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.
It’s past 1 am as I write this, but I just had to.
I went down into the old basement to treat the hot water tank with hydrogen peroxide before going to bed. This is what I found.
It’s leaking!
(That ring of minerals on the concrete is not new; it’s been there since the last time we had issues.)
We don’t go into the old basement often (and with the cats, we’ve put all the most breakable stuff into the old basement and blocked off the opening between the two basements, so there was no chance of kittens falling into the sump pump reservoir or otherwise hurting themselves). The last time anyone went down there, that I can remember, was my daughter, the last time the tank was treated. I called her over to see, and confirmed it wasn’t leaking the last time she was down there.
In trying to see where it was leaking it appeared to be coming from the bottom access panel, too. So we opened it up.
Yup. It’s been reaching that high!!
We’ve left the panel off. Tomorrow, I will call the number on the tank to talk about getting a replacement under warranty.
Again.
For those who are new to the blog, when we first moved here, this place still had the tank that was installed when my dad got the well dug near the house and installed running water. He got the tank second hand. When cleaning up the basements, I found the old warranty certificate and bill of sale for it, dated 1963, if I remember correctly.
It died shortly after we moved in.
Long story short, we went without hot water until we could afford to get a plumber to replace the tank for us.
That worked out well for a while, until the water started to get hotter and hotter, all on its own. We called the plumber and he changed the thermostat, but that’s when we discovered that it had started leaking at the bottom. When he opened the bottom panel, he found the insulation saturated with water.
Not long after that, we lost hot water completely.
We then had issues with discovering the local hardware store it was purchased at, not doing warranty replacements. I tried working with the company directly before finally finding a branch someplace else that had would honor the warranty. We then had to get the plumber back to install it for us, and it’s been working fine ever since. The only issue is one we’ve had since replacing the original tank; the hot water would start to get a sulfur smell. Every month or so, we would drain the tank a bit, then use the vacuum created to suction hydrogen peroxide through a hot water tap in what used to be the laundry sink. It needs to sit for at least 4 hours, so we would do it before bed, so the water could be used in the morning.
It’s been about 1 1/2 years since that tank was replaced under warranty. And not it’s happening again.
What the heck is going on? How does a second hand tank last for nearly 40 years, but new tanks aren’t even making it 2 years?
But at least we still have hot water. I guess it’s a good thing it started visibly leaking this time, before we started having problems. We don’t have the water getting super hot, like the tank started having issues last time. It’s “just” leaking.
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.
I took advantage of yesterday’s warmth with a trip into town. At one point, on the way back, I was driving through precipitation that couldn’t make up it’s mind if it was snow or rain! LOL We actually hit 3C/37.4F, which was a couple of degrees warmer than forecast.
Then the temperatures plummeted overnight. While the actual temperatures remained above -20C/-4F, the wind chills brought things down colder than -30C/-22F Apparently, there was even a storm last night, though it seemed to be well to the south of where we are. We got hit with high winds, mostly.
As I write this, we are at -17C/1.4F with a wind chill of -28C/-18.4F
While I was doing the cat stuff outside, most of them just stayed in the cat shelter and watched me though the windows. They still had lots of food in the kibble house, but I also toss some inside the entry of the cat house, where I have another food bowl. I don’t put much in there, since I don’t want to encourage other critters going in there. That food bowl was empty.
Some of the cats did come out for some warm water; the heated water bowl does the job, but when it’s cold like this, I like to give them water that is actually warm, and they really seem to appreciate it.
Then they all just disappeared! Not into the cat house, but running off around it, with some running under the storage house.
I discovered why when I turned around as saw we had a visitor!
My younger brother’s dog had come for a visit!
He just thrives in these temperatures! The colder it is, the more he loves it.
They have yard cats too, of course, so when he comes here, he expects to be able to come right up to ours and play! Butterscotch and Rolando Moon (and Beep Beep, if she were still outside) are more familiar with him, as he used to visit my late father all the time, but the other cats where born after we moved here, and the sudden appearance of a fluffy giant is rather frightening for them! Meanwhile, he just wants to play. :-D
As I was finishing my rounds, I managed to get him to follow me down the driveway and start heading home, but as I came back, he was suddenly bounding beside me, leaping and jumping in the snow, trying to get me to play with him!
Unfortunately, the winds made staying outside any longer than I had to, out of the question.
