I can rest now… and critter pictures

Good news; today was the last day my mother had to go to the hospital for injections!

But first, here are a couple of critter pictures from the DSLR, yesterday.  I didn’t upload them until today.  There were very few, but a couple I really enjoyed, that I hope you enjoy, too!

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Yes, I am an immature child that loves to catch the deer with goofy faces.  :-D

I tried to snag a picture of a squirrel posing so perfectly on top of the limestone cross.

I didn’t quite manage it, but I think I like this better…

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This morning’s trip with my mom to the hospital took a lot longer, for good reasons, and she was having one of her good days, so it was much more pleasant, too!  When I got to her place, she was ready and waiting for me to put the brace on her leg, which was awesome.  She did comment on how the bump on the inside (a knob with a dial that applies pressure to her knee, to straighten it) gets in the way of her other leg, so she has to walk with her legs farther apart.  My response was good!  That’s what it’s supposed to do!

Well.  At least until her knee starts to straighten out.  The dial will need to be checked and adjusted after a while – if she keeps up wearing it!

We had a pleasant drive to the next town, with beautiful views of frost covered trees glistening in the sunlight.  She did comment again about how ridiculous it is to drive so far, every day, just for an injection.  While I understand why it’s being done, and I think she kind of does, too, she had a point.  So when we got there (this time, I gave in and used my husband’s disability placard so we could park closer to the door; the distance she had to walk yesterday was really hard on her!) and I let them know she was there, I also asked if someone was available to check on her eye and see about getting the prescription to replace the injections.  After explaining the situation to the nurse, she was more than willing to see what she could do about it.

Later, the same nurse brought the blood pressure machine to the waiting room for my mother and took her vitals.  She looked at my mom’s eye, but this was the first time she’d seen it.  Thankfully, I’d taken a picture of it a couple of days ago, which helped.  She had us go to an examination room (all of this is being done in the emergency section of the hospital) for a bit more privacy for the injection, then she had us go back to the waiting room while she got the on-call doctor.  The one that has seen my mother before was not in, so we had no idea who it would be.

I think we waited less than 15 minutes, in total.  The doctor came over and took my mom back to the examination room.  He had lots of questions, trying to figure out why my mom was on the first blood thinners at all, and why she was now getting these injections.  Had she had heart surgery?  Valves replaced?  Nope.  We explained as best we could. Then he left, and we could hear him consulting someone on the phone nearby.  A few minutes later, he was back with a few more questions, then off to consult again.

I must admit, my mother showed tremendous restraint from her usual behaviour.  Not only did we once again have a non-white doctor – Middle Eastern, no less! – with a strong accent, but one that was dressed VERY casually (I once got a long story from her that culminated in her concluding that because doctors and nurses don’t wear white uniforms anymore, it means hospitals are dirty, and that’s why we have viruses…).  However, it was a male doctor, and he asked her lots of questions, looked at her eye and listened to her heart.  The expressions on her face were very conflicted!

One thing I did notice happen a lot today; more so than other days – while talking to my mother, more and more, people would turn and start talking to me, instead.  Now, I can help by explaining things that are harder for her to explain, due to her limited English medical vocabulary, but don’t ask me what her symptoms are or how she’s feeling!  She’s sitting right there.  She may have trouble expressing herself in English sometimes, and takes a while to get to the point, but she’s not senile.  She’s not deaf, either.

I’m reminded of a time I accompanied a friend to a medical clinic.  She is a wheelchair user and drives an adapted van; she just needed someone with her for a bit of assistance.  When we got to the clinic, the person behind the counter looked right past my friend and started asking me the questions.  Hullo!  Just because she’s in a wheelchair, that doen’t mean she doesn’t understand her own care needs!  I’m just along for the ride!

Though I do have to give the people at the hospital some slack, after seeing some of the inpatients they are caring for, several of whom are younger than my mother.  It may just be what they are most used to.

The end result was, my mother got her new prescription!  No more trips for injections.

I’m looking forward to sleeping in tomorrow!

We took advantage of the situation and I helped her do some grocery shopping, and she took me out for tea at a lovely little café.  Then it was off to her home town to get her new prescription, though they could only give her a few days’ worth.  She’ll have to come back next week to get the rest.  She can do that herself, using her walker, if she has to.

I have been talking to her about getting home care to help put her brace on in the mornings.  I hope she’ll be able to get that arranged quickly.

Meanwhile, my older brother will be visiting her tomorrow morning, so he’ll be able to help her put the brace on.

We’ll still have to keep tabs on her and that eye; it’s better, but after I took another picture and showed it to her, she even commented that it still looks pretty bad!  The good thing is that there is no pain, nor is her vision affected.

Phew.

