatter planted and things were pretty crowded out. I never saw the bok choy until the bolted – again, just a couple of plants – sending their flower stalks up through the mass of kohlrabi leaves. They were able to get much bigger, even being crowded out as they were, and I had a lot more pods to collect once they dried up. The pods were so dry, they started snapping open in my fingers as I tried to collect them. Most of the seeds ended up in my hand, but I’m sure a few ended up on the soil. I finally broke off the flower stalk lower down and brought the whole thing inside. For now, the seeds are in the cooler living room, with the container open to make sure they are completely dry.
When I do the winter sowing this fall, it will be a lot more organizes and planned, know that I know how the different things worked out. These tiny bok choi will be planted where they won’t be hidden or crowded out by other plants, and with protection from cats. Hopefully, next year, we’ll actually be able to harvest some and find out what they taste like!
There might still be some stalks of pods hidden under the kohlrabi leaves, but I definitely got most of them. While looking around, I did a bit of weeding and suddenly realized I was looking at a whole lot of new sprouts that were NOT weeds.
We left more spinach to go to seed than we need, and some of them got so leggy and spread out when they bolted, I pulled them like weeds, and just dropped them as mulch. Well, it looks like those seeds continued to develop, even after the plants were pulled!
We’ll be having an unintended fall spinach crop!
I was really struggling this morning, though. I couldn’t sleep for some reason, and after I did finally sleep, I woke up (was awakened) with this simmering undertone of anger, and it just hasn’t gone away. It didn’t get better after I had breakfast, so I tried for a nap.
It didn’t get better after a nap.
So I’ve asked the girls to take over on various things, but the outside jobs I could have done today, aren’t getting done. My head space is so messed up right now, I can’t even think of which project I would be working on. On top of it all, even though I just bought more kibble during the Walmart trip, it was just one 9kg bag for the inside cats, and another for the outside cats, and we’re already running low. I need to go to the feed store and pick up a couple more 40 pound bags, if I want to last until the first stock up trip at the end of August. I’m in no shape to do it today, but I will have to do it tomorrow.
Weather forecast is now saying we’re going to have more rain tomorrow morning. Maybe. The weather app on my phone was saying thunderstorms starting in the wee hours and ending by late morning. Now, it says no rain at all. The app on my desktop says we’ll get a bit of rain in the late morning, then again in the evening. We’re also supposed to get a lot hotter. It’s going to be topsy turvy temperatures for the next while. Last night, the forecasted low was 10C/50F. We ended up dropping to 8C/46F, instead. I actually got cold last night, and when I did my rounds, I wore a sweater for the first time in months. While not cold enough to need to cover things, anything below 10C/50F is not good for our garden, when everything is so far behind.
Anyhow.
I did head out to do the evening cat feeding earlier than usual as I wanted to make sure the littles hiding under the counter shelf could have a chance to eat without the bigger cats pushing them around. I’ve only seen one or two at a time, so I still don’t know how many are under there. For all I know, one of the moms has moved some of them.
After putting the food out, I did a head count of adult cats.
Five.
Yup. Just five! Not twenty five or thirty five. Just five
Of course, there were a lot more in the morning, but I haven’t been able to do a head count. They move around too much.
I did get a couple of pictures this afternoon, though.
Eyelet couldn’t hear the sound of the food being added to the trays and stayed in his comfy bed, making it easy to get his picture. Syndol REALLY wanted me to be paying attention to him instead of Eyelet, though!
As I write this, I have the critter cam live feed up. I can see one little kitten – the one I found in the garage, and later rescued from following other cats around the yard – running around. I saw a skunk earlier and my husband went to try and check it out, but it went under the counter shelf, instead.
Not as fast as usual, though! It would have come face first with however many kittens are under there.
They seem to have made peace, though, as the skunk’s tail is no longer visible, and he’s all the way under.
*sigh*
I’ve accomplished pretty much nothing today, and I feel like I got hit by a truck. Not pain wise. That’s been so much better since I started the anti-inflammatories. Some of it is just a general malaise. My chronic cough hasn’t been very frequent for some time, but today it’s hitting me again. I’m not coughing a lot, but when I do, it’s bad enough that my old daughter was calling down from upstairs, asking if I was okay – and she was wearing headphones while she worked! My cough is like my throat is being torn up. I spent more than 10 years in two provinces going to different specialists to find the cause of my cough, and none was found, and I finally gave up. Nothing drives a doctor more insane than being a short, fat woman that every test shows as being extremely healthy, other than physical damage, like the OA and bone spurs. Aside from not having the laundry list of fat-people ailments they think I should have, they can’t find the cause of my respiratory issues. After test after normal test, they start looking at me sideways, and thinking I’m making it up. With my new doctor, I haven’t even brought it up. She knows it’s an issue, and it’s all in my file, but I see no point in asking for more tests again. I just live with it.
Still, it’s not my cough that’s causing me issues today. I know part of it is the cats and their destructiveness, which is what woke me up this morning. We just have too many cats in the house, and chances of adoption these days has basically dropped from slim to none. I don’t blame the Cat Lady for getting out of rescue, that’s for sure.