My goodness. I just glanced at my weather icon on my computer and noticed we’ve already started to drop in temperature. Looking out my window, it’s a clear and sunny day and looks like it should be quite pleasant out there, but we’re now -18C/-0.4F, with the wind chill down to -31C/-23.8F We’ve already hit the high of the day, and it is expected to keep slowly dropping from now on until tomorrow. We’ll have one more mild day tomorrow, then temperatures are supposed to plummet for a few days before getting mild again. With concerns over the vehicles, we plan any outings around the forecasts, which means quick run to check the mail and pick up more bird seed and deer feed will be done tomorrow.
Unlike our furry visitor, we do NOT thrive in this cold, and neither do the vehicles! :-D
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. :-)
Yesterday, I got started on making covers for our big fish tank, to keep the cats out. Today, I assembled the first one.
Of course, things did not go to plan.
Does anything ever? :-D
One of the things I needed to figure out was how to secure the hardware cloth to the frame pieces, for those inevitable times when a cat jumps on them. All I’ve got for materials is whatever we can find lying around the farm. While doing my rounds this morning, I went digging in the side of the garage where we store the lawnmowers and snow blowers. I knew there were some roofing nails in there, so I grabbed a while bunch and brought them inside.
Here is the first problem.
All of the nails were huge. There was only a single smaller size, and it was still too large. What I wanted to do was secure the mesh to the tops/bottoms of the boards making up the frame. Previously, we’ve used a staple gun to do that, but these were not for things where the wire mesh was expected to hold weight. Particularly not the sudden weight of a cat leaping onto it from above.
The mesh was going to have to be secured along the sides.
That meant cutting it with a half inch overlap on all sides.
I’m getting closer to the end of my roll of 1/8 inch mesh, and it really does not want to unroll at this stage! :-D I had all the boards on there to hold it down, and it still kept rolling itself back up again!
Once the mesh was cut to side and flattened, I affixed it to one side.
Normally, I would have used the staple gun to tack it in place, but I couldn’t find it anywhere. Which is really weird, because I’m the only person who uses it!
So it had to be tacked in place by screwing in the cross piece, holding the wire as taught as I could in the process.
Then I took out one of the screws in each corner.
I had placed the wood in place on the tank and marked each one with pencil, but once the hardware cloth was in place, I couldn’t really see my marks anymore. Plus, with the cross pieces a fraction too long, I had to make sure I didn’t line the side pieces up to the other end, or the while thing would be to big.
So I quickly drilled a pilot hole in each of the other corners of the cross pieces, then went back to the tank.
This way, I could place the long pieces where they were meant to sit, line everything up, then add a couple of screws through the pilot holes to hold them in place.
Then it was back to the basement to continue.
Once each corner was secured with a pair of screws, it was time to bend the wire mesh. Since the sides would be bent in one direction, and the ends in the other direction, I first cut out the corners.
The wood pieces may have been lined up to the tank, but no matter how careful I tried to be, the wire mesh ended up uneven.
Ah, well.
Once the mesh was bent, I drilled pilot holes for each nail (to prevent the wood from splitting) and hammered them in. The flat tops of the roofing nails were perfect for securing the mesh. Very different from how I had to do it with the larger mesh on the screen “door” we made to keep the cats out of the old basement.
Time to test it out again!
Oh, dear.
The addition of mesh and nails – especially the nails – made it wider. It wasn’t so much that it no longer fit. I could have let it just rest on the nail heads, I suppose. They would, however, damage the tank’s frame.
There was a very easy solution to this problem.
Flip it upside down.
With the cross pieces being every so slight too long, I used my Dremel to take off the corners at roughly a 45 degree angle.
It now fits!
Unfortunately, the wood is a bit warped, so it doesn’t sit flat, but it should still do the job.
There are still a couple of things I need to do. One is to find some way to cover the edges of the hardware cloth, for safety reasons. I’ll probably just use Gorilla Tape, if we still have some.
The other is to find my self-adhesive felt pads. The kind that’s meant to go on the bottoms of chair legs or the like, to protect floors. Since the bottom is now the top, the screw heads are facing down, and each corner screw is sitting on the plastic ledge in the corners of the tank. It wouldn’t be an issue, if I weren’t expecting cats to jump on it, so a bit of padding would be a good thing. I haven’t seen them since we packed for the move, though. :-/
Aside from those 2 things, this cover is done.
