While doing my morning rounds, three kittens were playing on the hand rail in front of the sun room – but did not what me anywhere near them! They know that rose bush will protect them. 😄
The third image of the garage kittens was from this evening. I went to tie off the catio door for the night, so it won’t blow around. I didn’t even seen them in the cat bed at first! I wasn’t able to get closer, though. I was able to pet them both when I fed them this morning, while they were eating, but that smokey one will not let me touch her, any other time.
Yet.
The littles are all over the place in and around the sun room, and I was able to get a couple of decent shots. That white and black kitten in the last two images has such surprisingly blue eyes!
Sadly, though, we lost another kitten last night. Once again, I found it in the new cat cave in the sun room, like the last one. About the only thing I can say is, at least they passed away in the warmth of a cuddle puddle, and not cold and alone.
Once the morning routing was done, I had time for a quick breakfast before heading out early to my appointment. I wasn’t sure how long things would be, so I made sure to go to the post office before it closed from 11:30am to 2pm. They close for the day at 5pm.
Then, just to be on the safe side, I made sure the packages of seeds were put into an insulated bag, in case the cab of the truck got too hot. I’m glad I did, because yes, it certainly did!
I got to the shopping commons the clinic is at early enough to grab a proper meal for lunch. I’m glad I did because I ended up getting into my 1:30 appointment about 45 minutes late.
The first thing the doctor did was ask how the new prescription was working out. I told what a huge difference it made, and that I’ve hardly had to take any painkillers since I started taking it. She was really happy to hear how well it went. Especially when I told her I have only been taking it once a day, before bed. She commented that I’m already on a low dose (I can take it up to three times a day), so it was really amazing that it’s made such a difference. She commented on how this particular anti-inflammatory is really good, and she thinks it should be prescribed more often. I did mention the one time I took with with just a snack rather than a meal and how that really did a number on my stomach. She was just nodding her head and saying, yup… it does need to be taken with a full meal, because it can be so hard on the stomach, otherwise, and mused that that’s perhaps why it isn’t use more often. All I can say it, it has helped me so much, I’m willing to make the effort to take it properly so that doesn’t happen!
I then told her about my hip issues and asked for X-rays to find out what’s going on. She looked in my file and it’s been more than 5 years since my hips have been X-rayed, so it was time. We already know that I have OA and bone spurs, but something is going on with that left hip that’s making it worse. She wrote me up for a complete pelvic X-ray, so both hips would be checked out.
Then we got to why I was there in the first place. My arm.
I was able to read the report on her monitor with her. They found no anomalies in my shoulder or elbow. Which surprised me, because they do still hurt at times. Especially the shoulder. Which suggests to me that the issue is now soft tissue damage – though the anti-inflammatories are helping with the arm pain, too!
Then there was the hand/wrist. There was a potential anomaly, so they recommended to get it X-rayed again in 1-2 weeks. We were already past that, so she printed out another requisition to get my wrist done again, along with my hips.
As for the follow up, normally they would call me to book a follow up appointment, but I mentioned that my daughter already has an appointment coming up on the 9th, so she said to go ahead and book my follow up then. Which I took care of while picking up my printouts.
Next stop was the hospital, where the lab and X-ray is. Once I gave them the forms, I had time to message the family with an update, and was soon called in for the X-rays. The tech took X-rays of my hand in some very different positions from the last time it was done. At this point, all they can do is confirm whether or not something actually broke in there. After all this time since my fall, it’s not like they’re going to put my wrist in a cast or anything.
Once the hand was done, I got the hips done, and that was it. It was very fast.
That done, it was back to the shopping commons where my doctor’s clinic is, this time to make a quick stop at the grocery store. I hadn’t realized we were out of bread until last night. While I was there, I picked up some sandwich meats that were on sale, and a few other little things.
From there, it was a stop at the gas station and the home.
When I was about 10 minutes from home, I could see the highway ahead of me, disappearing in a cloud of white. It turned out to be an absolute wall of rain! It was coming down hard enough, with so much water on the road, I had to slow down and was about ready to pull over and wait it out. It did lift a bit, though, and I was able to continue. By the time I got home, it had blown over – something I was very happy about, since I needed to get out to open the gate. Particularly since, with the inside handle on the driver’s side door broken off, I need to open the window so I can open the door from the outside.
No complaints about the rain, though. We needed it.
Anyhow.
So all went well with the doctor, though I am surprised nothing showed up in the X-rays for my shoulder and elbow. The shoulder injury it still sometimes an issue, and I was expecting some sort of damage to my rotator cuff. My left elbow has been a problem for a long time, since well before my fall, but that is due to nerve damage, so I guess that wouldn’t show up in an X-ray.
In a couple of weeks or so, I will be back to find out what they find in my hips.
That should be… interesting! I hope I get to actually see the X-rays this time, and not just a report. I’m very curious as to what shows up!
Meanwhile, it is now past time for me to have the supper my daughter made – a nice, substantial meal to take my anti-inflammatories with!
Just a quick catch-up for now. I’m hoping to get outside and get some mowing down.
Yesterday turned out to be a good day to be sick. It rained off and on all day. I think it’s finally dry enough to mow. I want to get the area I allowed to get overgrown with alfalfa and whatnot, so the pollinators would have something. I’m not seeing a lot of pollinators of late, though. I think all the smoke has caused problems. The area is done blooming, though, so time to get it under control!
I still don’t know what happened to me, in getting so sick so suddenly. I had a chance to chat with my SIL and mentioned what I was feeling. She told me that she suddenly got sick like that, too, while they were out camping with the grandkids. The dizziness got so bad, she thought she might be having a stroke or something. Then my brother got sick, too. That was a few weeks ago, and neither have fully recovered. Hearing I was sick actually was a bit of a relief for her, as she now things they caught some sort of virus, though she felt back if they passed that on to me.
Somehow, though, I don’t think that’s it. By late afternoon yesterday, I was feeling good enough to go outside, do the evening cat feeding and my evening rounds. By the end of the day, I was feeling normal again and went back outside, just to enjoy the fresh air.
While checking on the garden beds, I found that a few of the Turkish Orange eggplants had damaged leaves. Just on one side of the plants, and among the ones that were more forward in the bed. I suspect it is cold damage when the overnight low dropped to about 6C/43F.
The drooping leaves, however, exposed something else.
There’s a ripening eggplant under there! It’s small, but from the photos of the ripe eggplant, it looks like it’s very close to being fully ripe. I think it’s supposed to get a darker orange, still.
The second photo has my hand in the photo, so you can get a perspective of the size.
This eggplant is so low on the plant, it’s resting on the ground, so after I got the picture, I took one of the dead leaves off the plant and put it under the eggplant in such a way that any water would drain away from the fruit.
We are all very curious as to what this variety will taste like!
The Sweetie Snack Mix peppers around the corner of the wattle weave bed have more fruit on them now, but they are all still very green. They should ripen into red, yellow and orange. At this point, there isn’t even a blush of colour on even the oldest peppers I have been keeping an eye on.
While doing my rounds, I noticed Pinky and her babies on the old tire that’s holding a door on one side of the garage open – I keep that door, plus the back door, open all summer for air circulation. The tire is still on a rim, so it’s heavy enough to keep the wind from blowing the door around. Pinky and her kittens were milling around on the tire, leaning into the rim.
They were thirsty and drinking the accumulated rain water!
There is food and fresh water by the house, but the kittens just won’t come over. I’ve seen the white and grey sneaking over to the shrine food bowls, and I think I’ve even seen him go into the isolation shelter or catio. The smoky kitten, however, will not go more than a few feet away from the garage. I only have a food bowl for them in garage, not a water bowl. I want them to come to the house! Pinky does, but she hates other cats and any kittens not her own. She will attack any that come too close. If they come near the garage, she will drive them away. Even the littles.
The white and grey, however, is starting to get used to me. The smoky kitten ran away, but the white and grey stayed while I pet his mother. After a while, I was not only able to pet him, but I was able to pick him up and snuggle him!
And confirm he is male.
I put him back on the tire and got some pictures while the smoky kitten started to come back. She (I think) does let me pet her while she is eating, sometimes, and I think it starting to learn that the giant, hairless food giver is not something to be scared of. She came closer while was there, but not all the way, so I left so she could finish drinking.
Later on, while walking behind the cat shelters near the sun room, I spotted Adam in the middle of them all, covered in kittens.
At least two ran off when they saw me in the gap between the shelters. She was nursing the whole lot of them. I don’t think any of the kittens in the picture are actually hers.
