While doing my rounds this morning, I was joined by Nosey and the Spice boys.
Usually, I am joined by Potato Beetle, but I didn’t see him until I was going back to the inner yard.
Up in a tree.
Waaaaaaayyyy up in a tree.
Something seemed off about it, so I went around to the power pole nearby to see what was going on. Once I got around my late father’s car, I found the problem.
There was Nicky the Nose, on one of the bottom branches!
Gosh, he’s a big, burly cat!!
Looks like he’s been trying to assert dominance again, and it was a standoff. Nicky is too big and heavy to go any higher, but Potato couldn’t get down without getting too close to Nicky.
We’re not having that! I dug out one of the pruned tree branches from the nearby pile and waved it around at him, and he took a flying leap from the tree, into the snow and ran off.
It took a while, but I stayed outside long enough for Potato Beetle to get himself down from the tree, so I could cuddle him while bringing him over to the kibble house.
I don’t know how to feel about Nicky. I don’t want to turn away any stray cat that’s hungry. Nicky, however, does what dominant toms do; goes after the males to drive them way, to keep the harem for himself. The other toms that used to visit back when Nicky first showed up are gone. No idea what’s happened to them, but he’s the only one left. Even Creamsicle seems to be gone completely, now. Moved on to another farm, or dead, we have no way of knowing. As the kittens get older, he’ll be after them, too. So while I am more than happy to feed and care for any stray that shows up, Nicky isn’t just any stray. He’s causing issues with the colony. I don’t know if we should be driving him away, or if we should be trying to socialize him more, to put a stop to it!
Ah, well. We’ll figure it out.
Today is supposed to be another warm one, and then temperatures are supposed to plummet again on the weekend. We didn’t start working on the door yesterday. It may have been warmer, but we had some wicked winds from the south, and that door faces south. The winds were a bit much to have just a storm door, should we have needed to leave the inner door open for any length of time. In fact, the entire house was shuddering and whistling for much of the day. Today seems to be a lot calmer. We shall see how it goes!
We’ve got some lovely mild weather right now. It’s kind of deceiving, to look out the window during our cold snap and see bright blue skies and brilliant sunshine when it’s bitterly cold, but now that we’re warmer, it’s overcast and deary looking. Those insulating clouds, however, are part of the reason we can enjoy these milder temperature.
The outside cats like the warm spot on the roof of their shelter, above the terrarium bulb! They were quite active when I came out to do their food and water.
Note in the background, a certain Nicky the Nose, tucked under the lilac by the storage house. He shelters under the building, when he’s not sneaking into the cat shelter to visit the ladies. :-(
Inside, we have tiny little bursts of sunshine of another sort!
This is the first time we’ve seen this succulent blooming! When we got it, it was one of 3 succulents in one pot that they soon outgrew. The other two varieties are still struggling along, but this one seems to finally be thriving! We’ve had to move it a few times because, apparently, it is delicious. The cats kept trying to eat it! Even when it was hanging in the dining room window, they would manage to clamber up and reach it. We finally seem to have found a spot where they haven’t been able to reach it. At the rate it’s growing now, we’ll have to keep an eye on how low it starts to hang, or they’re try eating it again!
Meanwhile, we have these lovely little busts of sunshine in our window to help us thing of warmer, sunny days!
The next couple of days will be even warmer, which means we’ll finally be able to start working on the main door that’s falling off its hinges, and see what we can do to fix it until we can replace the door and frame. Until then, we’ve been using the door as little as possible; mostly, just when we have to unload the van or something, which we do assembly line style. That way, only the storm door gets opened and closed frequently.
It should be interesting to see how damaged the door is, once the hinge plate is moved away. That will determine what we end up doing to get it usable again.
As I write this, we are at -5C/23F, and are expected to get a bit warmer. After the deep freeze we just had, this is feeling downright tropical!
I meant to post this picture yesterday, but I just didn’t have the brain space to do a blog post, so I’m sharing it today!
Their matched, angry looking expressions make me giggle. :-D
There were lots of kitties out while I was doing their food and water this morning.
The Potato Beetle brought luggage.
This was attached to his tail! A whole lot of stuff, stuck to a couple of burrs, stuck to his tail. The blue is from the tarp covering the kibble house. It looks like there’s some jute cord in there, too, and I have no idea where that would be from. I haven’t used any outside, yet. You don’t get a real sense of perspective on the size in the photo. It was like he had a small birds nest stuck to him!