By the time it was all done, it was almost 5 hours before I got home – scaring a deer away from the house in the process!  It came back, though…

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At least I’m guessing it was Hungry Girl that had run off.  She’s been coming over by herself more often.

Excuse me while I giggle happily at her silly tongue face.  I got several of them, but that one is the best!

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This one looks like she’s having a conversation.

I also got a good shot of a male redpoll today…

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Pretty little thing!

Meanwhile, I got other good news.

First off, I got the mail before coming home and WE HAVE OUR NEW HEALTH CARE CARDS!!!!  WHOOT!!! Finally!

Or, to be more precise, my husband has two health care cards, and my name happens to be on the second half of both, along with his.

Apparently, husbands and wives still don’t rate individual cards in this province, but wives are added to the list on the second half, like dependent minors.  So he and I have identical cards, with his name and address on the first half, and both our names and individual numbers on the second half.

They still needed me to send them a copy of my marriage certificate to use my married name, though.

Arglebargle.

Whatever.   At least we have them now!

Then I got a phone call from our insurance company, letting me know that the problem with my coverage has finally been fixed!  It took them a while to track it down, since everywhere else in their system, it showed me as being covered.  It was now done, she told me, and I should have no problem!

Conveniently, my husband had phoned in some prescription refills of his own, so I headed into town to pick those up, and had the pharmacy get my insurance checked out, too.  Sure enough, it was all fixed!  So I got my own prescription refilled, too.  Just one, though.  After seeing my new doctor and going over the results of my blood work, it was decided to go with just one right now, and see how it goes.  My goal is to be off that one, too, though the doctor seems dead set on me being on it for the rest of my life, along with statins.

Not if I can help it!

*sigh*

I feel a wonderful sense of relief today.

I look forward to being home tomorrow. :-D

The Re-Farmer

 

 

Critters, and ID Update. Yay!

Okay, so let’s end the day with things that don’t involve messy mystery clean up jobs!

Nothing like our critters to make me smile again. :-)

All of them seemed unusually active today.  Maybe spring is in the air?

While walking away from the door to feed the cats, several of the usual friendlier ones already in the area, I caught sight of the Mothman out by the other house, running away hard, in great leaps and bounds though the snow!  I don’t think I’ve ever seen the Mothman move at anything faster than a barely quick walk before!

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At best, a few of these guys let me pet their backs while they ate, and they didn’t seem to like it that much.  Squishum wouldn’t even allow that.  Even Rolando Moon, who came in later and will usually come right up to me, stayed away.  Only Butterscotch let me touch her, though she was moving around too much to properly pet her.  As I walked out of the yard to go read the electricity meter, she kept running ahead of me a few steps, stopping, running ahead a few more steps, then stopping again.  There was something odd about how she was moving, as if she didn’t like her paws touching the ground.  Then she would stop and chew on the bottom of a paw.  I think she might have had ice and/or snow stuck to her paws or something.  The only other time I’ve seen a cat walk like that was when it accidentally stepped on a piece of tape, and it got stuck. :-D

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Even the blue jays were so active, I could hardly get a photo of them.

Then the deer showed up.

All 5 of them.

Barbecue came first, then Mama and one of the twins, which was very unusual.  The other twin made its way through the spruce grove, instead.  Then they chased Barbecue away from where he was eating.  Hungry Girl made her way in through the trees, too.  Then, for the next while, they kept chasing each other off.  Mama and the twins took over the feeding station for a while, as Hungry Girl and Barbecue hung out in the spruce grove.  Eventually, they would make their way over, and more chasing would happen.  Not the usual short little chases, either, but big leaping chases, out into the garden.

It’s always something else to see a deer at full speed.  They can really move!!

With all that, I did get quite a few pictures.  This one has got to be my favourite!

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What a sassy Mama!

Who know deer could wink? :-D

I also love this one of Hungry Girl.

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Meanwhile, the squirrel is just sitting there, watching all the crazy stuff going on.

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In between all this, I made my trip to the post office and got my marriage certificate (yay!) so after lunch, my younger daughter and I went into town to FINALLY get my driver’s license transferred over, as well as mail off the forms to finally get our health care cards for this province.

I think it still ended up taking an hour to process the driver’s license transfer!  Thankfully, between all the paperwork I had, she was able to get it done.  Because I was able to get my old file number from the last time I had a driver’s license in this province, she was able to look it up – and my old photo came up for her!  She commented on how different I looked.  Especially the glasses. :-D

She did a whole bunch of form filling, taking extra care to make sure all the names and dates were right, I got my photo taken, then she got on the phone to get an override of my old license done.

They put her on hold.

Twice.

That done, she started to input the new information, but had to start over part of it, which meant I had to get my picture taken again.