Of course, when doing the cat feeding this morning, I saw all sorts of kittens, including the “new” ones under the cat house creeping out. Some of them are even brave enough to go into the sun room already! I am 99% sure the kittens from the collapsing log building are Ink’s babies. I’d seen her climbing up into there a few times over the summer.
I don’t think I’ve seen Ink around for several days.
She was always one of the more feral cats and would run off faster, so that’s not too unusual, but after what happened to Poirot, it makes me wonder.
As I was finishing up my rounds, I spotted this baby under the shrine.
I don’t recognize it. It’s hard to know for sure, as the “new” kittens run and hide so quickly, but I think I would have noticed one that had all white around one eye, and black around the other like that.
Today, I had to go into town and my daughter and I headed out in the late morning. She wanted to come along, just in case I wasn’t feeling as well as I thought I was! I went ahead to the truck with the big water jugs that needed to be refilled when I spotted Slick in the grass, under the canopy tent.
She was nursing two babies!
One ran off, and it’s possible that one was the kitten in the photo above, but I didn’t see its face well enough to be sure. The other looked more like Mom. I gave them a lot of distance, so as not to scare it away. My daughter spotted the two of them still there as she came out a few minutes later. She tried for an indirect photo, trying not to startle them, but isn’t sure if it turned out yet.
We left early enough to stop at the post office where a parcel for my husband was waiting. It turned out to have a custom’s duty on it, so I had to pay $30 to pick it up. The postmaster told me she was processing a lot more customs duties of late, and thinks it might have something to do with the new tariff wars. Customs duties are a different category of taxes, though, not tariffs. If it is, that means it’s our own government charging us for stuff they didn’t before. Anything that gets shipped into Canada can potentially be charged duties. Usually, it’s the equivalent of what the sales tax would have been if the product was purchased in Canada. We have very rarely been charged duties on anything we’ve had come in from the US, whether by mail or courier. This was some stuff from a leatherworking supply company he’s purchased from before, without being charged duties.
Now I’m wondering if our government is going to tax me on all those seeds I ordered from MI Gardener that are making their way through the USPS right now. I’ll find out, soon enough, I guess.
Once in town, our first stop was at the pharmacy, where my daughter was able to get her own refills as well. Then we popped across the street to check out the Red Apple; one of the things my husband asked me to pick up is slightly cheaper there. Then it was off to the grocery store to refill the water jugs and get a few little things as well.
Seeing the prices change in just the last few weeks can sometimes be mind blowing. For example, I sometimes like to buy shelled pistachios as a truck snack. There is a brand that has them with various seasonings. About a year ago, they were still under $7. That price has been creeping up until even at Walmart, they went from just under $8 to almost $9 per bag within a couple of months. Locally, they were already just under $9 for some time. That’s what I saw them as, about a week ago.
Today, they were just under $12 a bag. 🤯
Needless to say, I haven’t been buying shelled pistachios.
We didn’t need to pick up much, though, and were soon on my way home. Now I want to get out and mow around the kibble shelters first, before the outside cats get their evening feeding. This is going to spook the heck out of the littles, so I want to get that done as quickly as possible!
Hopefully, I’ll be able to get quite a bit done, but we’ll see. That left hip of mine is causing more problems, so the point that I have to do things like sit down to put my pants on, because it’s too unstable for me to stand on my left leg.
Something to talk to my doctor about when I see her at the end of the month. Looks like I’m due for another round of Xrays!
Ah, well. It is what it is. I’ll deal with it when the time comes!
Today, I was out giving the garden and the food forest trees and bushes a deep watering. Yes, we did have good rain not long ago, but everything is bone dry again.
Sadly, in the video in the next file above, it did not pick up the purring. Eyelet started purring loudly as soon as I started moving closer with my phone. So adorable! Someone needs to adopt this baby!!!
Party way through, my younger daughter came out to let me know her sister had to jump into the shower, asking me to pause on the watering for a bit. While I was waiting for her to be done, I decided to see what we had for potatoes. With them dying back like they are, without ever having bloomed, I wasn’t sure if we could have any at all. I chose a spot where the plants were the deadest, and this is what I found.
This was from two or three plants, so not a lot, but gosh, those are lovely potatoes! Whatever is going on with our potatoes, we will at least have enough for a few meals, from the looks of it.
One of the things I noticed is that we are finally having some flower buds on bush beans.
Two of the three surviving Royal Burgundy bush beans – the two that did not get topped off by a deer – are blooming. Some of the yellow bush beans in between the tomatoes are also starting to bloom. The plants are still absolutely tiny, so I don’t expect much. They just don’t have the foliage to provide a lot of energy towards growing beans. We’ll see how that works out.
Then there was the weird thing that happened.
While I was watering, I could hear a quad start up and head out way, which meant it was our vandal. I saw him driving by through the trees, but he didn’t keep going. I could hear that he’s stopped at our driveway. So I went over to take a look, cutting through our garage, since we keep the main door wide open for most of the summer.
Sure enough, he had stopped at the end of the driveway, and was off his quad. I missed whatever he’d been doing since I first could hear that he had stopped. He was doing something to the back of his quad when he saw me looking at him from the garage. So he lifted his hands up to either side of his head, and seemed to be wiggling his fingers at me?
Then he pointed straight at me, before pointing down to the ground.
It was clearly intended to be a threatening gesture.
Then he got on his quad and drove away.
*sigh*
I really hope the cameras got that, and it didn’t get missed in the gap between capturing files and the motion sensor being triggered again. I’ll know, tomorrow.
Our vandal is clearly getting more unhinged, and his anger and hatred is aimed directly at me. He claims even his doctor said that I caused his cancer, which I assume is due to stress. Which is his own problem. I’d happily forget he existed, except he’s starting to show up and do weird stuff again.
I really don’t want to go through the process of applying for a restraining order again. It is such a pain.
Bah.
Anyhow. Once he was gone, I just went back to watering the garden and that was that. I never heard him driving back again, so who knows where he headed off to.
I really wish I understood why he got like this. I can come up with all sorts of contributing factors, but lots of people have been through the same or worse, without becoming like he has. It is the one major point against living here. Even my brother has said, if this farm ever does get sold, it will be because of our vandal, and my parents’ wishes have always been very clear about keeping the property in the family name. The irony of that is, our vandal is hating on me and doing all this because we live here when he expected to be able to convince my mother to change her will and leave it to him, instead of my brother. He’s causing all his own problems.
Well, there isn’t much we can do about it. We just focus on the thinks we can do something about!
Side note; while I was writing this, I got a message from the rescue that took in Poirot’s babies. She was asking what other kittens we have! I told her, but made sure to mention things like Eyelet being deaf, and Sir Robin’s infected eye that isn’t quite recovered. I told her about the feral kittens, too. Who knows. They might be able to help out with them! One can hope!
Oh, on a completely different note.
I got a call back from the autobody company. The arrangements we made for them to pick up the truck tomorrow have fallen through. Partly because the guys that would be doing the repair and painting on the damaged part of the box says they will need to use a primer, and it will need to sit overnight, at least. They know we don’t have any other transportation, so until the can arrange a courtesy vehicle, our insurance work is on hold. Otherwise, the earliest they can book us for is in September. Thankfully, the damage being worked on is not essential, and the truck can be driven.
Which worked out, in the end. My daughter was able to order her new computer, using my brother’s address for it to be delivered to. It’s supposed to arrive tomorrow. Which means that, after my eye appointment, we should be able to drive to my brother’s and pick it up, since where my eye appointment is is already about half way to their place.
I also just realized something else.
I’ve been doing various things, inside and out. I’ve taken no pain killers since yesterday morning. I’ve only had two dozes of the new anti-inflammatories, though I can take them up to three times a day, if I felt the need.
I am virtually pain free right now. Even my shoulder isn’t bothering me as much. Normally, while typing, my finger joints would be stiff and sore, making it hard to type. Not only that but, after sitting for a while, when I got up to walk around, I could actually do so normally. Usually, my knees and feet would have stiffened up so much that I have to hobble for a while, before I “grease my joints” and they can bend normally again. Yes, there is still some pain and stiffness, but much, much milder.
How utterly amazing. Such a huge difference, in so short a time!!!
Wow.
I wish I, or one of my doctors over the years, had thought of this earlier.
My daughter was able to get the most adorable Eyelet pictures when she joined me for the evening walkabout.
Eyelet really loves to be carried and cuddled. So does Sir Robin.
Now for the boring stuff.
I’m happy to say my left arm did rather well during the night. I was pro-active on the pain killers and getting my husband to rub the joints with the Voltaren cream, from my hand to my neck. Oddly, it was less painful on my arm to sleep on my left side, which seems rather backwards. I wasn’t going to complain, though.