Nostrildamus was quite eager for attention this morning.
He was trying to climb onto me while I was taking is picture. I am so happy with this shot!
Butterscotch was out and about, too, and followed me around. She let me carry her back to the house, and I took advantage of the cat house roof. I put her down on it, then kept petting her, and was finally able to get a really good look at her wounded leg. The gash is completely closed and barely visible. If there were not a suture in the middle of it, I probably would not have been able to spot it, as she moved around.
The whole area is still nekkid. The fur is not really growing back at all, yet. Which means she’s cold, all on the inside of her thigh. Which is better than a gaping wound, of course, but I can tell she’s uncomfortable when she sits in the snow.
Meanwhile…
I took the van in to the garage yesterday. When I got there, I went over again with him about what the van was doing (he sees so many vehicles, I’m not going to assume he remembers everything I told him before! LOL), and he asked a few questions.
When I had come to the front door I saw, for the first time, a sign about masking. Most other places have them plastered all over, but he had just the one on the door. So I paused to put on my Mingle Mask before going in. There was no one else inside and, while he had his back to me when I came into the office, I could see he wasn’t wearing a mask, so I asked “can I take this thing off?” He said yes as he turned around, then saw the Mingle Mask. He had this “wtf is that?” look on his face, so I told him, I can’t wear a mask, but I can breathe with this.
As we were talking and I gave him the keys, I mentioned I was going to go to the grocery store across the street, but might have to come back. There’s no place else to go to wait. He told me to take my time at the grocery store, because he’s not allowed to have people wait in his office anymore. Which is ridiculous, considering how much space he’s got in there.
I did take my time with the groceries, but still ended up sitting outside and waiting. Thankfully, the grocery store has a picnic table in a sheltered corner, where the staff takes their smoke breaks. While I was there, a woman came by for a smoke and we chatted for a bit. After a while, I walked into the parking lot to check, and saw that my van was outside the garage door. I asked if it might be okay to bring the cart over there to unload it, but she saw I had two of the big water jug refills and said it would be really hard to get the cart through the snow. Instead, she helped me bring it into the vestibule, moving a divider for me, so I got get it nearer the exit doors. There was a staff member in charge of cleaning the carts, and she ended up keeping an eye on my groceries for me, while I went back to the garage. She even offered to help me load the water jugs when I came back with the van! They were so sweet. :-)
As for the van…
The mechanic was outside when I came over – it turned out he had just tried phoning me, but I never heard my cell phone ring! As I came up, the first thing he asked me was, where do I buy my fuel?
We always but our fuel at either Costco (usually once a month, though we haven’t been to Costco for quite a while) or at a co-op. As members, we get a check at the end of the fiscal year, with the amount based on how much gas or groceries we buy, though I haven’t tried to shop at the local co-op grocery store since the restrictions went nuts.
As soon as I told him it was at the co-op, he just shook his head.
My EGR (exhaust gas re-circulation) valve needs to be replaced.
I had no idea what that was, so he explained it to me. It’s no wonder I didn’t know what it was. It’s been so long since I’ve tinkered with engines, they didn’t even have these, yet. I was aware of the EGR valve’s function in newer vehicles, but not as part with a name to it.
Gosh, I suddenly feel old.
He told me the co-op gas stations have the worst quality fuel available. This is something I’ve heard others saying, too, but I didn’t seem to be having any problems, so…
Yeah.
It turns out he sees this a lot, and every time he does, it’s people who buy their gas at the co-ops. The crappy fuel leaves behind a lot of carbon, and these valves end up completely clogged. He said they can sometimes be cleaned, but usually need replacing. I figure, by the time he sees the vehicles, they’re long past the stage where the valve can be just cleaned out!
This is in line with my brother’s thoughts when I described what the van was doing, though he hadn’t specifically mentioned the EGR valve. It might even be why our van sometimes doesn’t want to start at all – something it did with the mechanic one time, as he tried to drive the van into the garage when I had the winter tires put on. That was a problem we’ve had every now and then, since we got the van. Whoever owned it before us did not maintain it well, and we spent an awful lot of money getting it fixed up after we bought it. Considering we got it at a price low enough, I could use my debit card to pay for it, I suppose we can’t really complain!
So while it’s only been a little over 3 years that we’ve been buying this gas, if there were already a build up in the valve before, it would have gotten a lot worse, a lot faster.