I think that might have something to do with that underlying anger I’m feeling today. I think maybe it’s just caught up to me. We do the best we can, but there are limits, and we’ve passed ours, long ago. I can’t even reach out to the stray and feral rescue group I’ve been following; people are very quick to make assumptions and get nasty. You’d think rescues would be a whole lot of people actually interested in rescuing cats and finding homes for them, not virtue signaling, one upping each other or reporting people to the province to “help”.
Oh, I need to stop. That underlying feeling of anger is bubbling up.
That is Lady Hypotenose, in the wee hours of the night, tending her now five kittens! I saw them on the camera earlier, swirling around her like a vortex, except the new baby, who was hunting nip. I look a couple of minute later and there she was with three of her babies (the fourth one ran out of frame), and her newly adopted baby, nursing them all in the middle of the sun room.
What a good mama!
When I went to feed them this morning, they were all over the place, but when I came back after finishing my rounds, they were all gone! Every one of them! I couldn’t see them anywhere in the sun room!
I went out to check the cat house and various other spots, but nothing.
Then I came back to the sun room and found a single kitten, going for the food. I had no idea where it came from.
So I went into the old kitchen and watched through the door with the missing screen, and spotted a kitten squeeze its way out from under the counter shelf.
*phew* What a relief! I was afraid Lady Hypotenose changed her mind about keeping her kittens in the sun room!
After that, I had a bit of time before I needed to head out to my mother’s, to take her for her doctor’s appointment. She really struggled to use the stool and get into the truck but, unfortunately, this was not an appointment that could be done over the phone.
We were able to go through a whole bunch of things during the appointment, from going over the results of her various blood tests (all is fine), talking about her leg swelling with a dosage change and confirming that yes, she has toe fungus, and getting a prescription for that. My mother brought up her frequent complaint about dry mouth, that happens only when she’s sleeping. I’ve been telling her, she’s probably sleeping with her mouth open. I get it, too, sometimes. So when the doctor asked some questions and came to the same conclusion, my mother was right ticked off!
I think the doctor was ticked off, too – or at least shocked – but not at my mother. I brought up the referral for another mental health assessment, since it’s been more than a year, and home care needs it for paneling my mother for a nursing home. The doctor looked up the last penal report and was shocked it wasn’t enough. She wrote a referral for the assessment, but also wrote a letter to the home care coordinator (I’m glad I keep her business card in my phone case, because she needed the contact information!). I brought up that my mother really shouldn’t be living alone, and my mother added that she is having more trouble moving around and has to lean on furniture to get around he apartment.
I think the case coordinator is going to get a rather brusk letter about my mother’s conditions, and that she needs to be in care.
There were a few other things, some of which I had to explain to my mother as I brought her home. Normally, we would have stopped for lunch or something after the appointment, since we were on the road at lunch time, but with the changes in her prescription, I needed to get her bubble packs to the pharmacy.
My mother was so tired, she actually started to fall asleep during the drive!
Once I got her home, I went through the lock box and took some bubble packs out, leaving the new one that just got started today. My mom will stick to the same dose until that pack is done.
I also found a message from my daughter. The pharmacy had already called me on the land line, wanting to talk to me about my mother’s prescriptions! When I got there, I joked with the pharmacist that they are FAST! They were calling before I even got my mother home, yet!
They took the bubble packs to adjust them, but the new prescription for my mother’s toes as another issue. I was warned right away that it was expensive, while she looked up if it was covered by our province’s prescription insurance.
It wasn’t.
My mother had given me cash, and asked me to get some more Voltaren as well, since she’s using it on both her knees and her back now. Between that and the new prescription, it wasn’t enough, so I paid the balance.
When I got back to my mom’s and went over everything with her, and told her I’d covered about $50, she was furious. This little bottle was $50? she said, as she threw it across the table. No, it cost over $120. The $50 or so was what I covered.
Cue much ranting and raving about how it’s just toes, she didn’t need it, she didn’t want it.
She had been quite happy to get the prescription when we left the doctor’s, but I guess she expected it to be free, just like she did with the inhaler when I covered that for her, too.
It took a while to calm her down and give her the instructions on how to use it.
I suspect she will refuse to use it.
After all that, I was more than happy to leave. I still had my own errands to run at Walmart, since I was out, anyhow.
It had been raining off and on all day, and I even got warnings from home that it was pouring buckets. It wasn’t that heavy where I was, though, so the drive to the Walmart wasn’t too bad. I’m just happy to have the rain. We need it so badly!
Once I got to the Walmart, I could finally have my own lunch, too!
I didn’t have a large list, but it was enough to make the drive to Walmart worth it. Especially when it came to the cat food.
This is what $178.63 looks like.
Yeah. Not much there at all.
The most expensive items were the two bags of kibble, plus a case of wet cat food. I also got a box of pet stain/odour remover, to cat supplies alone were in the $100 range.