All day, I was practically crawling out of my skin, wanting to do stuff. It was a gorgeously cool day out, and it would have been perfect for so many jobs that need to be done around the garden beds and yards. I kept having to stop myself. I had to get my older daughter to do most of the work with feeding the outside cats; basically, I passed the kitten food bowls out to her. I didn’t do my full rounds, but we did walk around the garden beds closer to the house.
I’m glad we did because, as we were in the old kitchen garden, she spotted something odd about the pink rose bush. The stems, in between all those thorns, were covered with little bumps. They were the same colour as the stems, so I didn’t really see them, but she realized they were bugs.
There were so many of them, the rose bush was starting to droop, and the roses that have started to open were showing browned edges on their petals.
We weren’t too sure what to do about it but, just to start, we got the spray bottle of soapy water and sprayed it down.
It was still quite early when we headed back inside, so I tried to lie down again.
That didn’t work.
I finally realized I was getting light headed, so I got up and made myself something to eat. While I was doing that, I started getting some messages from my SIL. I knew my brother was coming out today, so she said she’d find out when he planned to be here.
He already was.
He went into ninja stealth mode and left without her even hearing him – then got here shortly after my daughter and I came in, so we never saw him drive in! He parks by their trailer, which is blocked from our view by trees.
As soon as I could, I headed out to say hello. He was still unloading from his car and hadn’t have breakfast himself, yet, so once everything was in, we chatted in their trailer for a while, as he ate. It gave him a chance to show me the new security camera he picked up for the gate, along with a wi-fi booster.
Over the next while, he plans to do here what he used to have at their house that they sold; add security cameras all over the place. The main thing, though, is the main gate and driveway, since that’s been our vandal’s primary trigger for rage and vandalism. Now that they have so much of their equipment here, our vandal can see bits and pieces of it from the road, and it’s driving him bonkers that he can’t come onto the property to see what’s going on and help himself to things. So I’m quite content with my brother wanting to set up more security cameras!
My brother had lots to do, though, so as soon as he was done eating, I left him to it.
I did head back out and harvested some things from the garden and put them together in an insulated bag for my brother to take home. I finally harvested the garlic scapes, so there was plenty for them, as well. I was also able to pick a couple of turnips, lettuce and chives, with blossoms for them. My younger daughter had cleaned up and smoothed out the stuff she made in her blacksmithing workshop. She set aside her two best ones as a thankyou gift for my brother and SIL for the gifts of that workshop, and I was able to add that in, too.
My brother wasn’t at his trailer, though, so I left it on the step for later and headed back in.
Which is when I got the phone call.
From home care.
*sigh*
Yup. For the third day in a row, no med assist for my mother. Yesterday (Saturday), it was the two evening visits, which get done by the same person. The day before, it was the morning visit. Today, it was the evening visit again.
During our family chat about how things went with my mother, my brother said he was planning to visit my mother, so if it happened again, he could take care of the med assist. Which is great, but I really wasn’t expecting us to have to cover med assists, three days in a row! Yes, we’ve had that happen before, but what was because someone was sick. These visits were all different people.
Before calling my mother, I went to talk to my brother. He wasn’t sure if he would be finished before her first scheduled visit – he had a lot he needed to do before the predicted rain hit. So when I called her, I told her that it might be either me or my brother, but one of us was going to cover her med assist tonight.
My mother wasn’t impressed (none of us are). The weird thing is, she got a double visit on Saturday morning. She had mentioned it to me while I was getting her supper meds out. The last time she said this happened, when the second person came in, my mother said she’d already taken her morning pills – but her morning pills were still in the bubble pack. So I checked, and that was not the case this time, and promptly forgot about it with all the other stuff going on.
As we talked on the phone, my mother was able to tell me when they’d showed up and who they were, though she can’t quite remember the name of the second person.
Then she told me about the 17th, and things got confusing. I thought she was still talking about her double visit, but it was about something else entirely. She said that someone had given her her meds for the 18th instead of the 17th.
???
So she kept her morning meds from the 18th, and stashed them away for the next time no one shows up in the morning.
???????
What I was finally able to get from her is that, when the second person came in for her med assist on the 17th, she noticed a mistake the morning person had made in the form they have to fill out. She had marked the date as the 18th, when it was the 17th.
Which my mother has concluded means that she got the wrong day’s medications. Or something. She’s been furious at me or the home care workers for not giving her the medication from the days that that were missed for some reason, so it’s not really getting the medications from the “wrong” day that bothers her. Basically, she thinks her medications were messed up, even though it was just the date that was wrong.
So when she got her morning medications on the 18th, she didn’t take them, and the home care aid left without making sure she took them.
She then started going on about how we are worried about her messing up her meds (she did that quite a bit), meanwhile the home care workers were the ones messing up her meds…. Except they didn’t. Someone just wrote down the wrong date in their form.
A lot of this was new to me, so I couldn’t get into it too much with my mother at the time. I needed to get off the phone and write it down, while I still remembered the details!
So all that got passed on to my family.
None of us is happy, and my SIL is planning to write a letter to the provincial government, which runs the home care system, about it. I don’t expect that to make any difference. This sort of thing has been going on for as long as the system has been around.
That taken care of, I spent some time doing some research, then tended to a rose bush. From what I could find, the first recommendation for dealing with scale is to prune away the infected branches. Which would cut away too much of the bush. We can cut it back severely in the fall, and it’ll come back, but not this early in the spring.
We don’t have anything like Neem oil or other suggested sprays, but one site I looked at mentioned dish detergent.
Well, we already started that.
A few other options came up that were not of any use to us, but apparently, using an old tooth brush to take them off can work.
So that’s why I tried.
I then spent the next while searching the rose bush, wetting it down with the soapy water, and using a tooth brush to get rid of the scale. This rose bush is a mass of short thorns, so I used a scrap of rigid foam insulation to stabilize the sections I was working on. The thorns could get pressed into the foam and stay in place, while also protecting my fingers from being ripped to shreds!
Once I got them all (that I could tell), I sprayed it down with a hose, then gave it another dousing with the soapy water.
I’m hoping this actually works.
The other thing we need to do is get that ornamental crab apple tree cut back. Sunlight is another thing to help prevent scale!
While all this was going on, I could hear the sounds of power tools being used. My brother had installed a post near the stand I have our trail cam on. He told me he was going to put in a post, and I was thinking “fence post”. Instead, he dug out a 4×4 post from some of their lumber that they brought over before the house sale, and set that in.
The camera is something like 10 feet off the ground.
He even added a few extras, some decorative, some practical – like a little roof over the camera to keep snow from building up on it. The camera itself is solar powered, and the solar panel could be mounted separately from the camera, unlike my solar powered trail cam, which can just pivot slightly to get a different angle. The solar panel is now mounted at the top of that 10′ or so post.
Which means we don’t need to have our trail cam at the gate anymore!
I’m thinking we can move it to record the cat shelters. I want to see how many “visitors” we get (as I have the critter cam up and have used it to chase out a racoon).
But not now, when I can only use one arm!
My brother was rushing to get things done before the rain started, but the rain wasn’t starting. I kept getting weather warnings on my phone about how, the rain will stop in about half an hour, or the rain will start at… but at most, we got spit on a bit.
Which was driving me nuts, because the garden needs to be watered, but I didn’t do it because we were expecting rain. In fact, we were supposed to get rain from about 1pm to about 2 or 3am!
We didn’t.
Later on, when my daughter and I were walking around with Eyelet, it did start to finally rain…
…only for it to stop soon after we got back inside.
I’ve just been itching to get outside, and watering is really about as much as my arm can handle right now.
Currently, we’re now expecting to get a thunderstorm between 7 and 9 this evening. It’s past 6:30 as I write this, and I see now sign of a storm. All of that seems to be passing to the south of us.
I did manage to finally try out those biscuit mixes I picked up at the dollar store. I ended up using two of the four packets. With the first one, I added a lonely piece of Prosciutto, chopped fine, and a garlic scape, also chopped fine. It was so fast, while the first batch was in the oven, I got another one going – this time with cheese to go with the garlic scape – waiting to add the water at the last minute.
I got enough biscuits out of the packages that I was able to bring a bunch to my brother. He was using the big riding mower, trying to clear the tall grass closer to his equipment, and could neither see nor hear me, so I just tucked it into the trailer for him.
When we did finally connect, he told me which app I needed to download and what I needed to be able to log on.
By then, he really had to hurry to finish and get to my mother’s. There was lots more he wanted to do, but they have decided they will come back next weekend – both of them – and stay the weekend to catch up. My brother was telling me what he really wants to do is to stay here, full time, for 6 months so he can get things done.