As I think about it, I realize that if we weren’t in the habit of doing a monthly shop, with the van being so heavily loaded, we probably would not have noticed it was becoming a problem, and likely would have kept going for months, if not years, before catching it.
The part is being ordered, and I am bringing the van back on Thursday morning. It’s going to cost $425, plus taxes.
*sigh*
I won’t be getting my new chainsaw this month! :-D
While we were in his office, booking the next appointment, he saw someone coming in and quickly put a mask on, so I quickly put my Mingle Mask on, too, so as not to get him in trouble. We were both muttering under our breath about not being able to breath without a mask, never mind with one. I think he he’s medically exempt, too, but is being forced to wear one when customers are around. This town has an awful lot of Covid Karens that would eagerly phone the snitch lines, or the police, on anyone they deem non-complaint. At least he’s alone in the shop, most of the time, and can take it off to breathe.
(Which reminds me; my doctor is going to refer me to a respiratory specialist. The puffer he got me to try has made no difference, and this is now something for the specialists. Hopefully, I will get someone better than the last respiratory specialist I saw, when we lived in the city. His conclusion had been, I’m fat, so that must be why I’m coughing, and he would react with open surprise when test after test came back showing me normal and healthy. :-/ Then he just gave up and sent me back to my regular doctor.)
Meanwhile, the van should be okay to drive, though I will be avoiding heavy loads until after the valve is replaced. He assured me that, while it might keep stalling on me, I would be able to restart it and keep on going. Once it’s replaced, that sluggishness I was noticing should go away, as well. It seems quite a few little things I was noticing, including the fuel economy dropping and the idle starting to sound rougher, were probably all warning signs of this problem.
Now I’m wondering about my mother’s car. She always bought fuel at the co-op, too, and I’ve noticed it has terrible mileage.
After booking the appointment and loading up the groceries, I filled the gas tank on the way home.
At a different gas station!
Dang it. One of our favourite places to stop on the way to the city was the co-op gas station in my mother’s town. There are such wonderful people working there, plus they’ve got an excellent convenience store. But getting a few bucks a year back isn’t anywhere near enough to make up for having to pay over $400 to fix the damage it causes. :-/
We’ll probably still stop there, just to go into the store for snacks, home baked by one of the gas jockeys. <3
So that’s where we are at, with the van situation. It’s going to be an expensive fix, but knowing what’s wrong is actually a huge relief.
I must admit, though; I’m getting really, really tired of vehicle problems. It’s a lot more stressful, when living in such relative isolation, because we depend on having a vehicle so very much. That’s one of the more major downsides of living out here. :-(
One of the first things I do in the morning, before heading outside to do my rounds, is check the weather.
This morning, at a time when I would normally be starting to head outside, it was -36C/-32.8F
Yeeeaaaaahhhhh…. No.
I waited a couple of hours before heading out, but it was still -28C/-18.4F At least there was no windchill, and the “real feel” was -25C/-13F
The wait meant I had a whole lot more cats to greet me when I came out! There were none at all, inside the cat shelter. They were all out and about.
They have quite a lot of food out, but still prefer the fresh kibble. Which they quickly abandoned, once they saw there was fresh, warm water!
One of them was eager enough to take a short cut through the snow! LOL
Once again, I skipped switching out the memory cards on the trail cams, but I did head out to the garage to double check that the vehicles were plugged in, and grab some sheets of insulation. We had used these to line the windows in the sun room last winter, when we were keeping the doors propped open so the cats could shelter in it. With the outer door fixed, and that cats having a lovely warm shelter of their own, we didn’t insulate the sun room this winter. That leaves the pieces available to use inside the fish tanks to help keep the seed trays warm.
It wasn’t a lot of extra time to do that, but even so, I could feel the cold in my lungs. Thank God I’m already a shallow breather, due to my chronic cough. In temperatures like these breathing deeply can injure the lungs.
There may have been no wind chill this morning, but as I glance at my weather app, I see we’ve almost reached our high of the day, at -24C/-18F – but the wind chill is now -30C/-20F!
Thankfully, tomorrow we should be back to more normal temperatures, and be warmer than -20C. Which is good, because tomorrow afternoon, I am heading out to help my mother with her errands, and have to do a bit of grocery shopping for ourselves, too.