I commented on how much more difficult all this was from how it used to be. She got a slightly wild look in her eyes as she nodded in agreement.  I added that seemed to get more difficult only recently.  The wild look came back to her eyes as she nodded and said that yes, yes it has!

I feel for the staff that needs to do all this.

Finally, everything was filled out.  My old driver’s license was photocopied, then she blacked out the bar codes.  I got the photocopies along with my original paperwork, after those got copied, too.  I paid for it, which turned out to be $50 ($20 for the license, $30 for a fee!). After that I had to sign something like 5 different forms.  Then, miracle of miracles, I got to sign my new temporary driver’s license!  My permanent one should arrive in the mail within a few weeks.

It’s done!  Finally done!

Then next time I’m back there, it will be after our van is saftied, and I can transfer the insurance and registration.  Which hopefully will be ready to do before the end of this month, so I don’t have to pay cancellation fees.

I’m just to glad it’s all finished now!  The rest of the family still needs to do their IDs, but I’m the primary driver, so it was more of a priority.

What an ordeal!  So glad it’s over!

The Re-Farmer

Okay… this is the worst find yet

I thought, after the horror tunnel, desiccated mouse carcasses, and other strange things we’ve found while packing up and cleaning away 4 decades of my parents’ stuff in our new home, I would have been beyond getting surprised by things we find.

I was wrong.

I must admit, it’s not so much the contents, but the circumstances of it.

Though we really don’t have the room for it in the growing pile in the dining room intended for the shed, I am just really not happy with having the litter box in the dining room, even if it is in an out of the way corner.  Having cleared everything else away, I decided to move the dresser and the stuff on the wall out of the little nook they’re in, so the litter box can be moved away from where we eat.

After removing the drawers, the first thing I discovered was a scale under the dresser.

Why is there a scale under the dresser?  It’s not like it was accidentally pushed under it.  It was way in the back corner.

Okay.  Fine.

I start moving the now drawerless dresser.

*clatterclatter*

A broken broom handle, with masking tape on the broken end, falls to the floor.

It had been between the dresser and the bit of wall on the bathroom side.  I had noticed that something was there, but forgot about it before moving the dresser.

Okay.  Fine.

I carefully pull the dresser out, hearing all sorts of crunching, grinding noises from the floor.  Oh, dear.  I called for a daughter to help carry it, since it sounded like pulling it along the floor would cause damage.  However, as I maneuvered it out a bit more so a daughter could grab it from the other end, I found it was really, really light, and not making the noise anymore.  So I just moved it myself, down the hall, up the two stairs to the new part of the house, and into the space I’d prepared for it in the dining room.  Then I put the drawers back and went to continue cleaning.

This is what I found.

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What on earth?

This is a flash picture; there is no light in this corner, so I really couldn’t see very well, but that plastic container on the floor?  My first guess was that the dregs on the bottom was mouse poison.  And what was all that on the floor?

I moved the scale and that plaque beside it to the pile of stuff for storage.  The plaque?

It was a prayer.

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Okay.  Fine.  I can see something like that falling between the dresser and the wall and being forgotten about.  That black piece of plastic?  Probably put there to get it out of the way and forgotten about as well.

I very carefully moved the mirror next.  It was just leaning on the wall, on top of that piece of wood.  The far side of it is a broken edge.

Then I come back to clean up the rest.

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That plastic bowl?  Is a glass bowl.  The crud on the floor is ancient cat litter, complete with several desiccated turds.

And a piece of bread.

So, it looks like this area was used for both a cat litter box, and for… cat food? before.  I threw the bowl out, but I’m guessing it’s the remains of some sort of cat food on the bottom.

All of this means that someone took out the litter box, but left the mess behind.  Left the bowl and the bread and added a bathroom scale.

Then put the dresser on top of it all.

Then used the dresser to store extra towels on the bottom drawers.  Above the cat poop and drying food.

Oh, and as I was going back and forth to move things, I found a pile of something that had fallen out from under the dresser as I’d moved it up the two steps.  As I swept it up, I took a closer look.

I’m pretty sure it was a very old mouse nest.

Once clear, I mopped the area with disinfectant cleaner, including the walls, then used a scrub brush in the area (including on the other side, where I got the girls to take the stuff leaning there upstairs), then mopped it again.  The only thing in that corner that still needs to be moved is one last large mirror, which will require a screwdriver to remove.

I don’t have the energy for that anymore.

I also found a shoe tray that I scrubbed; it will go under our litter box when it gets moved.  For now, the entire area is being left to dry.  We will move our litter box in tomorrow.

This just blows me away.  It’s one thing to be in the practice of keeping things that might be useful, and just shoving them somewhere for storage, as is likely the case for most of the things we’ve found.  It’s quite another to deliberately put a dresser on top of cat litter, cat turds and cat food.

And a scale.