I’m practically swooning at the though. There is SO much we simply can’t get done, but he can, he has the equipment for it, and if he doesn’t, he has the ability to get it. With the stuff we’ve got going right now, we’re barely treading water and going into debt to pay for necessary repairs. Stuff like this is why we have credit in the first place, but to have so many things expensive things needing to be done, all at once, is good at all.
Well, we’ll see how things go. While I was at my mother’s, yesterday, she started talking about how she’ll pay to get her car fixed up. Which is great, but we can no longer afford to keep two vehicles insured at the same time. Our insurance has actually gone down, thanks to my excellent driving record (which will not be affected by our insurance claim due to wind damage), but everything else just keeps going up and up and up. Frankly, I wouldn’t mind selling the car, so we can use the space it’s in, in the garage. My brother thinks he can fix it.
Ah, well.
My brother is probably still at her place as I write this. He always goes over her banking with her in detail, leaving the printouts for her, all of which she promptly forgets as she throws away the printouts. She’ll keep some political party donation request letter from 5 years ago, but she won’t keep last month’s bank statements. Which is really, really frustrating for my brother!
Meanwhile, I’ve tried to log into the new security camera, and it says it’s offline, so I think I should go check on it.
Tomorrow, my husband has an appointment at the new pain clinic that’s closer to us. I think my arm will be fine for driving, but I might have issues getting his walker in and out of the truck!
Hmm. According to my weather app, it’s raining right now.
It isn’t.
I should ask my daughters to water the garden while we’re gone. Tomorrow is supposed to be a lovely, cooler day, but no rain.
Well, what we get, we get. Not much we can do about it.
*sigh*
It sure was great to see my brother, though, and we can look forward to seeing them both, next weekend! Yay!
Meanwhile, time for some more painkillers, then one last walkabout outside… and maybe cuddle a few kittens in the process.
The first photo is the carrier she insisted in putting her babies into. As you can see, they fit, but she doesn’t really have room to stretch out.
We have a larger carrier that was sitting on the platform supported by the shelf this little carrier is on. When I had a chance this afternoon, with Poirot outside, I made the move. I prepped a puppy pad on the bottom of the big carrier, removed the loose top of the small carrier, then started moving babies.
Hastings (the almost all white one) had one eye stuck shut, so she (pretty sure they’re all female) got an eye wash, first. She wasn’t happy with it, which got Poirot’s attention from outside. I put Hastings into the big carrier, then moved of Miss Lemon (the white and grey), who did not need any eye washing, before picking up Japp (the black with white on her belly). By then, Poirot was jumping up to the small carrier and the platform and looing around, but make no move to stop me when I picked up Japp.
Instead, she went to the bigger carrier on the platform and joined her other babies!
Japp had a sticky eye that got washed before being returned to mama, who was contentedly nursing. You can see them all in the second picture.
This carrier is large enough that, when I set out her personal food bowl, there was room for it inside the carrier. She was quite happy with that!
I took the small carrier out and gave it a wash. Later on, when Poirot was once again outside, I shifted the bitter carrier to where the smaller one was, where there is a sun shield at the window side to keep them from overheating. It was warm enough that I tucked a frozen water bottle under the puppy pad near the front. The kittens were all cuddled at the far end of the carrier and barely noticed being moved.
Another good thing today is that I got the luffa transplanted, but only because I wasn’t up to doing the other stuff I’d intended to work on today. It was something I could do, just so I could get at least something productive done outside! That will get a separate post, though.
The day actually started out pretty good, in that I got sleep! I’d used the Voltaren stuff for the first time, along with my usual prescription painkillers, before going to bed. At first, I thought it wasn’t making any difference. As soon as I lie down, my hips and knees start becoming acutely painful, as did my left shoulder and elbow. My finger joints were hurting, too, as usual.
Yet, I fell asleep before midnight, and didn’t wake up until the cats woke me up at 4am. I distracted them by topping up their kibble and closed most of them out of my bedroom, so Butterscotch could use the litter box without getting bothered, and went back to bed. I fell asleep again almost immediately and slept another two hours, waking only slightly when I heard someone opening my door to let the cats in before they started scratching at it.
It was the closest thing to a pain free sleep I’ve had in …. I can’t remember.
So this stuff works better than the prescription topical painkiller the doctor tried me on, years ago – and my OA wasn’t as painful as it is now!
Just as an experiment, I applied some to my husband’s lower back, where the worst of his injury is, just a little while ago. If this stuff will help him, too, even a little bit, that would be a huge improvement for his quality of life! Lord knows, the drugs are barely keeping things bearable for him.
Then, there’s the not so good stuff.
While my daughter and I had been coming home from the city, yesterday, I’d got a call from home care letting me know they didn’t have anyone for my mother’s suppertime med assist. So we swung by on the way home and I set her meds out for her – only to have the home care person show up, anyhow!
This morning, after I’d done my morning rounds, I had just enough time to grab breakfast before I needed to go to town for the appointment with the insurance company rep about the truck. I was just sitting down with my food when the phone rang.
It was home care.
They didn’t have anyone for my mother’s morning med assist, though I was assured they had someone for supper and before bed.
My mother is supposed to get her meds between 7 and 9. It was about 8:45 when the call came in.
It takes 25-30 minutes to get to my mother’s place.
So I quickly put my food back in the kitchen and left immediately. I didn’t take the time to call my mother, nor did I try to call her using the hands free unit my brother gave me, because I knew my mother would be angry and start going off on me. I did not need the delay, and I certainly didn’t need that while driving.
It was the right decision.
When I got to my mother’s place, I knocked and went in, calling out “Hi, Mom” a few times. There was no response, but she was in the bathroom – with the door open. In her tiny apartment, that meant I had to close up the bathroom door just to get in far enough to close her entry door!
By then, she had made an acknowledging response, so I started to say that I got a call from home care, telling me there was no one for this morning, while getting her lock box and little bowl for counting out her pills ready.
Then my mother comes out of the bathroom, starting to talk, saw me and stopped in her tracks. Oh! It’s you! I thought it was home care!
…
I don’t think they normally come into her apartment calling out “hi, Mom”, so I guess that meant she didn’t hear properly.
Maybe it’s time to get her hearing tested! I don’t know that it’s ever been done for her.
I moved aside so my mother could sit in her chair at her dining table, before working on the combination lock. My mother was still standing just outside the bathroom, leaning on the other chair at her table, and half blocking my way.
She was angry, and wouldn’t move.
After it was clear she wasn’t going to sit down, I went back to opening up the lock box.
My mother was on a rant.
She is obsessed with those pills from missed days in older bubble packs. She wanted me to give them to her. I had already mentioned I didn’t have much time, because of my appointment in town (a 15-20 minute drive from our place, but a 30+ minute drive from my mother’s., which I’d told her about yesterday.
She started saying that, if it was illegal for them to take pills from different days to give to her, then it’s also illegal for them to not show up to give her her pills at all, and having me come out to do it for them.
All I could say is, Mom, I don’t have time for this.
She eventually sat down, but was now accusing me of “being on their side”. Then she started saying how we (my siblings and I) are not taking care of her and leaving her in the hands of strangers. All I could say at the time was, none of us live here. I certainly didn’t have time to go into it beyond that!
I got her pills from the correct bubble for the day out, which got her angry about the pills again. I was “on their side”. I got the pills in her little bowl and made notes about what was doing in the notebook I now keep in the lock box for the home care workers to see, and got her inhaler out.
She did take her inhaler, though that was weird. She’s supposed to take a few deep breaths first, exhale, inhale the puffer, hold for a count of ten, then rinse out her mouth. She even had a cup of water waiting for that.
She started taking the breaths, but had trouble doing the exhale before using the puffer. After a few times of not taking a puff, she started forcing herself to burp. For some time, she’s been going on about how she burps so much, and it’s such a problem, only to eventually say that she’s making herself burp because it helps her chest pains.
…
Whatever.
This was the first time I’ve seen/heard her doing it like this, though. First, I have no idea how she was doing it. Where was she getting all this abdominal air from? Second, it was really really gross – and it takes a lot to gross me out! She managed to keep it up for almost a minute, too, before finally taking her puffer.
That done, I started putting things away into the lock box, and she started railing again – but not taking her pills. She said that she was thinking of taking a hammer to the lock box. I told her, that (her attitude) is why you have a lock box! Then I told her (again) that I had to go to my appointment and was in a hurry. Oh, you’re always in a hurry.
…
So, yeah. She was nasty right from the moment she saw it was me and not the home care worker, right to the moment I left.
I did make it to the appointment location in time (it was just in a parking lot!). There was someone else being finished up, so I had time to send messages to my family about how things went with my mother. I wasn’t quite done when the other vehicle got their paperwork and left, and the insurance rep came to me.