My husband requested water flavours, but they had only one flavour of his preferred type/brand, so he got three different types. I also grabbed more distilled water for his CPAP humidifier. He still has a good supply, but it’s a lot cheaper at Walmart, so I got extra.
There’s some coffee creamer for the girls, some cleaning vinegar and facial tissues, some powdered chicken bouillon, and some rye bread. They had an excellent price on corn on the cob, so I picked up a bunch.
And that’s it. That was almost $200
Ouch.
By the time I was heading home, it was late enough in the day that I asked my daughter to feed the outside cats. She tells me that all the kittens, except the two garage kittens, came to the house to eat, and she even got to pet some of the new littles! I’m glad because, by the time I was bringing in more cat food through the sun room, they were almost all hiding again.
The system that gave us all that wonderful rain today has passed us by and it seems like the main body of it will go right over where the huge fire across the lake is. Even with the rain, the air was still smoky. We might get a bit more rain tonight, but just barely.
I actually don’t have any appointments or planned errands for the next couple of weeks! I’m amazed. It’s been so long. Of course, there will be the usual unplanned stuff – trips to the dump, any new calls to cover my mother’s med assists for home care, stuff like that – but I’m otherwise actually going to be able to stay home for the next while!
What an amazing thing. I might actually get some progress done on various projects that had to be set aside!
I’ve seen several nursing moms show up during feeding time. Normally, when their kittens get old enough to wean, the mamas bring them to the house and feeding stations and basically leave them here. That hasn’t been happening. One of the moms, Ink, clearly has a pretty large litter, judging from how her underside look, and how many teats seemed to be full and swaying. I could never get a good look to judge how many, though, but figured more than four. Lately, though, her belly is starting to return to normal appearance, which means she’s not really nursing much, if at all, anymore, and there’s no sign of kittens.
Well, that changes this morning.
When I came out to feed the cats this morning, I found four new babies in the sun room!
That black and white one in the back is particularly hissy-spitty. BUT they did not run away. They had been playing when I opened the door, which means they’d already been there for some hours, at least. Long enough to start to feel comfortable.
Lady Hypotenose is her mom, and she seems to have contentedly moved her babies into the sun room.
Everything else was as usual while I did my rounds, and when I left to meet up with my brother and his family to take my mom out for lunch.
That changed when I got home.
There were no kittens in sight when I parked the truck in the garage, but when I got out of the truck, I was hearing distressed meowing! My first thought was that I somehow hurt a kitten, but it wasn’t a pain meow. It was more of a panic meowing.
I went around the truck and saw a kitten run out from under and around my brother’s riding mower that’s parked to one side. The kitten saw me and ran behind some stuff to hide.
Which is where I saw a second head pop up, see me, and disappear again.
These kittens are much younger than the garage kittens.
It was late enough in the afternoon that I decided to quickly get changed, then feed the outside cats. Lately, I’ve been doing just kibble, but this time I made sure to do the upgrade from kitten soup. Before, I would use a couple of cans of wet cat food, mixed with hot water until smooth and thin, and then I mixed in dry kibble to soak up the water and wet cat food gravy. The cats love it to the point that I have had to kick the adult cats out of the sun room so the kittens could get some.
I also grabbed an extra container to use as a bowl in the garage.
Well, that worked out different than expected.
After I’d put the garage food out, I saw the little kitten I’d seen first, running around behind the garage and meowing. Pinky – the garage kitten mom – seemed unsure about these new additions and a little stressed out.
Still, once the food was set out, I saw her eating together with one of her own kittens, plus the new one.
Just after I got that first picture, though, Pinky promptly started batting at his head. He was so hungry, he mostly ignored it and went back to eating, but Pinky was NOT happy with him there.
He was so busy eating, I was able to come over, pick him up and carry him to the isolation shelter. He hissed at me, but that was about it. Once I put him down, he almost immediately dove in for the food.
I finished up with the cat feeding and put things away. By the time I was done, the new kitten was out of the isolation shelter and running around in the grass, meowing in distress. He seemed to be trying to follow other cats. For a moment, I thought maybe Ink was the mom after all, but she took off, ignoring the kitten as he tried to follow her.
When the kitten started wandering to the outer yard, I had to do something. It’s dangerous for a kitten out there! Thankfully, I was able to catch him. This time, I took him into the sun room and into the cat cage, then gave it his own food and water bowl. He tried to get through the cat cage walls for a while before the food became too irresistible for him. The cat cage has a kitten sized opening under the “door”, so it would eventually find its way out, but for the moment, he settled. Some of the kittens that showed up this morning were nearby, and that seemed to relax him a bit. Which is when I was able to get that last photo in the above slide show.
After a while, though, Lady Hypotenose showed up to nurse her own kittens. While she was moving around to get their attention, I took a chance and got the new kitten out of the cat cage and put him with Lady Hypotenose and her babies. I don’t think she nursed him, but he was definitely calmer around the other kittens, and already seems to have picked a friend!