I just don’t understand.  Who did this?  I don’t know how long that dresser has been there, but I don’t think either of my parents were strong enough to move it.  Well; maybe my mother, depending no how long ago it was done, but she usually got other people to do that sort of manual labour for her.   So I have no idea.  And why?  Why was it done like this?  I can’t imagine any of my siblings doing this.

I’m at a complete loss.

I think I’m going to take a shower now.

The Re-Farmer

I’m Finally Married – and can prove it!

Yes, I finally have it!

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It had better finally be enough for me to switch my ID around!  Because the “certificate” part itself doesn’t have my married name on it.

That’s on my address at the top of the letter.

Which has only my box number, not my physical address, so that had better be okay, too!

The certificate itself is just a larger version of the wallet size I had seen an image of on their website.  Otherwise, it’s exactly the same. It even says “certificate of marriage” not “certificate of registration”, which is what was part of the concern when the woman at Vital Statistics called me back to make sure I was getting the right version.  I’m guessing that because this size is part of an 8.5×11 letter with my married name and address on the top third, it will satisfy the powers that be when it comes to changing my driver’s license.

I’ve also made a copy to include with the paperwork we need to return, along with a clean image of my husband’s half-destroyed birth certificate.

Just waiting on my daughter to have lunch, then we’re on our way!

I really, really hope this will be the last of this ID mess!

The Re-Farmer

 

Snowfall Fallout

Ah, the joys of dealing with a fresh dump of snow.

I am very grateful that we didn’t get the major storms others got – and that are still being predicted!  We don’t have to deal with floods or power outages, and massive amounts of snow.  We just have minor stuff to deal with, on what turned out to be a very lovely day.

On taking feed out to the deer, I paused to visit Eunice, who has started to loose part of her eyes. :-D

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This photo, however, was taken from our living room window, and there are 5 deer in it.

You can almost see one of them in the bushes, between the cross and the dead tree, and part of one through some trees, out in the garden area.

Eunice made them all very nervous, and for some time we saw them creep closer around the spruce tree on the left, where they usually come in, or go into the spruces, back out along the edge of the spruces or among the apple trees, chasing each other around, leaving, coming back…

Not a one made it to the feed.

I had wondered if the presence of Eunice would have that affect.

I hope they come back tonight, but either way, tomorrow I think I will make a small trail of feed, starting under that spruce bough, and around Eunice.  We’ll see how that helps.

Early this afternoon, one of my daughters and I went into town to pick up some prescription refills for my husband.  While there, I had them try adding the insurance to my file again, explaining that the problem was at the insurance end, not theirs.  If they fixed it, it would work.  If not, I’d just pick up my husband’s prescriptions and my own would wait a bit longer.

I picked up my husband’s prescriptions.

After we got home, the girls went out their window to shovel off some of the snow.  It’s already melting, but it they can make it so that the melt will go into the eavestrough instead of into their wall, that would be awesome.

As they were finishing that, I took the stuff for the burn barrel out.  They won’t do a burn until dark, so they can see any sparks that need to be put out.  I got a giggle out of this…

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It’s a cat path, from wherever it is they’ve been saying the night lately. :-D

(The sticks in the foreground are the remains of Sydney, an earlier snowman my younger daughter had made. :-D )

Since it was so nice out, I decided to take advantage of it and do some shoveling for a path of my own.

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See that electricity meter on the post?  We need to be able to reach that to read it.

The snow piled in front is the edge of where my brother used his tractor and snowblower, near the burn barrel.

Also, there is no way we’re getting anything from the house to the shed any time soon.  That red building is the old pump shack, and the shed is behind that.  The driveway itself goes as far as the pump shack, then peters off.  The rest of the way to the shed is tall grass.

Ah, well.  We can maneuver around the stuff a bit longer.

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Yay!  I can reach the meter now!

There was about a foot of fresh snow on top of the old snow, with a thin layer of ice melt in between.  Digging this out required breaking through the the layers with the shovel, first, about half a foot at a time.

Thanks to the time stamps on my phone’s file names, I could even tell how long it took me to do it.  Only about 15 minutes!  Not bad at all.

Before heading back inside, I walked around to the back of the house to look at the trees that are growing at angles.  I really, really am not comfortable with the two that are growing over our roof – especially the one that’s actually touching the roof, but there is another tree that overhangs the opening to the garden.  It’s very beautiful, framing the space and all draped in winter’s glory.  Unfortunately, it’s also tilted right from its roots, with three major branches all leaning the same way.

It’s only a matter of time before a large snowfall will cause it to fall.  This is not a young tree.  If we want to save it from breaking at the main trunk, we’ll at least have to cut back the biggest section leaning over the yard, and likely one other section.  That should take enough weight stress off the main trunk that the weight of the third section won’t be a problem, even if it’s still growing off at an angle.