It should be even warmer on Friday, when I take the van in to the garage to get checked over. I really hope he finds why it has begun to stall and have troubles when fully loaded. We were already splitting our monthly shop into a couple of trips, and if the van has problems with just a half load already, and have to make more frequent, even smaller shops, we lose all the benefits of bulk shopping. Plus, our province has kept up a lot of restrictions, loosening some but increasing others, with no change in the mask mandates. There are still a lot of places that refuse to accept medical exemptions, and going out to shop feels like going out to battle, every time. Being surrounded by faceless people is also starting to freak me out more and more. I’m even playing Pokemon Go less. The game has things you can do right from home, without having to go places, and among the thing you can do is exchange gifts with people that are on your friends list. You get to see each person’s avatar in the process, and people are putting masks on their avatars. It’s bad enough that the option is even available, but it’s like a punch to the gut, every time I see a masked avatar. Every avatar represents the person playing, and that person just turned themselves into an NPC.
It’s one thing to know, intellectually, the sort of psychological damage this sort of dehumanization causes. It’s quite another to feel it. And rather surprising, considering how little we go out anyhow. I don’t even want to imagine how wigged out I would be, if I had to be surrounded by it every day. I completely understand my friend who has self isolated for months, because being surrounded by masks triggers her PTSD!
At least I know what the cause of the discomfort is. Most people would have no idea. And why would they? All they would know is that their stress and anxiety is increasing, and there are so many things contributing to that right now. Unfortunately, that cognitive dissonance would cause all sorts of anger, even rage, towards anyone without a mask, and they wouldn’t understand why.
A bit of a rant, there, I suppose, but that lack of awareness directly affects people like myself, who can’t wear a mask. Even in places that recognize medical exemptions, it’s the other customers that become more aggressive and abusive. I have been fortunate so far. I may have been kicked out of stores that refuse to honour medical exemptions (which is illegal, but then, so are the mask mandates), but I haven’t been harassed by other customers, yet. It has, however, affected familial relationships and friendships in a negative way.
I have never enjoyed shopping to begin with. Now, it’s like walking around with the sword of Damocles hanging over my head, never knowing if it’ll drop.
We are still in a polar vortex induced cold spell right now. I delayed doing my rounds outside until it had warmed up to -32C/-25.6F
I skipped switching out the memory cards in the trail cams again! Just the extra time to refill both bird feeders this morning was pushing it.
The heated water bowl was covered over even more than it was yesterday. Not just in frosted surface area, either.
This is after pouring off the old water. That’s a pretty solid layer of ice, left behind! Yesterday, it was more frost than ice.
The other water bowls were, of course, frozen solid. I had to do a fair amount of kicking to get them loose from the snow. When fresh water is added, the metal warms up enough to melt the snow around it, creating bowl-shaped pockets of ice that hold them in place.
Another reason why using old, broken frying pans make excellent water bowls. They can handle being kicked around, then bashed against things to knock the ice out. I used to use a wooden hand rail by the sun room to bash them against, but I didn’t like how much I was damaging the wood, so now I’m bashing them on the saw horses I’ve stored nearby. They’re old and damaged already, and I need to build new ones, so I don’t care if they get more beat up. :-D
Creamsicle Jr. didn’t move from his spot the entire time I was there! He’s under the terrarium bulb, but with the dusk-dawn light sensor, I don’t think it was actually on at the time. I don’t see the red glow of the indicator light, which would visible about 6-8 inches under the outlet.
I did get joined by Ginger, but he was the only cat I saw outside, braving the cold!
With our main entry door falling off it’s hinges, I’ve been going through the sun room to go outside. Which means going through the old kitchen, which is unheated and probably not insulated; at least not by any modern standards. We go into there as little as possible in the winter.
The old kitchen is where we had our crab apple cider vinegar fermenting, and where I now have the mother stored.
It’s almost frozen solid! You can’t even see the mother, which is in the middle of the jar, immersed in vinegar.
I have no idea if this will kill the mother or not.
Does anyone know?
When I was a kid, this room never really got cold, since the wood burning stove was kept going almost constantly, as much to help heat the house as for cooking, so lack of insulation was never really an issue. The old kitchen is an add-on to the original log part of the house, though I don’t know when it was added on. I only know it was already there when my parents bought the property.
The forecasts say we’ll have one more day of this bitter cold, though it will be a bit warmer tomorrow. Today’s high is predicted to be -25C/-13F, with a wind chill of -31C/-23.8F. Tomorrow’s high is supposed to be -21C/-5.8F with a wind chill of -28C/-18F. After that, we’re supposed to keep warming up for the next week. Check this out!