In the second picture, you can see Lady Hypotenose taking a break from the kittens!
Two of her others like to hand out around that cat bed. The last one, the black and white, is definitely the spiciest of them all. I kept hearing him growing, hissing and spitting, at any of the bigger kittens that come near.
Later on, I’ll go out and see if I can spot that other kitten I saw in the garage. I’d really like to get it into the sun room, too. Whichever cat is the mama, at least in the sun room, they will have access to food and water, even if the mama has simply left them here.
Our total kitten population is now at 14 or 15, and the new ones in the sun room now have a MUCH better chance at being socialized and hopefully adopted out!
Which is a good time to point out that we do have a donation button at the top. All donations go towards the feeding and care of the cats.
Of course, there is always the cuteness of the kitties, but this morning we had something extra.
Our bathroom window opens into the sun room and this morning, I was hearing some strange noises. I checked the critter cam, but couldn’t see anything. The noises were still there, though, so as soon as I could, I went to see what the heck was going on.
What I found was a pair of little raccoons, squeezed between the top of the counter shelf and the wall shelf above!
As I came in, they dove behind the counter, against the window.
I can make out at least three of them. This is a litter of four that comes visiting – the mom must of run out of the sun room before I got to the door – so I’m pretty sure there is a fourth one mashed into there!
That insulation is against a double pain window that lost its inner pane. After cleaning up as much of the broken glass as we could, we put the insulation there to both protect the window from extreme temperature differences and any kittens and cats that would go back there.
Also, baby raccoons. 😄
We had more rain last night, and very small amounts of rain off and on, so after they had their breakfast, the cats curled up in their favorite spots.
Nosey found himself a nice little bed in the portable greenhouse. At the same time, Grommet was chilling on the garbage can heat sink (in the last picture). I also got a picture of Grommet and Eyelet snoozing together in one of the cat beds in the shelf shelter. Grommet really likes that cat bed!
Late this morning, after my daughter loaded the truck for me, I finally made it to the dump. It’s been a while! When I got there as saw the pit area, it was clear that they had finally pushed the huge build up on garbage at the edge of the pit, in. There was actually room to drive in and turn to back up to the edge.
Which was already filling up with trash on the edge. A lot of people make no effort to toss the garbage into the pit, and just dump it at the edge. Which gets to be a problem when it’s odd stuff like construction garbage (which isn’t supposed to go in the pit; there are areas set aside for that) or like what I saw today; a large pile spilling into the lane of what looked like rectangular pieces of foam. Picture mattress foam, except definitely not from mattresses.
I’m glad to finally make the dump run, and that they did clear the pit area since I was last there, but it has already gotten so bad, so fast, again, it’s really a problem. I’m not the only one worried about getting a flat, driving into the pit area!
After I got home, I did some stuff in the garden and got things going for the crock pot, as on one wants to cook in this muggy heat. I had to stop to go to my mother’s for her med assist, so one of my daughters finished that for me while I was gone.
Today makes 5 days this week, where I had to come in to do my mother’s med assists, because they were short staffed. The first two were mornings, the rest were evenings, where I have to set out her bed time meds for her to take herself, later.
When I got there, my mother had just finished her supper. Which was also her breakfast! She had stayed in bed all day today, which means she didn’t have food with her morning meds. She probably had a few crackers with them.
I remembered to grab our callous grinder from home, so after she took her meds, I checked on her toenails and smoothed them out a bit. Since I am taking her to her doctor next week, I brought up having the doctor take a look at her feet, just to make sure she doesn’t have any fungus, because of that one weird toenail.
Since I was there anyhow, I also did her dishes and put away her laundry, which was still neatly folded in the basket on her couch, where my sister had left them for her. The wheelchair I brought is still sitting in her living room. I don’t think she’s even touched it. Which really doesn’t help us any, when she’s asking us to buy her a new one and we don’t even know if she can use a manual chair to begin with.
I hope my mother is feeling better tomorrow, though. My brother has a surprise for her. We’ll be meeting up at a particular restaurant, with his grandsons, and then he’s going to go get my mother to have lunch with her great grandsons. We haven’t said anything in advance, as my mother’s behaviour is so unpredictable, it’s just safer not to say anything. I’ve been asked to be there partly because she behaves differently when I’m there, and is less cruel to my brother and his wife. With her behaviour around kids, it’s really hard to know how she will be. She wanted nothing to do with her grandsons when they were little, and the only interest she had with my daughters was to “test” them and get them to perform for her, in between making false reports against us to the home school office.
We never know, though. She might have one of her good days, and it’ll be a great visit and one her great grandsons will remember in a positive light in the future.
My husband and I had joint dental appointments this afternoon, which meant – of course – I couldn’t sleep last night! I got maybe three hours of sleep before I finally got up to take care of the outside cats and do my morning rounds.
Once the outside stuff was done, I had enough energy to grab a couple of PB sandwiches for breakfast and then crashed for a couple of hours, so I would at least be safe to drive.