We talked about what happened, and he took pictures.
With the box cover, he started talking about how this was the second one he had this week, and that these Velcro types have a habit of getting caught in the wind. Over time, the Velcro just doesn’t hold as well, getting full of dust or whatever. Basically, making it sound like it was more likely a product fault, which the insurance wouldn’t cover.
I showed him the bent part of the frame and the broken tail light. Under the tail light, there’s a dent from before we had the truck, and the crack in the tail light ends just above it. He tried to say that the impact from whatever caused this dent broke the tail light. I told him, the tail like was not broken before. I did mention that we’ve only had the vehicle for just over a year. While it’s certainly likely that, whatever caused that dent had broken the tail light, it had been fixed before we bought it.
One of the things that was noted and the took pictures of was a crack in the fender. The truck had rusted spots when we bought it. I don’t really care about what are essentially cosmetic issues. Along the edge of the fender, framing the wheel well, there’s a section with more rust. The crack is in that section. It actually is a new crack, but I never bothered mentioning it, since it was clearly cracked because of the older rust damage that was already there. I didn’t bother telling him that the crack was new. I just confirmed that the rust and other little dents and dings were old damage.
After he did his inspection, he went to his own vehicle to process the claim to get an estimate. That gave me time to finish updating the family.
End result with the claim.
He couldn’t even find the replacement value of the box cover, since there was nothing like it in his system. The estimated repair cost he came up with was just over $1000, and we could pay our $500 deductible. A replacement cover would be a new, improved version, so we would also have to pay 30% of the difference for “betterment”.
Once I got the estimate, I went straight to the company we’d be taking it to, which was just a block or two away. I had talked to them on the phone, previously, and our mechanic recommended them to me, as they are authorized to handle insurance claims like this.
Of course, since I literally just got the estimate, it was too early to be in the system for them to download the claim file. She did go out to look at the truck with me.
As she couldn’t look into the claim file to see the details, she couldn’t give me any hard information. She did explain to me that, with when they fix the bend in the frame, so new cover can be installed, they will have to paint the frame. That area of rust, where it was thin enough to crack, would be a problem when it comes to painting. I told her, I really don’t care about the paint, but it’s something they are required to do.
So… we might have to pay extra for rust repair, as that is not at all covered by the insurance, nor would I expect it to be.
As we were talking about the 30% betterment and so on, I told her, we might not be able to cover much. We can do the $500 deductible, but anything beyond that, well… we’re on a fixed income. She understood.
Tomorrow, she will download the file, then talk to the insurance company. When she has some hard numbers and confirmed data, she will give me a call.
I completely forgot, though. Tomorrow, I’m going to be at my mother’s. I’ve got her grocery shopping to do, plus I expect to be doing her laundry (Fridays are her scheduled turn for the shared laundry room) and whatever else she needs doing. She’ll have her Meals on Wheels for lunch, but I would want to make sure she has things she can easily put together for her meals during the weekend.
I’ll just have to make sure someone in the house has the phone with them while I’m gone!
So we may or may not be able to get the truck fixed and get a new box cover. We’ll figure that out, some time tomorrow.
By the time I got home, I was wasted. I’d spent probably less than 5 minutes at my mother’s, and she sucked all the energy out of me in that short time. When I got home, I ended up crashing for a couple of hours. While I certainly needed the rest, I woke up feeling like I’d wasted precious time in my day, plus I didn’t have the physical energy left to do most of the things on my to-do list. I won’t be able to them tomorrow, either, because I won’t be home. I’ll be at home mother’s, and I know that by the time I get home from helping her out, I’ll have zero energy to get anything done outside. Thank God I’ve got the girls taking care of things inside, so I don’t have to worry about that, too!
Then, to top things off, while I was at my computer, getting some stuff done while listening to a YouTube video, my sound suddenly disappeared.
After much checking of the system, everything was fine.
I checked the connections on the speakers, which required moving way too many things to access the back of the tower, that all checked out fine, too.
I tested it using my Bluetooth sleep headphones.
They worked fine.
I eventually gave up in frustration, then headed outside to feed the outside cats and get at least one things accomplished in potting up the luffa.
My husband, sweetheart that he is, unhooked and brought over set of speakers for me. They can be plugged into the tower, or be used with Bluetooth, so when I got back inside, I got my speakers out and hooked his up on Bluetooth.
They didn’t work.
We checked the power bar. It seemed fine. I flicked the switch back and forth, but there was no change.
Eventually, my husband was able to look and see where I’m too short to see, and discovered the power bar’s plug to the wall was half out. I keep that blocked off so that cats can’t mess with the cords, so it took some doing for him to be able to reach and plug it back in.
Still nothing.
I tried the switch on the power bar again.
It turned on.
*sigh*
My husband, meanwhile, took my speakers to test them out on his computer. It turned out that there was a loose connection, even though I’d checked them, and they seemed fine!
*sigh*
I didn’t have the energy to switch them back again, so I now have my husband’s Bluetooth speakers, and he’s got my old ones. These were speakers he kept on his headboard to play basically white noise to help him sleep.
Well, we’ll see how it works out.
My daughter just swung by a little while ago and showed me something else that I can add to the “good” list for the day. She just spent the past couple of hours in the basement, with baking soda, water and a toothbrush, cleaning the smoke damage off the book stand I salvaged form our tiny, historical burned out church after the closing services. I’m still debating going back for the benches or a pew, if someone else hasn’t already taken them. I know I’ll regret it if I don’t, but we just don’t have anywhere to store them until they can be used in the future.
I remember admiring this book stand when I was an altar server. The one that was used regularly was on the altar, and was a rather plain wooden stand. This one was sparkly “gold” with glittering “gems” in the front, and was kept in a tiny room on one side, where the priest got ready for services. Us altar servers would get ready in a tiny room on the opposite side then, just before mass started, cross over to join the priest for the procession. The room where we would get ready is where the back door was located, and that was where the person who broke in, started the fire. That room was completely burnt out, but the other room was surprisingly undamaged, other than smoke. This book stand was completely blackened with smoke, except for where there had been a crochet doily on the adjustable book rest. That left a clearer pattern in the smoke.
My daughter wasn’t able to get the black completely off; she didn’t want to damage the surface by scrubbing more. She did get it looking gold again, and while not as clear and shiny as they used to be, the glass “gems” look like gems again. She did an amazing job! I’ll have to try and get a picture of it in nice, bright light.
My mother was very happy when I told her I’d taken it home, and asked if she could see it again. I should bring it with me, tomorrow, to show it to her.
After showing me her handiwork, my daughter asked me what there was that she could do for me outside, tomorrow, while I’m gone. She’s going to try and finish the lawn mowing for me. I still have to refill the jerry can of fuel for the mowers, but haven’t been able to get done, yet, so she’ll do as much as she can before running out of gas. 😄
As for me, I should probably call my mother about tomorrow. Her evening med assist should be happening around now, so I know she’ll be up and about, at least!
Then I’ll share about how the transplanting went in my next post. 😊😊
It’s just past 5:30pm as I write this, and it’s all I can do to keep my eyes open. I am SO tired! Please forgive any odd sentence structure or typos, because I’m sure I’m going to miss many when I got over things before hitting publish!
The cats had me up at about 5am this morning. I got up and fed them – the morning feeding includes kicking all the cats out of my bedroom except Butterscotch and Freya. After the dry kibble is dispensed, I pour some cat milk into a small bowl for our elederly Freya (Butterscotch gets the rest of the little carton), and then I sit beside her on my bed, holding the bowl for her while she eats until she is done. This saves her from having to jump down from the bed to eat, and she can stay all curled up in whatever cat bed she’s in.
Yeah. I’m a suck for the cats.
After a while, I let the other cats back in, then tried going to bed for a couple more hours. I swear, the cats know exactly when I fall asleep for real, and that’s when they start getting into things they shouldn’t, and start making loud noises. Or just going crazy. Tissue got the zoomies this morning. So what sleep I did manage to get was highly interrupted. I can’t even keep the door closed, because then they start scratching at it and that keeps waking me up.
The temperature had dropped to 2C/36F at 5am. By about 8am, it had warmed up to a whole 8C/46F. Which was about when I started heading out. First, the kitties got fed, and I got a daughter to help out. Not with the feeding, though. With kitten catching! Kale and Sir Robin the Brave are incredibly fast about getting into the old kitchen, and haven’t learned to stay away from moving feet, or closing doors! After luring the adult cats away with kibble, I closed the inner door into the sun room and my daughter started handing me bowls of wet cat food to set out for the littles, plus one with both wet and dry cat food for Poirot at her cat carrier nest. Another bowl with part kibble and part wet cat food went into the cat house for Caramel and her babies.
