Well, we did reach our high of -17C/1F today – at about 6-7am. By the time I headed outside to do my morning rounds, it was down to -19C/-2F, which isn’t too bad, except the wind chill was -32C/-26F It was coming from the north- northeast today, so the house acted as a wind break for the most part. I made a point of checking the ejector this morning, where I found myself getting hit by the wind, full blast.
Not fun.
Ejector is fine, though. I checked the heat tape and could feel warmth.
As I write this, it’s just past 5pm, and we’ve cooled down to -20C/-4F, but the wind chill is still -32C/-26F
This afternoon, I made sure to check on the truck, get it running for a while, then hooking up the OBDII to do a scan. The same sensor code is coming up; nothing else, so that’s good.
While letting the engine run and warm up, I took advantage of the sunshine and relative shelter from the wind and shoveled out the paths. We didn’t get a lot of snow, but the winds blew drifts into all the paths, with some not even visible anymore. Just flat snow. The kitties will be much happier, now that they can get around the yard more easily!
The first one is the fluffy girl that we can sometimes pet while she is eating. She lost her first litter last year. Unfortunately, she is now in heat. Brussel is being left alone, so I have to assume she’s pregnant, but the boys are all over this one.
This is a really bad time of year for a cat to go into heat. They’d both be having kittens at the end of February or so. Chances of survival are pretty much nil.
I’m really hoping we can catch her, or Brussel, for the spay next week. We’re booked for one male and one female, and I don’t expect to have any problems catching the males. They are far less feral than the ladies.
If you click through to the next photo, you can see another of our fluffy beauties; one of last year’s kittens. Totally feral. No idea if it’s male or female. We have at least one, maybe two, more fluffy ones like that that are completely unsocialized, and won’t go near us. I had to zoom in quite a bit to get that picture!
I had a chance to talk to the Cat Lady today. Yesterday, I’d connected with someone in a feral and stray cat group on FB. I normally am not active on there, after being burned by similar groups in the past. Someone was offering donated cat food, though, so I contacted her. I told her outright that we’ve been having difficult getting help, and only one rescue has been willing to help us. We messaged each other privately, and ended up arranging to connect when I’m in the smaller city, waiting for the spay and neuter to be done. I will be meeting the Cat Lady that day, too.
After, I let the Cat Lady now that I’d connected with someone about possible food donations. Today, she phoned me and asked if it was a particular person by name.
It was the same person.
She then warned me to watch out for her. She says, her heart may be in the right place, but she has… issues. Issues that have resulted in her calling the provincial vet on people she had been “helping”, which then resulted in a whole lot of cats being euthanized instead of TS/NR’d. More alarming is that she has been sending cats out of province with “brokers”. The cats get picked up by people in unmarked white vans, and are never heard from again. She apparently is full convinced that these “brokers” are adopting the cats out to good homes in the other province – a province that is just as overwhelmed with cats as rescues are out here (we’ve lived in that province a couple of times, over the years). The Cat Lady suspects the cats are actually going to a lab, based on her own observations before leaving the big rescue she had been connected with when I first met her.
Basically, she said that if we can get help with cat food, getting cats fixed or getting them adopted, that could be fine, but not to give any personal information, not to say where we live, and especially not to send pictures, as those will get shared all over online without our permission. It’s people like this woman, and the rescues she’s connected with, that have resulted in the Cat Lady backing away from her own rescue, and basically working with just a couple of people like us, and that’s it.
As she was telling me this, I remembered some of her past stories she’d told me, about how and why she left the big rescue. No names were mentioned, so I hadn’t known this person was one of the people she’d had issues with.
Well, we just have to be careful, which I try to be, anyhow.
One of the things that came up was how many cats we’re feeding right now. With how cold it’s been, I haven’t done head counts in a long time. The last time I did, I think I counted about 36, or in that range.
Today was nice enough that I tried to do a head count after doing their evening food and water. I counted “only” 23! That’s a huge drop. I had been seeing as many as 15 crowded into the top of the isolation shelter. Today, I counted 5. Looking into the sun room from the bathroom, I’ve counted as many as 20 that I could see, most bunched together under the heat lamp. Today, I counted 8 in the sun room. The rest that I counted were running around outside.
Twenty three cats is still too many, and I know that there is likely cats that just hadn’t come to the house for food yet, but that’s still a big change.