I don’t think my husband was able to eat anything at all this morning. He meds really mess with his appetite, so he doesn’t typically have any sort of breakfast.
Which turned out to not be a good thing!
His appointment was at 12:45, and the plan was for us to go for a late lunch after we were done. We both had changes in our medical information to update them on before our appointments, so we headed out early to have time for that.
Thank God for AC in the truck. For all the rain we’ve had, it’s still hot and muggy, with the humidex making it so much worse. Stepping outside of the house or truck was like walking into a wet wall of heat. The rain doesn’t seem to have done much to reduce the smoke in the air, either. We’re just as smokey today as we were yesterday, and yesterday was the worst I’ve seen since we moved out here.
We had a bit of a surprise during the drive to town. For some distance, we could see something on the side of the road. A whole bunch of large somethings.
They turned out to be Guinea hens! About five or six of them! Someone’s flock had escaped. 😄 I had no idea anyone in that area kept Guinea’s.
Once at the dentist, I had a form to fill out with my new information. For my husband, he brought printouts and we just handed it to them to input into his file from. None of these forms ever have enough space for the number of medications he’s on. The first time we filled one of these forms out for him, we wrote the list out on the back and it pretty much filled the page.
My husband got called in first, and I had a while to wait before I was called in. Long enough for him to get his Xrays done, and then inform us they had to double the freezing to do what they had to do, so it was going to take longer than expected.
My own visit was actually a pleasant surprise… I think. I had a couple of teeth that have been bothering me, and I thought I had a cavity starting under a crown. After the Xrays were done, they found no cavities. In fact, other than needing a cleaning, my teeth are great.
So, why the problems I’ve been having? The dentist was perplexed. In the end, the only thing he did was the slightest of grinding and polishing of a sharp edge that I was feeling that I thought was the edge of a cavity. I didn’t even need freezing. He tried all sorts of things to try and track down the source of the issues I was describing, and everything was testing out fine. About the only thing he can think of is that there is a crack under a filling, too small to show up on an Xray, but he really couldn’t tell.
I will have some other work done another time, and eventually get to talking about what to do about my missing teeth, while we still have insurance, later on.
So my husband and I are booked for another double appointment next month.
My husband, unfortunately, needs more work. Today he got a temporary fix, but he does have a confirmed cracked tooth under a filling. He was in the waiting room by the time I got out, and still so frozen, going for lunch was out of the question!
We booked the next appointment, but had a problem settling the bill. For some reason, our insurance wouldn’t go through. My husband’s did, but not mine. This has happened before, and not just as the dentist. After fussing with it for a while, she ended up just printing out the invoice/receipt for both of us for our records. They’ll keep working on whatever is going on with the insurance company and if there’s anything not covered (I believe we are covered 90%), they’ll mail us a bill. I seem to recall they did this for me the last time I was there and had a tooth pulled.
From there, we made a quick stop at the grocery store. My husband stayed in the truck – he was in no shape to walk around! – and I dashed in to pick up something he could keep in his medication fridge to eat once the freezing wore off.
My the time we got home, it was time for me to head out to feed the outside cats and start my evening errands.
Which is when my cell phone rang.
*sigh*
Of course.
It was home care.
They didn’t have anyone for my mother’s med assist for tonight and tomorrow night. I confirmed the times she was scheduled for. I had enough time to update my siblings in our group chat, call my mother, grab a food and go.
When calling my mother, I found out that my sister had left not long ago. She had been able to come over to do my mother’s laundry during her scheduled time, which was really nice. I would have done it, if we didn’t have our dental appointments. Given what happened with the med assists, if I had done it today, I would have gotten home and had to turn around and come back almost right away! My sister is normally not available, so she doesn’t even have the lock box code.
Unfortunately, every time I call my mom to let her know I have to cover the med assist again, she starts ranting at me. Why are they calling me? Why don’t I tell them I live far away? Like it’s somehow my fault. I tell her, don’t take it out on me! She says she isn’t; that I’m the “victim”, so she doesn’t seem to realize that yelling at me every time really is her taking it out on me, even if it’s home care she’s mad at.
The call was short, though, as I told her I needed to have my supper (lunch, actually), then go.
Including the time it takes to get ready, open the gate, get the truck out, then make the drive, it takes about half an hour or slightly more to get to my mother’s. While there, I give her the supper time meds, then prepare her bed time meds for her to take herself, later. She’s supposed to take her supper time meds with food. She had her Meals on Wheels at noon today, but didn’t really have much she was up to for supper and ended up asking me to get some instant oatmeal started for her, and prep her milk that she likes to add to it as well. Even so, I was there for less than 10 minutes, and then it was another half hour to get home.
Talking to my older daughter about the situation just a little while ago, she pointed out that we won’t be able to do this in the winter, and I’m the closest! We’ve already had one call where the person who was supposed to do my mother’s med assist wasn’t going to come into town because it was too dangerous to drive on the highway during a storm. I told the person calling me, if the aid couldn’t come in because the roads are too dangerous, neither can I! (Which was completely true that day.)