Then I continued my rounds, leaving the sun room closed up, even though all three mamas were out. The white and grey mama has been seen nursing the creche babies more often, now that her third baby is in the sun room again.
Poirot’s grublings are getting more mobile, so I set up a a bit of a shield for them.
I’ve been saving cardboard for the garden in the old kitchen, and there just happened to be a couple of pieces of cardboard that was used as spacers inside a box that were just perfect for this. In the second picture, you can see how they’re set up to cover the gap between the shelf and the wall, and cat carrier and the wall. This should be enough of they accidentally squirm out of the carrier. As they get more mobile, we might just move the carrier to the floor, so they can go in and out as they wish.
Once done with tending the colony, the first thing I do it switch out the memory cards. As I go out to the sign cam, past where the food forest is being built up. That corner gets very sun baked and dry in the summer, but these guys don’t seem to mind at all!
They are absolutely everywhere. It’s impossible to not walk on them, but they don’t seem the least bit bothered by that. I don’t know what they are, but if I had to guess, I’d say they are some type of pansy? Whatever they are, they are pretty indestructible!
The next thing was to check on the garden beds. Especially the one where I just planted peas, yesterday. I thought they were fine until I got to the northernmost end, where I saw the cats had been digging. *sigh* Hopefully, they didn’t actually dig up any seeds, but I really couldn’t tell. I was trying to figure out some way to cover things when I remembered I still have grass clippings saved to use as mulch. There isn’t a lot left, but enough to do the job!
The soil got a gentle watering, first. After the grass was laid down, that got watered down, too. Partly so it wouldn’t blow away too easily.
The plastic covered beds all got watered, too. With the sprouting seedlings, it’s hard to tell which are what I planted and which are weeks. Some that I suspected to be weeds were starting to show their true leaves, and I was correct: they are maple seedlings. So I pulled as many of those as I could, along with identifiable stuff like dandelions – so long as pulling them wouldn’t disturb any other sprouts.
The low raised bed that no longer has plastic on it got watered. I’d tried blocking off one end of the cover and hoped that would be enough protection until I could do the other end. This morning, I discovered, I was wrong.
*sigh*
After repairing the digging damage as best I could, I got creative. This is all temporary.
In the first picture, you can see I just stuck some boards across the opening. The stick holding them in place is secured at the top through the mesh, so those could only go so high, so I used what I could find to add verticals on the inside. Hopefully, the cats won’t try to jump through the gaps.
In the next picture, you can see the twine I wove through the mesh to close up the end. Again, temporary, but this should hold for a while.
After the watering and weeding was done, I headed inside for breakfast, before going back out and continuing what I hoped to get finished today.
It was almost exactly 10am and I just sat down with my food when the phone rang.
It was my mother.
No one showed up to do her med assist this morning.
I should have gotten a call, but I got nothing. My mother had tried calling the case coordinator, but it’s Saturday; her office is closed.
So I told her, I would quickly finish eating, then head out to give her her medications. She wanted me to dispense her other two meds for the day, too, in case her med assist didn’t show up for those times, either, but I refused. Got quite a mocking for following the rules. So what will you do? she asked me. Come out two more times?
I said, yes! I will!
I told her, there’s a reason your medications are in your lock box. You were messing with your medications, forgetting if you took them, etc. Oh, I wasn’t that bad, she said. Yes, you were, Mom. That’s why you have a lock box! She actually seemed to stop and think about that!
One of the things I did was write up a note and leave it in their notebook, stating that I had dispensed that morning’s medications and at what time.
I also told her that, since I was out anyhow, I would make a trip to the nearest Walmart to do a bit of shopping. I had planned to do it later in the weeks, but I could do it now. The Walmart carries 2L plastic milk jugs, which she finds easier to handle, so I told her I was thinking of getting a plastic jug for her. I did just get her a carton, but…
She does still have milk, but it turns out she had dropped the carton while trying to open it and spilled some. So more milk, in a better container, was a big yes from her!
I ended up leaving with a small shopping list and some cash. One of the things she was running low of was the topical pain killer she’s been using on her knees. She’s now using it on her back, too, so she’s going through it faster. I had already been thinking of checking that out, too, as I figured it would be a better price.
Since it was well past 11am by the time I was going to head out, I offered to make a lunch for her, but she said she had leftovers from yesterday’s Meals on Wheels, so she was fine. Once I knew she was settled, I headed out.
My first stop was actually a Dollarama that shares a parking lot with the Walmart. There were a few small things that I wanted to pick up and, of course, I went through the garden supply section. I ended up picking up four 4′ metal posts. Not T posts, but the same idea. They have hooks in the metal to hold trellis netting. They would have been perfect for what I was doing yesterday – and easier to set into the soil! We will be trellising pole beans and more peas, though, so new posts will not go amiss. I probably should have gotten more, but I should be able to get some more next month, if I need to.
After I was done at the Dollarama, it was across the parking lot to Walmart.
I got a few things that were not on my list. 😄
One thing that was on my list was more wet cat food. Since we are giving wet cat food to the kittens, we’re going through it faster. Normally, at Walmart, I pick up cases of 32. Looking at the new prices for the individual cans, though, I realized it would actually be cheaper to buy them loose, than by case lot! I ended up using some of their cardboard flats and got 48 cans of paté for the inside cats (paté works better when making cat soup) and 24 cans of chunks in gravy for the kittens.
They had sales on canned food for humans, too, and I got a flat of 24 cans of tomato soup for the pantry, too.
I also went through the garden centre. I picked up some replacement Yukon potatoes, since I’m sure the ones I’ve been chitting are no longer viable. Their herbs and vegetables were out, so I went hunting and found a few herbs. I got English Thyme, Golden thyme, two containers of oregano, lemon balm and basil. These will go into the tiny raised bed in the old kitchen garden, which has a cat proof cover already.
As for my mother’s list, the topical painkiller she uses was there – and cost $11 less than at her local pharmacy! That’s a huge difference!
The store was very busy, so it took a while for me to get everything I was looking for (and then some), and I was really tired and hungry by the end of it. I had some frozen stuff in my cart, so I stopped to get some take out that I could eat while driving, then headed out, making sure to update my family and let them know I was on my way to my mother’s, then home.
Which is when things went sideways.
Literally.
The last part of my route to my mother’s is a provincial trunk road, from one highway to another, that leads to my mother’s town. This is an east/west route.
The wind was coming from the south.
As I was driving towards an area of wide open fields, I saw the entire horizon was covered with what looked like black smoke. Once clear of some trees, I could see it swirling over the fields – but no flames.
It was dust.
Basically, the topsoil from the south side of the road was being blown to the north side of the road.
As I was being buffeted by the wind, driving through it.
Which is when I heard and felt something behind me and looked in my mirror just in time to see the cover over the box of our truck blow off, into the ditch and keep on going!
I pulled over, but by the time I did, there was no sign of the cover. I’m sure it was still being blown across that field for some time!
I had stuff in the box of the truck, and it was already getting scattered across the box. I gathered it all together and crammed it mostly into the back of the cab, making sure nothing went to the front that could get mixed up with my mother’s stuff.
I made sure that there was no way those metal posts would be able to slide and hit a window!
Once everything was put away, I continued to my mother’s place. Wow, what a difference in how the truck felt while driving! The wind swirling into the box of the truck was very noticeable.
When I was done at my mother’s, I was able to get for damage, which you can see in the second image in the slideshow above. There was enough flex on the box when the cover was torn off that it cracked the tail light cover.
But I didn’t get a chance to see that until later.
As soon as I entered her apartment, my mother, who was lying in bed, started saying, Oh, I’m so glad you’re here! I’m so glad to see you! while getting up to sit on the side of her bed.
I’m doing poorly, she tells me. Maybe I should go to the hospital. What do you think?
I certainly did not voice what I was actually thinking. My mother has cried wolf so many times, and uses having us take her to the hospital as a way of getting attention.
I asked her questions about what was going on. She was pretty vague about it; as if she expected me to already know. She told me she took one of the new pills (the T3s), but it didn’t seem to make a difference.
I told her, these pills aren’t magic. They are just stronger painkillers. As she kept on basically about what her expectations were (take pill: pain ends utterly and completely), I told her that her prescription for these is just a couple a day, morning and evening, as needed. I’m on the same pills, same dosage per tablet, and I can take up to 9 of them in total, per day. So it really depends on the individual.
She was pretty shocked that I could take so many per day, when she had a limit of two per day.