Oh, how I’d love to have an arborist come in and go over the trees in the yard.

Which reminds me; I did a bit of research for lifts.  Turns out we can rent a scissor lift for a week for $480.  They are drivable.  Potentially, we could rent one, somehow get it out here, then spend a week using it to get all the pruning done at once.

It’s going to be a while before we can afford that, and there are many things higher on the priority list.  But it’s a potential option for the future.

After checking on the trees and walking back to the main entry, I noticed something.

I now know why there is a rock in the old bird feeder.

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The weight of snow on its roof had caused it to tip.  There is only one nail?  Screw? holding it to its base.

I straightened it out and all the snow fell off the roof.

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Rather than fixing the base, someone put a rock on it to act as a counterbalance.  The recent snowfall put enough weight on the roof that the rock was no longer enough, and over it went.  With the snow knocked off, it is now heavy enough to keep the whole thing from tipping over again.

I wonder who came up with the idea of using the rock like that?  It’s rather creative, but not a good substitute for actually… you know… Fixing the thing.  My guess is, once the rock was put on, the fact that it is broken got forgotten about.  I have no idea how long it’s been since anyone has tried to put birdseed in it – oddly, it still has old popcorn kernels in it.  Nothing else.  Just popcorn kernels.

So I guess we’ll have to see if it’s still in good enough shape to warrant fixing it, or if we should just replace it.  I’m thinking fix, but we’ll figure out for sure later on.

Another curious find for this place!  I’m sure we will find many more.

The Re-Farmer

Marriage Certificate Progress

I almost forgot!

My telephone tag with Vital Statistics is over.

We finally connected again, today.  It was the same woman I spoke to earlier, and she was so apologetic, because she’d told me my application would be processed after our last talk, where she thought she had asked all the questions she needed.

It then got sent to someone else for the final processing, and that person asked her…

Did I want a marriage certificate, or marriage registration card.

Now, the form gave two choice.  The large size suitable for framing, or the small card, like our birth certificates.  I’d checked off the small card.

It turns out, that’s just a registration card which, as I noticed in the image on the website, has only the pre-marriage names, not post marriage names.

The certificate (which would be the larger, framing size) would have our names before and after the marriage on them.

Which is what I need.

It’s a good thing I’d told her why I was needing the certificate, and the problem with my birth certificate name not matching any of my current ID.

For all the hassle this is, the folks at Vital Statistics are awesome.

This being Monday, I might get my marriage certificate by the end of the week.  Then, finally, I’ll be able to change my driver’s license and get my health care card!

Next thing on the list; get the van safetied, so I can transfer the registration and insurance.

I might actually get all this done before the end of the month!  Only a month longer than it’s supposed to be done by, but late is better than never!

The Re-Farmer

 

So. This Happened

Last night, the girls alerted me to a leak that started in one of the rooms upstairs.

Right near an outlet, too.  So they shut down their computers and unplugged the power bar as soon as they could.

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The water was coming in between the window box and the moulding.  It was leaking out the bottom, too, for a while.

These windows were installed just this past summer.  Wherever the water is coming from, it’s going into the wall, first.  The girls crawled out to clear things a bit, and they found the wall itself was quite dry on the outside.

I emailed my brother about it and he thinks this has been an annual leak; we just happen to be here to see it.  Even when my dad was still living here, the upstairs was hardly used and, in the winter, blocked off completely at the stop of the steps, to conserve heat.

It stopped leaking during the night, but now there is water damage to the nice, new window frames.

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There is a similar water stain on the bottom of the frame.

20180303_120750.25%So today, the girls crawled through the window to try and clear the roof as much as they could.  This is what they found.

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This moss is over the north window (it’s the south window that’s leaking).  After speaking with my brother, he tells me that moss has been there for many, many years.  They had replaced the rotten wood all along the outside wall this past summer, too.  He also cleared the eaves (I believe they are called gutters in other parts of the world) several times over the summer.

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This is the ice dam they found under the snow; my daughter included her thumb for perspective on how thick the ice is.  Unfortunately, the ice was going under the shingles in some places, so they couldn’t get it off without damaging the shingles.

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Check out the beautifully clear – and empty – eavestrough!

This section of the roof was raised to make more room in the second floor, so the slope is not as steep as it should be.  Now that the upstairs is being used and heated, even though there has been very little snow this year, it would be melting from underneath and not draining as well as it should.

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They also got a picture of this for me.  I asked my brother about it, and apparently it has always been like this (I was very young when I was clambering on the roof as a child, so I did not remember it).  So the water is draining directly onto the shingles, rather than down the side of the building.

Not that there is much water to drain right now, since it’s not melting into the eavestrough.