That’s something I’m going to have to remember to bring up with the case coordinator. There’s a reason my mother’s meds are in a lock box, but if med assists are so unreliable due to staff shortages, this is going to be a real problem.
Unless, of course, they finally get my mother into the nursing home, like she wants so much!!!
So that was done, and I’ll be back tomorrow. My brother and SIL will be out this weekend with their grandkids, if all goes well, so maybe my brother will be able to come with me, too. With how she treats him, he doesn’t want to, but she behaves better when I am there.
Anyhow.
Once done and back home, I was able to finish my evening rounds.
That smokey coloured garage kitten is getting darker as s/he get bigger. I still wonder where the blue eyes genes came from! There has to be a cat at a neighboring farm. It certainly isn’t from one of the males that lives here.
The white and grey is becoming increasingly curious, and allowing me to be closer. The smokey one runs away, which actually surprises me. After that one time I was able to not only pet it, but pick it up and hold it, I thought it would be the easier one to socialize. Instead, it’s been the harder one!
It does help that the mother allows me to pet her and starts purring. If she’s around, like she was when I got the above pictures, they are less prone to simply running away and hiding.
Once the evening stuff was done, I could finally settle in for the day. It’s not even 8pm yet, but I’m seriously considering going to be, with how little sleep I got last night. The only reason I have against it is that it’s so hot and muggy in my bedroom/office. The AC doesn’t affect this part of the house, and there’s only so much the fans can do, even with I have the box fan set to blow the hot air and smoke OUT the window during the day.
Tomorrow is supposed to get just as hot as today, with some rain in the late evening. Then we’re supposed to get about a week with little change in the temperature, but no more rain. Also, no change in the ongoing severe air quality warnings.
I do have to make sure to make a dump run tomorrow. I’m really dreading it. The conditions have gotten so bad there, I skipped going last week. I did as on a local group if anyone knew if they’d brought out the front end loader and pushed all the built up trash into the pit, but no one confirmed either way. Considering it’s been at least two months since the trash accumulating at the edge of the pit has been pushed in, you’d think it would be done by now.
I truly doubt it.
Our new council is really dropping the ball when it comes to this particular landfill. There are two others in our large municipality, but I don’t know their conditions, I’m not sure where they are, and it’s really not worth the extra cost in gas to drive the distances to them.
It needs to be done, though.
What a pain.
Ah, well. We’ll deal.
For now… yeah. I think an early bed time is definitely a necessity.
We’re only 3 days in and August is already hammering us, and it looks like it’s not going to get much better for a while! As I write this, it’s just past 6pm and, depending on which app I look at, we’re still at our high of 27C/81F, or we’re 25C/77F with the humidex putting us at 29C/84F.
I just got back from outside, and I’d go with the humidex of 29C/84F.
Looking at the long range forecasts, we’re looking at highs of 30C/86F or higher. In a couple of weeks, though, we might start getting overnight lows dropping below 10C/50F here and there. We’ll see what actually happens!
This morning, at least, was pleasantly cool. When I first headed out, early since I had to go to my mother’s for her morning med assist, I at first thought the smoke was really bad again. Happily, it wasn’t smoke, but fog.
Well. Mostly. Once the fog dissipated, it was still really smokey. Last I read today, several new wildfires have been spotted, while several others have merged. High winds and poor visibility have prevented helicopters and water bombers from being able to go out, but things have cleared up a bit, and they were able to see the changes.
I didn’t see the calico this morning, but fluffy little Colby now likes to join the crowd of cats converging at the sun room doorway, calling for food. The garage kittens wouldn’t move away from the garage this morning, so I brought their bowl back. I was hoping if I left it closer to the house, they’d be encouraged to come over, but they’re still too scared. It doesn’t help that their mother is so stand-offish and aggressive with the other cats. She will let me pet her sometimes, and starts purring right away, but she does NOT like other cats! The kittens did seem curious about the other kittens, when I saw them by the house, so they might be different as they get bigger and braver.
The cats fed and my morning rounds done, I was soon off to my mother’s to do her morning med assist. Since I was there yesterday morning, there wasn’t a lot else that needed to be done.
Since I was out anyhow, I kept on going to the smaller, nearer city. I hit the Canadian Tire first to get more stove pellets for the litter boxes. While there, I picked up some deer repellant spray that I can spray directly onto our fruit trees, as well as surfaces. It’s supposed to repel racoons and mice, etc. too.
My peas had been getting a second growth spurt, with several plants blooming and developing new pods.
This morning, they were gone. The pea pods and fresh growth, that is. Not the entire plants.
I’m not going to spray my peas with this stuff, so I stopped at a Dollarama next. I found more of the taller tomato cages, like I set around the plum tree. I picked up four sets of them and plan to put them along one side of the bed with the peas as a sort of wall, and spray those, instead. I’m going to just do the side with the Super Sugar Snap peas, since those are the ones still trying to produce, and where I have a couple of drying out plants with pods I’m allowing to fully mature to collect seeds for next year. I’ve bought more pea seeds, but none are sugar snaps.