It’s like temperature whiplash!
Time to think of warmer things. Like gardening. I think I’ve figured out a way to raise our seed trays up closer to the light in the fish tank greenhouse. If it works, I might not need to line the sides with foil.
Outside my window, the sky is clear, the sun shines brightly, and not a twig or branch in my view is moving from anything other than birds landing on them.
As I write this, our temperature has warmed up to -24C/-11.2F, with a wind chill of -34C/-29.2F When I headed outside to do my rounds this morning, it was -25C/-13F with a wind chill of -38C/-36F.
At those temperatures, even the heated water bowl starts to freeze over! There’s actually a layer of ice forming under the frosted areas that you can just barely see.
Nutmeg was content to watch me from the comfort of their shelter!
I am so thankful my brother went through all that effort to bring their old dog house for us to use. It’s working out so well for the cats!
The cats that did come out into the cold were much more interested in the fresh warm water than the fresh food! The cat equivalent of a hot cup of tea on a cold day. :-D
When switching out the memory cards in the trail cams, I of course had to warm up the new camera with my hands, just to be able to see the screen. I wanted to see how it would take the micro disc my husband gave me.
Alas. I still got the “incompatible” message and had to format it in the camera, even though I made sure to format it on my computer. The card may be the same brand as the other one, but I guess it’s not an “ultra”. At some point, I’ll just have to buy another one of the card that works without having be formatted every time. At least I know what’s going on, now, and what I need to do to be able to see the screen.
At some point, the other camera is going to need to be replaced, too, so we’re already doing research on cameras more like the new one, but better able to handle the cold. We should have plenty of time, but I’d like to get one before it’s needed. I can’t complain about what we have. It’s still an excellent camera for the price, and I really appreciate some of the features it has, and the faster processing speed.
We’ve had ourselves a chillier morning today! Light snow, and bitterly cold winds from the south is what greeted me this morning, when I went out to do my rounds.
Kitty loaf is not impressed.
It does look pretty, though!
Switching out the micro disk cards on the new trail cam has gotten somewhat easier. The micro disk itself has become easier to take in and out; it isn’t as “sticky” as it was at the start. As long as I have enough of a thumbnail to push the card in, to either latch of unlatch it, it’s not too bad. :-D
When I open up the camera, I switch it from On to Set Up, first. The screen turns on, and that’s when I can see if the cold is an issue. If the screen is mostly blank and barely lit up, the camera is too cold. I’ve found I can use my hands to warm it up enough that the screen will start working. Which, on days like today, can be rather hard on the hands! Thankfully, it only takes about half a minute. Then I can switch the memory card and see if there are any issues.
When I got the camera, I got 2 micro discs along with it. I just ordered the recommended ones, not really noticing that one of them was actually a pack of 2. Those are the ones I’ve been using. The problem is, when I switch cards, the camera wants me to format the new card, every time, after giving me a message that the card is “incompatible.” So all those days when I found nothing on the card, it was partly because I couldn’t see the screen and missed these messages. Once the card was formatted in the camera, it worked fine. It didn’t matter if I’d already formatted it on my computer.
I shouldn’t have to do that every morning.
Last night, I dug up the extra card, formatted it on my computer, and used that, this morning.
The camera had no problem with it. No messages, and no need to format the card in the camera!
The cheaper cards were the problem.
On mentioning this to my husband, he dug around and gave me one of his extra Micro SD cards to use. It’s a 64 gig card. WAY more than needed. The other cards were 32 gigs, and even at highest resolution while set to take both photo and video, I could probably leave the card for a week and still have room to spare. The main thing is that the card won’t need to be formatted every morning. It’s even the same brand as the new one I put in this morning, so it should be fine. I’ll know for sure when I switch cards tomorrow morning.
It still doesn’t solve the problem of the camera not really working when the temperatures dip. Once it gets cold enough, it simply stops recording. It does start up again on its own, when the temperatures rise. This is frustrating, because in all other respects, I really love this new camera! But all the features I love about it are useless if the camera simply stops working when it’s cold. At least we have the second camera that keeps working. With that one, the cold is only an issue for the batteries, not the camera itself. As long as it can get any juice out of the batteries, it will keep chugging along.
Ah, the things we have to put up with, because of one person we can’t trust.