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This is not the only area with potential problems.  These are new icicles outside our living room window.  Formed between the eavestrough and the eave.

Apparently, my dad did not believe in soffits.

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This ice jam has formed at the corner between the master bedroom and the old kitchen.  I’m told it’s an annual thing.

You can see the pruning saw leaning against the wall in the corner.  It’s on a very long pole.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like we’ll be able to do the actual pruning, before the sap flows, as we wanted to.

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This section of tree is the one that’s causing the most problems for the shingles.  Despite my brother cutting it back over the years, branches are touching the roof again.

I wasn’t able to unhook the broken branch that’s stuck on the TV antennae support wire.

The only way to make it not be a problem anymore is to cut that whole “branch” (it looks like a trunk!) back to the main trunk.  To do that, though, it has to be cut back in sections, so as not to cause damage to the house as the pieces fall.

Theoretically, it can be done with a ladder, but the safest way to do it is with a lift bucket.  Because a chainsaw would be the best tool for the job, and using a chain saw while on a ladder is just not ideal!

No one has lift buckets around here.  We’d have to hire someone.

We do have chain saws here.  There are three of them in the garage. I’m pretty sure one of them used to be ours; we’d given our chainsaw to my late brother before we moved out of province.  No need for a chainsaw when living in a city apartment!  It’s unlikely any of them work.  We’ll have to get some maintenance done on them.

It is not the only tree that needs to be cut back severely back there; there is another huge maple with a large trunk leaning towards the house.

Then there is the tree in front of the kitchen window.

Let’s look at this photo again.

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Ideally, we’d get rid of it completely.  It’s the reason the eavestroughs needed to be cleared so often.  I was thinking we might be able to, say, turn the stump into the support for a table top, so we’d have a sort of picnic table out there, but this is a Chinese Elm.  It has been cut back severely in the past, but it just grows back.  Apparently, these trees are very hard to get rid of.  It was a mistake to plant such a large tree so close to the house, but I think my mother had wanted the shade, and this is a variety that grows very quickly.

Little by little, we will figure out what needs to be done, and do it.  The challenge will be to prioritize things!

The Re-Farmer

Two Steps Forward, One Step Back?

Before I get into the bureaucratic battle of the day, I will start with the pleasant things.

Critters.

Mama and the twins came out first, today, but at one point, we had all 5 deer hanging around.

2018-03-02.three.whitetail

Then Mama and the twins chased off Hungry Girl and Barbecue, who hung out in the spruces for a while.  Barbecue tried to come back, but one of the twins chased him off.  Then Mama and the twins left, and Hungry Girl and Barbecue had a chance to eat.

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I had to include this one.  It looks like he’s shouting!

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Mama and the twins hadn’t gone far, though, and hung out in the garden area for a while.  When the twins started to come back, it was Hungry Girl’s turn to chase them off.  Back and forth it went, until they were done eating.  Then the birds got their turn!

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The grosbeaks really like the black oil seeds.  There aren’t as many in the deer feed, and we didn’t get one of the big sacks of just that type of birdseed this time around, so we’re seeing less of them, already.

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Quite the drama! :-D

That redpoll looks like it’s trying to figure out just what those crazy deer are doing!

In the middle of all this, I finally got a call back from Vital Statistics.  We’ve been playing telephone tag for a while.  The main question she had for me involved our address, of all things.  I included both our postal address and our physical address.  She went with just the PO Box. Then there was all the confirming of names and spellings; my husband’s name became the issue, because she wanted to put in his first name, as it is on his birth certificate, but that’s not the name he uses, nor is it what he would have put on the form when we got married, nor anywhere else.  Then there is the whole “birth name” and “name before marriage” part.  I told her about the problems I was having because of the names, so she ended up deciding to drop my husband’s first name completely.  That done, she said she would finish processing it today, and it’d be done!  Yay!

Then I got a phone call on my cell phone.  Yeah.  It was my old doctor’s office, once again calling the wrong number.  At least it rang, this time, though she couldn’t hear me and I had to call back on the land line.

Turns out that they can’t do debit Visa, after all.

They also don’t take electronic transfers.

So I’m going to have to find a check.  *sigh*

My younger daughter and I went into town again, to pick up some things we forgot yesterday.  We took the opportunity to play Pokemon Go, and it was actually warm enough that we walked over to a couple of gyms.  One of them is right along the lakeside that, in the summer, you can walk to rather easily, but in the winter, there is no path.  When we walked over, though, we would see a trampled path in the snow from the other players that have made their way to it, too.  With things half melted, it was a little rough and hard on the ankles, but we managed not to slip and twist anything. :-D

Among our errands, she picked up some birthday beer for her sister; a splurge on some Innis and Gunn.  Not sure how I ended up with daughters who like beer.  I could never acquire a taste for it, myself.  Same with wine.  Maybe it’s because I got traumatized by the cheap swill I drank back when I was a teen pretending to be cool at bush parties. LOL

When I got home, there was a message waiting for me.  From Vital Statistics.  She wanted me to call back.