Last of all, I hit the Walmart, starting with an early lunch at the McRaunchies. One of the things on my list was some ibuprofen for my daughters, but I was still too early. The pharmacy department was still closed and the extra strength stuff was covered and locked, still. So I took my time getting the other things on my list, plus a few other items I remembered.
In the end, I got four 4L bottles of distilled water for my husband’s CPAP humidifier, the ibuprofen (the most expensive item), a container of beef bullion powder, a couple of containers of sour candy for my husband (for when his blood sugars drop), four little bottles of sugar free water flavours for him as well, plus a bag of praline covered peanuts and two containers of gum to keep in the truck. Last of all, I grabbed an energy drink for the drive home. It cost just under $83. !!! The scary thing is, if I’d bought all this locally instead of at Walmart, it would have cost about 50% more.
That done, I headed home with only a stop at a gas station along the way. Gas in the town nearest us is the same as the city, at $1.379, instead of the $1.389 that it is in my mother’s town. I’ll be back at her place on Tuesday, to take her for her monthly blood work, and I wanted to make sure I got gas at a slightly better price.
Once I was home and the truck was unloaded by the house, I couldn’t move it because there were too many kittens around the tires. It was too early to feed them to lure them away, so I left it to move at feeding time. Once my daughter and I put everything away, I decided to just lie down for a bit. Between my aversion to shopping and the heat, I was wiped out, so I thought a bit of a rest was in order.
Two hours later, I woke up to find myself encased in cats. 😄
Good grief. I just checked the temperature again, as I want to do the evening watering, and it has actually gotten hotter!
Well, the garden needs to be watered. Time to put on my big girl panties and suck it up.
I really don’t tolerate the heat like I used to, that’s for sure! I used to love temperatures like this!
As you can see in the video after the image in the slideshow above, they are all very nervous and alert!
Sadly, I ran out of canned cat food last night, so no kitten soup this morning. I can tell they were waiting for it! That got taken care of with our first stock up shop, today. I’ll follow up on that in my next post.
I completely forgot to do an update after I got home from meeting with my friend, then seeing my mother, yesterday.
This turned out to be one of those “fine threads” situations. Since no one in my family was available to drive me to my mother’s town and pick up the truck from the garage, my friend was a sweetheart and drove me.
Being paranoid about vehicles the way I’ve become, I had to ask her about the noise her car was making. She said it was her transmission. Her car, a Toyota, has a recall on transmissions, and it hadn’t been done yet.
I suggested she talk to the guy at the garage about it. Which turned out to be a really, really good thing.
After talking to him, and going for a spin, he thought it might be the wheel bearings, except it wasn’t acting like it was the wheel bearings. So an appointment was booked, accidentally missed, then rescheduled for yesterday.
Originally, my friend was going to pick me up at 8am and we were going to drive in together. After doing my mother’s med assist on Sunday night, I realized I would have to run errands for her. I suggested to my friend that I take my truck and meet her at the garage. So that was arranged.
Since the garage opens at 9, and that’s when she was booked, I didn’t leave until about 8:30. I got to the garage before 9, yet there she was, watching as her car was already on the lift!
When I got there, the owner/mechanic was manually turning her rear driver’s side wheel, which is where he narrowed down as the main source of the noise, though the front tire was also making noise. He was really excellent as explaining to her what we were hearing, which was a normal sound, as he spun the tire. What he couldn’t do was spin is fast enough to hear the other noise. He was going to have to take the tire off and try to see what was going on.
So I took my friend out for breakfast.
We had an excellent time, catching up with each other. I mentioned to her about my mother’s medications and that I wanted to go to the pharmacy and see if her bubble packs were ready. The pharmacy is right near the garage, so that’s where we went next. I had just parked the truck and we were chatting when I spotted what I thought was her car, driving by behind us. It turned the corner and drove past on the other side, so we could see that yes, the mechanic was driving her car around the block!
She walked over to the garage, just as he was pulling back in, while I went to the pharmacy. My mother’s bubble packs were ready, and I found out how much they were. I didn’t pay for them because, the last time I did that, my mother got really angry and seems to think it cost as much as it did (she expected it to be “free”) because I used my card to pay for it. The folks at the pharmacy are quite familiar with my mother and her… peculiarities, shall we say! She completely understood why I just wanted to know how much it cost. I’m glad I did stop by, because there was no arrangement for delivery, from what I could tell, and my mother didn’t have any evening meds left for Monday, though she did have a full day’s worth for Tuesday.
Once I got the information, I headed over to the garage.
I could tell as soon as I walked in and saw them talking at the counter, that the news was not good.
My friend’s brakes were severely worn out, with the driver’s side half the thickness as the passenger side.
Worse, he couldn’t do anything about it.
One problem was that his 6 month old $10,000 diagnostic computer couldn’t connect with her on board computer. They can’t talk to each other. He’s never had this happen before, even when working with other Toyotas. Since he can’t connect with her computer, he can’t do the repair. He could jerry rig something together and it might last 6 months, but he wasn’t going to do that.