A few days ago, my husband got a phone call. There were two things odd about this. First, the call went to his cell phone. Being in a dead zone, any time a cell phone rings is downright startling. Second, the call turned out to be from Fed Ex. They had a package for him, and needed our physical address.
As near as we can figure, this was something my husband ordered back in November. After all this time, he’s actually already got a refund on it. He had been expecting it in the mail, too. Fed Ex doesn’t do box numbers!
So he called the number back using the land line and, after being on hold for about 45 minutes, finally got through to someone. After giving our physical address, he gave them precise directions on how to find us. The person he talked to even looked us up on Google maps and did eventually figure out where we were. Just inputting our physical address hadn’t worked! He then let them know about the locked gate, so they said they would send an email in advance, letting us know the package was on the way from the city.
We got that email, telling us delivery would be made yesterday. So when I went out to do my rounds, I unlocked the gate and left it open.
The last time we did that for the washing machine repairman, the gate was open only half an hour, and our vandal showed up and tried to break it again. So we were pretty uncomfortable having that gate open, but we also didn’t want the package to just be left in the snow in the driveway, either. We kept a close eye on the security camera’s live feed!
Then my husband let me know that we could close the gate up again. He just received an email. Apparently, FedEx couldn’t find us, so they weren’t going to deliver the package. They wanted us to call about getting it.
Which means, they would expect us to drive to wherever their warehouse is in the city, to pick up a package they’ve been paid to deliver to us.
I don’t think my husband plans to call back. There is no way we’re going to make the trip. UPS found us, no problem. FedEx can figure it out, too. Even when we were living in the city, we’ve had issues with them. They would actually leave notices on our door, saying no one answered when they knocked, but we had been home and no one knocked.
I was just happy to be able to close and lock the gate. No sign of our vandal, either!
Later in the afternoon, I did take advantage of the slightly warmer day to go get the mail and pick up some more deer feed and bird seed. We’d run out of both, that morning.
One of the things I’ve noticed when heading outside to do my rounds, is that our door has been making an increasingly horrible noise. The inner doors in the “new” part of the house are still the originals, and they are wooden, hollow core doors, not insulated steel doors, as are available today. These doors are heavier than interior doors, so I do think they have some sort of insulation inside them, but I really don’t know.
The “front” door, facing the spruce grove, almost never gets used, so aside from needing to put insulation between it and the storm door in the winter, to keep frost from building up at the bottom, inside the house, it’s fine. The door we actually use all the time is not doing so well! The house shifts with the seasons, so it’s not really a surprise that the door is scrapping the door jam now, and we can hear the wood of the door splitting and cracking at the bottom. So I’ve taken to lifting the door as I close it, to reduce the noise.
How much the door lifts was quite a surprise, so when I had the chance, I took a closer look.
*sigh*
The door is coming off its hinges.
This morning, I snagged my husband to help me tighten the hinges. This is the top one.
It’s hard to see in the picture, but the screw heads are even slightly bent!
Of course, with the top hinge being so loose, the middle one is, too.
Thankfully, the bottom one is still solid, but that won’t last long if these ones get any worse.
There is a built in closest near the door, so it can’t be opened all the way. My husband held it open as much as he could for me to be able to fit the screwdriver in place. Normally, I would just open the storm door, but between the cold and the cats, that wasn’t an option. While my husband lifted the door and held it in place, I tightened the screws.
As I did so, I could tell this wasn’t going to work. The screws were barely catching on anything. Still, I hoped to at least get it a bit tighter than before.
*sigh*
As soon as my husband released the door, not only did it drop, but some of the wood split above the top hinge.
I reached up with my phone to get this picture.
In the photos, you can see there are cracks in the wood of the door frame, too.
We knew the front door needed to be replaced, and were already thinking we would replace the entire frame, too. I just didn’t think we’d need to do it because the door is falling right off the hinges!
Theoretically, we can install hinges in different locations, and that would tide us over until we can replace the door and frame completely. Given how loose the door is, we might not have a choice. Even if we had the money for a door kit now, we wouldn’t want to install it in the winter. Because you just KNOW something will do wrong and it’ll take forever to do! :-D My brother recently replaced one of the doors of his house, and he used a door kit, with two doors and the frame, as we would be doing here. Everything was standard sized, so it should have been a simple switch. It wasn’t, and it took him days to get it installed properly! I don’t think our doors are standard sized, so I don’t expect anything to do smoothly.