The other one will wait for another day! :-D The earliest we should be starting any seeds is in late March, so we have time! :-)
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! :-)
Today was a nice and quiet day, so maybe it was as close to the life of our cats as we humans can manage! :-D
Just look at Keith!
He is such a calm and quiet cat. We brought him indoors to better treat his eyes; they were never as bad as his brother David’s, but they were not really getting better. Even as a kitten, we could tell he would have a sweet and calm disposition as an adult. We probably would have brought him in much earlier, if his cousin Cheddar hadn’t impaled himself with a stick through his armpit and needed to recover indoors from surgery.
I still have that cheese stick, in it’s vacuum sealed container. LOL
One thing out of the ordinary happened today. I had a conference call with my siblings and mother – a technical feat my brother pulled off involving cell phones, land lines and speaker phones – to get us all on at the same time, and able to hear each other!
The topic of conversation was our vandal.
A few days ago, while I happened to still be near the end of our driveway while doing my rounds, I saw a vehicle turn onto the road. As I usually do, I waved at the driver as he went by. Only then did I realize it was our vandal, driving one of his other vehicles, so I didn’t recognize it at first.
He very studiously looked away from me as he drove by.
I thought nothing of it, but I should have made a point of calling my mother to let her know. Sometimes, when he sees me, he ends up calling her and going off on a rant. He hadn’t done it the last few times I saw him, though, so I didn’t think of it.
The next day, I got a call from my mother, asking me if anything had happened – if I got anything else in the mail regarding our vandal’s ridiculous suit against me, or something. I told her no, I only saw him drive by the previous morning, then immediately asked what happened.
He had called just her. She made the mistake of answering without checking call display first. He, as usual, launched into a tirade. He kept asking her things like, why is she trying to put him in jail (he’s been saying that since I laid charges against him, after catching him damaging our gate), but never giving her a chance to speak. She finally hung up on him. He called back immediately, and she answered again, quickly said that he was putting himself in jail, then hung up again.
The whole thing left her quite rattled and it took her quite a while to calm down.
So today, my siblings talked about what happened, and a few other things that have gone on over the years. I found out that, among the things ranted about at my mother, our vandal told her that I said – to him – that my mother shouldn’t attend her sister’s funeral.
My aunt is living but, as you can imagine, that freaked my mother out a bit, since she is in a nursing home.
Of course, I haven’t spoken to our vandal since I laid charges against him, two years ago, so this claim of his was just another thing he invented, like so many other things.
I learned today that when he had called my brother at work a few months ago, he ranted so loudly, everyone in the office could hear him!
The question is, what do we do about it?
Unfortunately, not much. I’m already doing the only things I can. Anything he does to my mother, she has to do herself. We can help her, but we can’t do it for her. The only way someone else could do it for her is if she were medically declared not of sound mind, and she is still far from that.
The frustrating thing is that, with our province extending the lock down again, my restraining order application’s court date will likely be delayed, yet again. I need to phone the court office closer to the date they gave me when I last called about it, so I will be calling next week. His civil suit against me is by teleconference, so there’s no delay in that. As you can imagine, it is extremely frustrating that a criminal matter is being delayed in the courts because of government shut downs, but civil cases can go ahead by phone. For us, so far, he’s only tried to destroy property and screamed verbal abuse as us, but what about people who applied for protection orders that fear for their personal safety? These lock downs have already caused a spike in domestic abuse, as so many tried to warn about. It’s hard enough for people to get the protections they need to begin with. Now, with the courts closed, they can’t get any at all.
The other frustrating thing is that our vandal is angry at me, for being here on the farm and actually standing up to his abusive behaviour, but it’s my mother that he takes it out on. He seems to still think he can get her to give the property to him, even though she no longer owns it, while at the same time, still seems to think she has given it to me. So… he thinks she can “take back” ownership from me, when I don’t own it, and give it to him?
That this makes sense to him is just a reflection of his state of mind. What is more confusing is how he managed to convince other people that this makes sense, and willing to even leave anonymous notes on my mother’s door – in spite of her building being locked down to visitors – telling her to give the farm “back” to him.
Bizarre.
On the plus side, my siblings, mother and I are being a lot more communicative and drawing around my mother to protect her as best we can. That we have to do it at all is just sad.