She was going to have to go to a dealership, and they charge typically twice as much for everything, including both parts and labour.
My friend was really unhappy to hear that, as the dealership has been really awful to her. One of the more recent issues was about the transmission recall. She phoned them about it and the guy she was talking to said, oh, I see you’ve missed a payment. She had only two or three payments left (the last payment was made just a week ago). She said yes, I missed one payment in 4 years – and what does that have to do with my transmission? To which she was told, “we can’t do anything for you”, and he hung up on her. !!!!
I don’t think that’s even legal when it involves a recall. The mechanic didn’t know for sure, but he said it shouldn’t be!
That was just one example. Knowing the dealership she went to, he had more. Turns out he had a story involving someone that turned out to be a mutual friend. She had towed her vehicle to the dealership and they told her she needed a new engine. Which would have been $8000 at the time.
She had it towed to him and he took a look.
Her engine was flooded. That’s all.
He told her about another location in the city, but they’re franchises owned by the same parent company. The only other one he knew of that was NOT a franchise dealership is in another small city that’s a 2 hour drive away.
My friend is going to take it there, because she refuses to deal with the place in the city.
He spent time explaining to her what he did, what he was, and why he couldn’t figure out what was going on to cause her brakes to wear like that. There’s something happening that he can’t see, nor diagnose with the computer. When he first mentioned the problem, I suggested proprietary software, but he said that’s illegal. They can, however, make it so that it’s really, really hard for anyone else to be able to do anything. Whatever the problem is, he can’t tell.
For now, he says he’s not worried about my friend driving her car normally. The way he put it, he could tell she isn’t a “rally driver”. The problem would be if she had to suddenly brake to avoid an accident, the brakes might not work. She needs to get it fixed as soon as possible.
I could see my friend was getting really worried, so I asked if he could give some sort of ballpark figure on how much it will cost, so she at least had some idea. That’s the issue. If he did the work, with what he charges for labour per hour, and being able to use off label parts, it would be a few hundred dollars. At dealership prices and how long they tend to charge for, it’ll be probably more than double that. She’s probably looking at $800 or more to get it done at a dealership.
But it’s her brakes, and there’s no messing around when it comes to brakes! They need to be done!
At least we know that where she plans to go is likely to be ethical about it. The entire town (city? I’m not sure if it’s officially big enough to be a city) has a strong reputation for reputable car dealerships. A lot of people will go out of their way to get vehicles there. So she should be in good hands.
Since he had to take her tires off, he made sure to let her know she needs to get her tires torqued between 50 and 100km. She didn’t know what that was, so he explained it to her. Since she lives in the town nearest us, I recommended to go to our regular garage. We reassured her, no one will charge her for torquing her tires.
Then she asked how much she owed him.
Nothing.
He said he couldn’t do anything to fix her car. He couldn’t even diagnose it properly. He wasn’t going to charge her for anything.
She was so thankful! He spent more than an hour trying to diagnose her vehicle, and no one would have had an issue with him charging for his time. She tried to pay him anyhow, but he refused.
What a good man.
From there, we parted ways. Given the distance to town, she was going to go straight to our regular garage and get her tires torqued sooner rather than later.
As for me, I headed over to my mother’s.
She was surprised to see me, even though I told her I’d be in town and wanted to take care of getting her medications. I told her how much is was going to be, and she asked me to pick something else up for her as well. She gave me the cash for it, but couldn’t find her loyalty card anywhere. She kept looking through her purse, but she has so many odd things in there, and has a habit of going through it and moving things around. After a while, I told her it was okay; I could just get her stuff and she could keep the receipt to get her points later. The only thing she uses them for is to get cash back off her purchases, so they add up.
After I picked her stuff up at the pharmacy, I tried going to a small department store across the street to see if they had some sort of organizer wallet for my mother. Unfortunately, the only designs they had were not accessible for my mother’s arthritic and twisted hands.
My sister works at a Walmart, so when I updated my family, I asked if she could keep an eye out for something that would be easy for my mother to use.
Once I got my mother’s bubble packs home, I made sure to put them into the lock box, before she had a chance to hide one of them away. When I went to open the combination lock, I realized that it was already on the combination. Whoever did her morning meds forgot to roll the tumblers after they closed up the box!! Thankfully, my mother didn’t try to open the box herself!
All of this was done by 11:30am, and my mother’s Meals on Wheels would soon arrive. She was looking really tired and overwhelmed, too, so I didn’t stay for very long. My mother wasn’t the only one feeling tired! As soon as I got home, I crashed in bed and didn’t get up until it was time to feed the outside cats!
Which means I didn’t get much done at home. Laundry doesn’t count. 😄
Today hasn’t been any more productive at home, either, but at least I got the shopping done!
I paused this morning to try and get some photos of the feral kittens that come to the shrine feeding station. This involves zooming in from quite a distance, so as not to scare them away.
The Re-Farmer 