Well, we’ll see how much they change again, as the weather warms up.
Tomorrow, we’re looking at a high of -15C/5F, which is supposed to happen at about the time my daughter and I will be at her doctor’s appointment. We will take advantage of the trip to pick up a few groceries and some more kibble. Our first stock up shopping trip is a week away, so we won’t be getting much.
Man, I really hope the long range forecast into February is somewhat accurate. I’m now seeing forecasts for highs of 8C/46F!
… that I convinced my mother to do her errands yesterday, and not today.
The high for today was forecast to be -4C/25F – with a blizzard warning. During the night, I’d checked the weather and we had actually reached -1C/30F at 4am.
It has been dropping steadily, since then.
Temperature-wise, we’re still at a mild -11C/12F as I write this. The wind chill, however is -32C/-26F
This is what it was like when I did my short rounds this morning. (scroll through the slideshow to see a brief video)
The usual bunch is warm and cozy in the isolation shelter. In the next image, the older and more feral cats were taking shelter in various places. The water bowl shelter is more sheltered from the wind than the kibble shelter, though under the kibble shelter, which has a sheet of rigid foam insulation on the ground, plus another under the shelter floor, was a popular spot. The plastic wrapped catio was also being used, as well as the old dog house. When we get a chance, we need to open the roof and check on the heat bulb in there, as I don’t think it’s working anymore. Usually, there is melted snow on the roof above where the bulb is, and there isn’t any, even when we had the warmer days.
The sun room, however, is a very busy place. Looking out the bathroom window, not long ago, I counted 21 cats that I could see. There may have been more in corners we can’t see through the window. The thermometer on the wall was reading 0C/32F, which is likely reading on the cold side, as it’s on an exterior wall and between windows, one of which is a single pane instead of double pain.
In the video, you get some idea of how windy it was, in general. I wasn’t able to catch some of the more severe gusts, and wasn’t about to hang out outside for it! We were getting warnings of 70km/43m winds, with gusts up to 100km/62m As I write this, however were are down to 42km/26m winds.
When I got inside and started checking my local groups on FB, I found it had just exploded with posts from people describing terrible road conditions, and telling people to please stay home. Some had just arrived at their destinations. At least one described starting out, then turning around and going home, because they simply couldn’t see the road.
Soon after, one of the weather groups started posting about highway closures. Some, just sections were closed, but one highway was closed entirely.
For us, we are pretty sheltered from the winds coming from the north-northwest, and we didn’t get a lot of snow. Our odd climate bubble seems to have protected us again. We still have high winds, of course, and I even saw the sun come out briefly, a few minutes ago.
As always, when we have high winds, we are watching the trees. Especially the spruce grove, with all those dead trees. With the wind direction, though, if any do come down, they will fall away from the house. There’s really just one that is a threat to the house itself.
If my mother had gotten me to come today to help with her shopping, as she had wanted to originally, I would have had to cancel, and she would have been stuck. She is just a couple of blocks from the grocery store, though, and they do deliver, so she would have been okay for food. The pharmacy only delivers medications, though, so she could not have gotten her shopping there.
Speaking of which, I’m glad my husband’s prescription refills were delivered yesterday, too!
So we get to stay home and hibernate for the next few days. The temperatures will continue to drop, but will start warming up again next week – just in time for my daughter’s follow up doctor’s appointment!
In other things…
Yesterday morning, I’d poured more of the calcium chloride into the ejector’s venturi pipe, as my brother requested. It never filled, which means it was draining at the bottom. The level in the stack pipe did rise, but not very much. In talking to him about it, we figured that, if everything was thawed out, the fluid could possibly back up into the main pipe to the house.
Yesterday evening, after I got home from doing my mother’s shopping, I went into the basement.
I found a puddle of water on the floor, near the septic pump.
This was good news!
I checked around the pump itself, of course. The pipes and connectors were all dry. The puddle had already started to dry, so it had been there for some hours, and the only other place I found moisture was under the pump itself.
Directly under the loose and open outflow pipe to the ejector.
I found a container that I could fit under it, even though it is unlikely to happen again, but this was a really positive thing. It means that the ejector is now completely thawed out, and the the main pipe to the house is clear. The pipe itself has a slope to it, so it would always drain away from the house. Pouring in the ice melter was just enough to push the water that would always be in the pipe, back up into the basement a bit.