Telephone tag it is, once again!

So the two things I thought were finally done…

Aren’t.

*sigh*

The Re-Farmer

 

 

Hello, March!

Ah, what a lovely spring day we are having today!  As I write this, our temperature is at +2C.  That’s right, I’ve had to add a + to the temperature!  We are above freezing temperatures right now, and it’s already evening.

Awesome.

Of course, we’re also getting storm warnings for Sunday – when we’re also supposed to be above freezing for temperatures, so it’s a heavy snowfall that would happen, if it does happen.  From talking to my dad over the years, these snowfalls tend to miss the farm, and hit farther south.  So we’ll see.

The melting snow has left the deer feeding area looking much bigger!  All the detritus of past feedings is being revealed, so the spots where I’ve been leaving little piles of seeds are now looking much bigger.  And blacker.

This morning, Hungry Girl and Barbecue came over before I’d gone out to freshen up the feed.  I tried to take photos, but the camera wouldn’t work.  Checking the display, I saw what looked like CHR.  Or maybe CHA.  Anyhow, I figured the battery needed to be charged.  So I took the one from the camera to charge and popped on the extra.

Which was also almost dead, even though I had fully charged it not long ago.  I still thought there was enough charge to take some photos, but not; I still got the same display.

So I missed getting photos of them while the batteries charged.

It turned out not to be the batteries.

Somehow, the memory card got locked.  The photos I took yesterday are still there.  I copied them, but I can’t remove them, nor can I take more photos on the card.

I have no idea how this happened, or even where.  It could have happened on the camera itself, or on the desktop.

I will have to investigate further.

I did, however, get a nice photo of a blue jay, at least.

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I got a call from my husband’s doctor this morning about a change in his medication.  (I appreciate that they will talk directly to me about it, so I don’t have to interrupt his lie-downs.)  The new medication is covered by insurance, so he gave me information and instructions about it, then sent the prescription to the pharmacy so I could pick it up today.  Rather nice having a prescription that we don’t have to physically pick up at the clinic and take to the pharmacy within a limited time period!

So my younger daughter and I headed into town to pick it up (and get some Pokemon Go in).

While there, I checked to see if my own file was successfully transferred from our previous pharmacy (it was) and if it had been filled (it was).  So I got both at the same time.

One of the pharmacists and a trainee spent some time with me, making sure I had the needed information about the updated medication, the dose, when to take it, etc.  They even opened the package to look at the paperwork to make sure the dose measurements on the injector pen matched the previous version of the medication.  It did, but the dose my husband is supposed to be on is quite high, so the box will only last a few days.  It was decided to leave it as is, for starters, then in the future we can get multiples of boxes, so I’ll have fewer trips into town.

Meanwhile I glanced at my own prescriptions and choked at the price tag.

The insurance coverage wasn’t used.

So I let them know and gave them my insurance card.  Once done with my husband’s prescription, they started fixing my file.

It’s a good thing I brought an insulated bag and asked for ice packs.

I think I spent at least half an hour waiting, as they first tried to get my insurance set up on my file in their system, which failed, and the pharmacist then called the insurance company directly.

Long story short.

They couldn’t get it to work.

At the insurance company’s end, the person was going to talk to someone else, but that someone else was on lunch, so she would call the pharmacy back later.

The pharmacist, meanwhile, felt that the problem was at their end, not the insurance company.  I could pay the full price and get reimbursed (nope; we may have just got paid, but reimbursement wouldn’t happen until it got fixed, and who knows how long that would take), or she was willing to transfer the prescription to the competing pharmacy across the street to be filled.

Yeah!  Really!

I decided to not get them for now (it’s a good thing they’re not a vital prescription!!).  She said she would call me if she got a call back from the insurance company.  I mentioned coming back tomorrow, but she suggested I call, first.

So what should have been a quick trip into town, with some leisurely Pokemon-ing ended up being much longer.  At least there is a Pokestop right next to the pharmacy, so my daughter was able to throw on a lure and played on both our phones while she waited for me.

Meanwhile, my phone let me know I had a voice mail.  Which was weird, because I got no phone call.  Turns out I did, but it just never rang.  It was my previous doctor’s office, wanting to talk to me about my file transfer.

So, once I got home, I had lots of phone calls to make.

I called the insurance company and explained what happened.  He could see nothing wrong with my file on the system, so he put me on hold to talk to someone else.

When he came back, I could hear the perplexity in his voice.  It turns out that in one area, my account was active, but in another, I was no longer active.  They don’t know why.  So he was going to contact the carrier my husband’s work is hooked up with to figure things out and get my file fully active again.