As I was putting things away, she lay back down in bed and suggested that maybe using the topical painkiller would help (confirming, finally, exactly what it was that was causing her problems this time). So that’s what we tried. She asked me to do, not only her hips (the pain is mostly just on one side), but her entire back as well. As I was doing that for her, she said to add lots, so I did it second time. As I was putting away the tube, she started saying she could feel a difference, already!
Hopefully, that will be enough.
My brother and I are planning to be there tomorrow for Mother’s Day, so we’ll be able to check on her more thoroughly, then.
Meanwhile, whenever I had a few moments, I kept my family and my siblings updated on things. I told my mother that I had frozen things in my vehicle and had to get them home, so I was soon back on the road. A daughter was sweet enough to have the gate open for me when I got in.
After everything was unloaded, and the new transplants and bags of seed potatoes secure in the portable greenhouse, it was time to feed the outside cats. I had another daughter on kitten duty, too! Other than doing a quick check to make sure none of the raised bed covers were blown away, I was more than happy to finally settle in at home.
So much for my garden and planting plans for the day! As I write this, we have continued to get warmer. It’s past 7pm now, and the temperature has risen to 24C/75F, though with the wind, it does feel a bit cooler. Not much, though! One of the local weather groups I follow on Facebook has been posting information and the coming heat way, with significant heat warnings to come.
We’re supposedly getting rain right now, though the current systems are skirting right past us. Later this evening, we’re supposed to be getting real rain. One of the things that the weather nerds that run the group noted is what appears to be pyrocumulous clouds forming in some areas! These are thunderstorm clouds that are created by heat; you might typically see them form over volcanoes, but can also form over forest fires, if the conditions are right. Scary stuff!
Tonight, the coolest temperatures are supposed to be at around 5 and 6am, at 14C/57F, and then start heating right up. The heat wave is supposed to hit us the hardest on Monday and Tuesday, but still be very hot on Wednesday and Thursday.
On Friday, the temperature is supposed to drop right down, with overnight lows of 0C/32F, and a mix of rain and snow. Saturday is supposed to be only slightly warmer.
Spring weather is so chaotic.
Well, if we can work around the hottest parts of the day, I should still be able to get at least some of those walnut seeds planted, get more areas prepped in the garden and, if all goes well, even do more direct sowing done. Chances are, though, that very little will get done until after the heat wave passes, and we’re back into cooler temperatures. At which point, we’ll be needing to protect some things from frost! For now, we’ve been able to leave our transplants in the portable greenhouse day and night, but we’ll have to bring them inside on those coldest nights.
As for me, it’s time to pain killer up and get to bed. If the cats are going to be waking me up at 5am anyhow, I may as well take advantage of it and get work done outside, before it gets too hot! I just have to work out what time I’ll be meeting up with my brother at my mother’s place tomorrow.
This is in the winter sown low raised be near the dead tree on the outhouse we were working on last night. I was starting to wonder if they had survived the winter, and the cats! This bed has the root vegetable seed mix I put together, plus our own collected lettuce seeds.
After doing some reading on the tree nursery’s website, I decided a trip to the nearest Walmart was in order, to pick up some supplies. The bed with the new sprouts was going to need protection, too! After doing my morning rounds and a few things at home, it was getting close to noon before I headed out. I ended up going to the Canadian Tire first, though, and that’s where I found pretty much all that I was looking for.
The main things I got were a couple of bags of cattle manure and another couple of sheep’s manure. I wanted to pick up some peat, too, but there wasn’t any, which I found rather odd. After getting some feedback in the comments section of a gardening video, I went looking in the paint section for some plastic to use on raised bed covers, without having to order 6mm greenhouse plastic online. I ended up needing help from two different staff members to find what I needed. Most of what was available was much, much thinner, but they did find some 7mm sheets for me. I ended up getting two 10’x25′ sheets plus three 8’x10′ sheets. Hopefully, this will work out better than cobbling together lengths of dining table protectors! I also got a 50′ roll of 1/2 inch pex pipe. These will be cut to length to use as support hoops. I also found a couple of small watering cans with long, narrow pour spouts. I’ve been looking for them for some time, as it’s been a real pain trying to water the aloe vera without water splashing off the leaves all over the place. It will also make it easier to water the transplant trays under the seedlings.
I did get one completely unplanned thing and that was a smaller Dutch oven that was on clearance.
That done, I went over to the Walmart. They didn’t have peat, either, but I did find cat milk for our elderly Freya and got a whole bunch. Since I was there, I went ahead and picked up things for the pantry and generally just looking for various things we might need.
By the time I was done and the truck was loaded up, I was completely wiped out. Yesterday had finally caught up to me. I had also skipped lunch, so I was tired, in pain and very hungry. I messaged home to let the family know I was on my way and my state. When I got back, I had plenty of help getting things unloaded and put away, and there was a hot meal waiting for me.
Pain levels aren’t the only thing that kept me from getting outside stuff started for planting. It’s been steadily raining/misting all day. On my way home, as my route took me closer to the lake, it was just straight up thick fog. Which will be great for the garden, at least! At least it’s relatively warm, though. It looks like I won’t be getting anything done tomorrow, either. We’re supposed to have a high of only 6C/43F, and the overnight low is supposed to be -6C/21F! For the past while, our overnight lows have been hovering around the freezing mark, at the lowest, but not that far below zero! I’ll have to make a point of protecting the bed with the seedlings overnight! After tomorrow night, our overnight lows are supposed to stay above freezing from not until at least half way through May. Our long range forecasts actually show highs getting close to 30C/86F until the middle of the month, and then suddenly dropping to the point of a rain/snow mix.
If I’m not going to be able to get things planted tomorrow, I’m going to have to make sure the trees don’t try out. They’re being kept in the old kitchen right now, where it’s cooler, so at least they won’t come out of dormancy too quickly.
We have seedlings in the basement that are ready to be potted up, so that can be a project for tomorrow. I should be able to get out and plant the trees the day after.
For now, though, it’s all I can do to stay awake at the keyboard while I type this. I’m not looking forward to trying to get out of my office chair and walking, though. I can feel every joint in my body stiffening up. Even typing is getting difficult.
Yeah, pain killers and an early bed time are definitely in order.
Before heading inside, I saw Brussel was well settled around her babies. I reached in to try and pet her. She didn’t like it, hissed at me, but did not actually try to bite me or anything like that. I got to sneak pet her babies, too.
There were no other cats in the sun room, so I went and got a squeeze treat. This is my first attempt to use one with her. She started growling as I reached in with it and immediately got distracted by the deliciousness in front of her face. She continued to growl at me, then entire time she scarfed it down!
I think that’s good progress on socializing Brussel!
With the temperatures swinging from a few degrees above freezing, to a few degrees below, things have been melting at a slower pace. As a result, the moat around the garage is nowhere near as large as it has been in the last couple of years. The “pond” behind the garage/in front of the outhouse that started to form is pretty much gone, and the paths are clear. There’s the low spot at the driveway into the yard, but it’s fairly easy to skirt around.
They seems to be “hunting” something through the ice at times. Probably water moving under their weight, or the ice making crackling noises. It’s barely thick enough hold the weight of the cats.
We’re supposed to have a high above freezing today, but below freezing over the next couple of days. After that, we’re supposed to warm right up and, if the long range forecast is to be believed, have highs well above freezing, from now on.
We’re still below freezing as I write this, so I’m going to wait a bit before I see what I can do with the raised bed cover in the old kitchen garden. The surface it definitely too frozen to remove any mulch, so I want to get that plastic over the frame. That should help thaw things out, even as the temperatures dip a bit, as we’re still supposed to get quite a bit of sunlight. It should get nice and toasty under the plastic.
I will have to watch myself, though. I didn’t think I’d over done it over the past couple of days, but my joints have been stiffening up and hurting a LOT. I honestly can’t tell if the new pain killers are helping or not. Worse, when I tried rolling over in bed last night, I got hit with a nasty Charlie horse in my left thigh. I haven’t had one of those in quite a while! While not the worst I’ve had (that was, hands down, the time I had it in both legs at the same time), I was unable to get to my phone to message my daughter for help. I did manage to take some acetaminophen (same family as the prescription painkillers). Ibuprofen would have been better, but they are NSAIDs, and contraindicated.
My daughters were both up, though, and heard me while I was trying to deal with the pain. My older daughter came down to see if I was okay, then stayed to try and help as much as she could. There really wasn’t much she could do until it finally started to go away. She then helped me stand up and walk to the bathroom, hung around to help me walk back again, and get back into bed. I needed her help to lift the affected leg up so I could lie down. After she was sure I was okay, she went back upstairs, and her sister came and stayed with me for a while longer.