This is something were I would much rather hire someone to install it, rather than doing it ourselves. It would cost more, of course, but would be worth every penny.
*sigh*
Another thing on the list that just became a higher priority.
The temperatures have gone up quite a bit today, and the outside cats are quite appreciating it!
I was very happy to see Rosencrantz this morning! I haven’t seen her in a couple of weeks.
Butterscotch also made an appearance this morning. I didn’t see her yesterday.
Her babies were just loving the new snow, running around a chasing each other in it. :-)
Butterscotch, however, would not come anywhere near me this morning, so I wasn’t able to check her wound at all. She seemed to be moving around fine, though, so that’s a good sign.
Nostildamus made up for her lack of interest, wanting all sorts of pets and attention!
He has such soft fur.
Today was a day when everything looked soft and fluffy. Even the trees.
The warmer temperatures brought with them the softest, fluffiest of snow. We got about 2 inches of it by this morning; two inches of mostly air!
The Potato Beetle is not amused. The kittens might be enjoying the snow of their first winter, but the adult cats seem much more ticked off about the whole thing! :-D
We’re supposed to drop to more normal, chilly temperatures after today, so I think I will take advantage of the day and make a trip into town to pick up a few things we are starting to running low on.
Just glancing at my weather icon on my toolbar as I write this, and see that we have reached 0C! (32F) The wind chill is at -6C/21F, which is still quite balmy! A wonderful day to get outside. :-)
I experimented with the no-knead, overnight dough recipe I’d made before, using the old dough bread baby from my Babcia’s bread experiment.
I didn’t take any process photos this time, since I was winging it. The “overnight” dough became an “over day” dough, for starters! :-D
Instead of making a pair of loaves, I made one giant loaf in a parchment paper lined lasagna pan.
As I was spreading the dough out as evenly as I could, I found myself thinking it was looking a bit like a focaccia. Too bad we’re out of olive oil.
Then I remembered… we still have some fake truffle oil (the only kind we can find, or afford!) left.
I ended up drizzling the top with the fake truffle oil, spreading the oil around evenly, then stabbing the dough with my fingers to make lots of little holes, which also helped even the dough out in the pan more, before sprinkling on some coarse salt and dried parsley.
Of course, it wasn’t real a focaccia recipe, and it rose quite a bit. This is how it turned out.
This turned out to be, hands down, the best bread I have ever baked! Definitely a winner!!
I think the next time I try this, I’ll use a baking sheet instead of the lasagna pan, to make a thinner bread. Mostly, because I think it’ll be easier to slice than this was, but it’ll also give a larger surface for the oil and salt crust. The texture and flavour it gave was amazing!
Next time, I will definitely take process shots and share the details here!
Once again, Butterscotch simply would NOT let me check her out. I barely even got to pet her, never mind check her wound!
I did manage to accidentally get a picture of a perfect snowflake on her ear, though!
Doesn’t she look so elegant and calm here?
The photo lies! :-D
The best I could get was a glance of her wound as she walked away from me, and I saw nothing out of the ordinary, so I hope that means everything is healing well. She doesn’t seem to be favoring the leg, except I think where the fur is shaved off is cold. I’ve seen her coming out of the shelf shelter we made, which has rigid insulation lining the empty bottom shelves, and more rigid insulation to block the wind and snow. She can sit in there and her bald spot will be nice and warm.
She does not go into the cat shelter. I don’t know where her hiding place is, but it is not in the inner yard. I think it’s somewhere in one of the collapsing sheds in the outer yard. :-/
Seeing two of her kittens peaking at me from between the kibble house and cat house was adorable.
I missed Nostrildamus going into the cat house; you can just barely see his tail tip through the strips of carpet. :-)
Rolando Moon is such a loaf! She is quite prepared to drive away any kitties that dare come close!
In other things, this blog hit a milestone yesterday.
We reached 500 followers!
It was rather funny when I got the notification from WordPress. In the time it took me to actually look at it, the number had gone back down to 499. Then it jumped up over 500 by the end of the day and stayed there.
This is really amazing to me. One thing that always surprises me is that anyone is finding it in the first place! That anyone is actually interested in our crazy little corner of the world is greatly appreciated, and I’ve been getting to know some really amazing people in the process. You guys are awesome! :-)
To all our new followers, thank you so much for joining us for the ride. Welcome! :-)
The Re-Farmer 