Hopefully, it will not take as long as it did to fix up the mess with my husband’s file.

Then I talked to my old clinic.  Turns out there is a $35 fee to transfer a file, and how did I want to pay that?  I don’t have a credit card, but I do have debit Visa, which they take, so we did that.

I also updated my address and phone number, so she wouldn’t call my cell phone, though my cell phone number is still there as a back up.

Then I worked on something else when I got a notification from my phone.

Another voice mail.

Yeah.  She called my cell phone.  And since I had zero signal at the time, it went straight to voice mail.

I called back and found out my card was declined.  Which made no sense.

So I called the bank’s 866 number on my card.

Which got answered with a cheerful recording saying I could help them out by taking a short survey.  As a reward, select customers could win a Caribbean cruise.

Uh huh.

So I went through the three question survey (there was no option not to take it), and at the end, the cheerful recording congratulated me, because I just won the cruise; it would only cost a $65 processing fee.  Did I want to accept the prize?

Uh huh.

So I selected yes.  A live person answered the phone, greeting me with an “are you excited about winning this cruise?”  To which I responded, “Actually, I’m trying to figure out how I got you guys, because I was trying to phone … ”

*click*beepbeepbeep*

She hung up on me.

I called the bank’s number again and got through to where I was supposed to.  After being on hold a while, I made sure to first tell the person who answered what happened.  She took notes to pass on to the back office to see if there was a security breach on their system.

Then I talked to her about my debit Visa being declined.  She checked, but there was nothing wrong with my card.  After getting more details, she put me on hold and went to talk to someone in the back office about it.  When she got back, she informed me that no transaction on my card was attempted, according to their system.

Which means that, somewhere between the clinic and the bank, something went wrong.

So, back on the phone with the clinic I went.  I told her what the bank told me, and she was surprised, because she had tried twice.  I told her the bank confirmed there is nothing wrong with my card, so she said she would try again later, then call me back if it was still a problem.

So far, no call back, but then if she tries to call my cell phone again, it might be a while before I find out.  I forgot to mention that she’d called the wrong number.

Ah, well.

So, more move related hassles to sort out.

Later on, I went and got the memory card from the camera, as well as the one that got locked.  I uploaded the photos I took…

And found pictures of Mama and the Twins.

I didn’t remember taking those.

I uploaded them all, then started trying to figure out what happened with the locked card, and if there was something I could find to unlock it on the desktop.

While I was doing that, my older daughter came by to let me know she’d taken some pictures of deer while we were gone.

I suddenly felt sane again. LOL

Here is one of the photos she took for me.

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With the melt, it looks like there is so much more feed out there than there really is!  I’d emptied the bag this morning, and picked up 3 more on the way home, so we should be good for the Month.

Now, I am looking forward to a quiet evening.  I’m not used to talking so much.  My throat is sore.  I have a friend I’m hoping to talk to soon, and I don’t want to have to cut conversation short because I’ve spent so much time talking on the phone!

The Re-Farmer

Data Vampire Slain?

So about a month and a half ago, I discovered the reason we were screaming through our internet’s data plan so quickly.

I had a Data Vampire in my own desktop.

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For some reason, my desktop’s system was using over 80 GIGS of data, and I had no way to find out what, specifically, was causing it.  With only 100 gigs on our plan, it’s no wonder we were going over so quickly!

So I went through everything I could think of to try and shut things off.  Then, at the end of the month, I reset the usage stats.

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Even by then, I could see a difference, as total usage within the past 30 days had already gone down.

Here is my currant usage.

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Well, there we have it.  In the space of about 4 weeks, my system used less than 3 gigs of data.  A difference of close to 80 gigs!

My browsers used more data – I use one for this blog, so there are a lot of photos uploaded, while with the other, I had uploaded some videos this month, so I used it more than usual, even taking into account that I gave up Facebook for Lent.

My total usage for the past 4 weeks was just over 13 gigs.  Slightly more than what I use on WiFi with my phone which, after I no longer visited Facebook, dropped from about 11 gigs in 30 days, to less than 10.

Our original internet account reached about 88% before we switched over to the new satellite (a matter of switching cables on the router).  With the new account, we haven’t even hit 45% yet.  Which means that, in total, we used more than 100 gigs, so having two accounts is still saving us money.

I still have no way of knowing what exactly on my computer was sucking our data plan dry, but whatever it was, I seemed to have stopped it.

So we’ll only be paying about $200 a month total for internet, instead of closer to $400.

Still more expensive than if we had been able to install a tower and get non-satellite internet, but at least we’ve GOT internet.

Unless something weird happens, it appears our Data Vampire has been slain!

The Re-Farmer