Just looking at the time, I’m realizing it’s been about 7 hours since the Charlie horse hit me, and the affected muscles are still feeing weak and trembly, and like they are on the edge of cramping again.
I have been trying to think what changed recently that it would hit me again after all this time. I am thinking dehydration might have contributed to it, having been out and about for the past couple of days, but even that doesn’t seem likely. Very frustrating!
With how little sleep I ended up getting last night, because of it, I plan to try and get a nap in before heading outside again. I’m actually nervous about lying down and getting hit with it again!
The full belly kittens especially enjoy the isolation shelter, with its new, donated beds.
There is one thing I need to figure out about the isolation shelter, for times like this, when no cats are being isolated. I specifically made the door to also be a ramp, so they can go in and out freely. Where it’s sitting now, though, that big, wide opening is facing directly south. Which is great for passive solar heat through the windows, and even the plastic wrapped around the bottom.
Not so great for wind and snow.
That’s going to blow right into the opening.
I’ve considered getting some scrap carpet or something and attaching it above the opening on the inside, where it still allow for the ramp door to be closed, with the carpet cut into strips so they can easily push through. That’s what’s over the opening into the cat house and it works very well, though it does need replacing. The cat house, however, has an added entryway to it. After my brother built it for his dogs, he found he had this same problem with wind and snow getting into the original entrance. So he made an addition. The addition created a somewhat sheltered corner next to one of the windows, which is where the new entry is, while the original entry is at the far end of the addition. Between the new angle and the shelter of the corner, the carpet strips at the opening (a double layer of carpet with the strips cut so that the slits overlap the strips) and the distance to the main entry, very little wind can get in, and virtually no snow at all.
That’s not really an option for the isolation shelter, since it needs to be mobile. If the patio blocks were not so uneven, we could simply rotate it 45 degrees, and that alone would mostly solve the problem. Uneven patio blocks aside, that would also eliminate a lot of the passive solar heat, plus we’d have to change up how the cords for the heated water bowl and heat lamp are, so we could still plug it in.
Basically, we need a wind break and a roof over the opening. It’s just a matter of figuring out the best way to do that, using the materials we have on hand. It may be something as simple as leaning something against the shelter that’s long enough and wide enough, and securing it enough that it won’t blow away.
We’ll figure it out.
After completing my rounds, I prepared a shaker container with the native wildflower seeds mix and some potting soil, giving it a thorough shake to get the seeds well mixed in with the potting soil. Once the insulated tarp that’s been laying on the ground all summer is moved aside, I planned to loosen the soil beneath with the landscaping rake, then scattering the seed mix over it.
Well, not today, it turns out.
Before doing that, I went in for breakfast and to let things warm up at least a little more – our high for today is only supposed to be 5C/41F, and we’re supposed to be rainy. Oh, they’re now saying, light rain and snow. As I write this, it’s before noon, a fog has rolled in, but no rain, so far. The tail end of a system that is passing north of us isn’t expect to hit until about 3pm.
So I sat at my computer to watch some videos while having breakfast, then worked a bit on the second of six Singlade balls I’m making for this year’s Christmas decorations.
Then I got up to go to the bathroom and discovered my entire body had basically seized up.
Every joint in my body seemed to have stiffened up. My husband had been in the room with me at the time, and I was hobbling so badly he offered to bring me a cane.
I used the walls, instead.
I’m having a harder time moving around than he is right now, and he’s the one that’s officially broken!
Well… it is Sunday. I guess this is God’s way of making sure I get my day of rest! 😄😁
This time of year is so hard on my osteoarthritis. It’s frustrating, because I can do so well on some days, and then WHAM, I can barely move.
I guess this will be a good day for pain killers, hot tea, watching videos and making Singlade.
Lord knows, I’m not going to be able to do much else today.
I did get some things accomplished today, but ended up cutting back on some of what I planned to do. I was just too stiff and sore, and I’ll be heading to the city for our Costco shop tomorrow, so I didn’t want to push my luck.
I wasn’t happy with the garden tour video I took yesterday evening, so I tried again this morning. I think they will do, though I did catch some mistakes I made. Ah, well. I can edit in some notes when I put the tour video together.
The truck was booked for the garage today. When changing the oil, he forgot to reset the computer, so I was still getting the “change oil soon” warning. He also forgot to put on a new sticker. The check engine line turned back on again, so he was going to diagnose that for me, plus get some pricing for other work we already knew would need doing.
My appointment was for 1pm, but I left early so I could put in a bit of gas and a car wash. I still dropped the truck off early. They were having lunch! After talking for a bit about what needed to be checked out, I told them there was no hurry, as I had some errands to run.
Without the truck, doing them meant a lot of walking!
My first stop was the furthest. I headed to the dollar store. There were some things I was looking for, for the bathroom, but I wasn’t sure if they would have them. I did, however, find some embroidery thread that I plan to use for this year’s Christmas decorations (I try to do a different craft every year). They had also restocked on breakaway collars. I got their last five that had reflective strands in them. The last time I got some, I got four of them to put on the four males that had just been neutered, but three of them were gone the next day. I think I put them on too loosely. I’d hoped to find them around the yard or something, but there was no sign of them. Only Syndol still has his collar.
After taking the bells off, I put the collars on after doing their evening feeding.
I had to double check for tattoos on a couple of them, to be sure! I had enough collars to include Judgement (who was done on a cheap spay/neuter day, and has no tattoo) and Gouda. Right now, the only fixed cat that does not have a collar is Rolando Moon. The grand old lady has no need for a collar, and I doubt I could get one on her, anyhow.
I made them a bit snugger this time, testing them out on inside cats, first. Hopefully, that will do the trick, and they won’t get lost. So far, the cats didn’t seem to notice them, once I got them on.
After the dollar store, I stopped at a Red Apple. Once again, what I was actually looking for wasn’t there, but I did find a blackout curtain for my husband. He has a south facing window, and the sun hits him right in the face while he’s on his computer. We had curtains there before, but they were too long, and the cats destroyed their bottoms. This curtain also turned out to be really long, but we just folded up the bottom out of cat range and clipped it in place for now.
My husband is very happy with it! Plus, it’s wide enough that a second one isn’t needed.
By the time I made my way back to the garage, it was past 1pm, but the truck hadn’t moved from where I parked it yet. I was able to leave my bag of shopping in it, then headed to the hotel next door that has a Chinese restaurant in it, and had lunch.
When I got back to the garage, they were just finishing up with the truck and just had to look up the codes that came up while he scanned it.
So the thing that’s turning on the check engine like turns out to be the Mass Air Flow sensor. Nothing urgent.
The part, however, costs almost $180 (plus labour and taxes).
The other thing we need to get fix, but got away with not needing last winter, is the cord for the block heater. I discovered the plug had been torn off. This being a GM vehicle, they have proprietary cords. You can’t just splice a new plug in. It won’t work. Apparently, GM is the only manufacturer that is like this. A new one is just pennies over $80. Last of all, I requested an updated price for the one of the wheel sensors. That will be just under $105, which is pretty much the same as when I asked about it, a year ago.
Thankfully, none of this is urgent stuff, because we won’t have the budget to get any of it done until next month. I asked which he would consider a priority, if we could only do one at a time. He suggested the MAF sensor. Next would be the block heater cord. Last winter was mild a mild El Nińo winter, so we were fine without it. This year will depend on just how strong the La Nińa current turns out to be.
That done, I made a quick stop at the grocery store across the street, then headed home, with a quick stop at the post office along the way. I had a letter from the government waiting for me. At tax time, I get the caregiver tax rebate, while my husband gets a disability tax credit. These are the only reason why we get anything back at tax time. The caregiver tax rebate is provincial, and has to be renewed every three years. It was time for me to renew it to get it on my 2024 tax return.
It turned out to be easily done online, so that got taken care of quickly.
My intention had been to try and get some more work done outside, while the temperatures were good and there was still daylight.
Instead, I decided to make it a day of rest. Even working on the garden tour video turns out to be something I’m just too tired to do. It doesn’t help that the arthritic in my hands is really kicking in. The crackling noises my finger joints make is truly unfortunate! It makes typing rather difficult at times. At least my wounded finger tips on each hand are healing up nicely. Just the one I dropped the trailer tailgate on is still hurting.
I think today will be a day for an early bed time. I’d like to get a relatively early start for the city. I say “relatively” because sunrise is past 8:20am this time of year, though it is usually pretty light by about 7:30. I do my morning rounds once it’s light out, so I’ll head out shortly after.
I’m glad we got the truck checked today, but I’m not looking forward to doing Costco on a Saturday. Hopefully, making it an early trip will mean fewer crowds.
The Re-Farmer 