Which means we could set the pump up to the ejector again!
My brother was talking about coming out this weekend to do that, weather willing.
Today, I told him, don’t even think about it! We can stay with the emergency diverter for another week. Next weekend is supposed to be much better. Thankfully, he is able to work from home today, too, so no commuting in this storm! They got hit harder than we did.
Wow. I was just going over this post, looking for typos, when my phone started screaming at me. Our province just issued an emergency alert for hazardous road conditions, high winds and blizzard like conditions. They are asking people in the south or our province to avoid driving, conditions are worsening, visibility is near zero, and multiple highways are closed.
We are further north than the warning area, though.
We keep several cat carriers in the sun room, so the cats will be used to them and hopefully not panic as much as we are able grab the more feral ones for spays and neuters. Sometimes, I will find cats just chilling in one of them.
Rolando Moon claimed it, this morning. 😊 Rondo Moon is the last of the originals, living here before we moved in, and cared for by my late father, still outside. We were willing to bring her in, and she has actually gone into the house voluntarily, then headed back outside. She has no interest in being an indoor cat!
Today is quite a bit warmer, as far as temperature goes, but I sure couldn’t tell when I did my morning rounds. It was -14C/7F at the time, but the wind chill was at -29C/-20F! The outside cats seem to be handling things well, for the most part. I haven’t been able to do a head count lately, but it does seem like there are fewer of them. There could be many reasons for that, but they move around so much, it’s hard to tell, and some show up for the food later on. I have seen cats going up and down our driveway on the trail cam, though, so hopefully they are just out visiting neighbours.
Speaking of cameras…
It looks like I’ll be returning the camera I picked up yesterday, to monitor the septic pump. It simply would not connect to our WiFi. It doesn’t tell me why. Just that it failed. We have two networks that I tried linking up to – one on our Starlink router, one on our Orbii router, which is there to ensure all parts of the house gets a good internet signal. It won’t connect with either of them.
Our septic pump still has not been triggered, so we still don’t know how well the emergency diverter will work until it does.
Meanwhile, we’re still dealing with the clogged drain to the kitchen and laundry.
My daughters tried to clear it again. This time, one daughter blocked the drain pipe for the washing machine while the other used the sink plunger in the kitchen. That thing does work really well!
Unfortunately, when my daughter uncovered the laundry drain again, gunk went shooting up out of the pipe! So the clog is basically right at where the laundry drain reaches the main pipe in the root cellar, causing anything from the kitchen to go up the laundry pipe instead of the main drain.
Once I had a chance, I made a couple of calls to plumbers. The first call, they were booked solid and new bookings are more than 2 weeks away. I had success with the second call. They, too, were busy, but his first response, when I told him what I needed done, was “definitely not today”. I asked about the next few days.
Long story short, he’s going to make us their first call tomorrow. Since they’re coming from the town to the north of us, they’ll get here around 9-10am. My younger daughter and I have our doctor’s appointments in the afternoon, but it should be done before we leave.
We might finally be able to do laundry without running a hose out the front door! That would help fill the septic tank faster, triggering the pump, so we’ll know how the diverter is working, too. It should be fine, but still… I’ve become as paranoid with our plumbing as with our truck!
I asked for some idea of what the bill will be. He said it depends on a few things, from how long it takes, to which machine he ends up using, etc., but might be as low as $150. I figure it will cost at least $300, but we’ll see.
So we have one more day of not being able to drain water down the kitchen sink.
We had some bitterly cold temperatures last night – dropping to -24C/-11F, when I was awake to check. There was no wind chill, though. In fact, the “real feel” was slightly warmer than the actual temperature.
When heading outside to feed the yard cats, I found a whole crowd of them inside the isolation shelter – all in the top level, too!
Including the isolation babies. Both Kohl and her fluffy partner were in there.
With so many cats and one bowl in a corner, the littles weren’t able to get at the food as well, so I dropped a handful beside the fluffy boi.
With the cold, a lot of the food trays still had a lot of food in them. None of the cats, understandably, want to be outside eating, and even in the sun room, they prefer to huddle together in their various shelves and beds and under the heat lamp. I saw several through the cat house window, near the heat lamp in there, too.
The food bowl in the isolation shelter, however, didn’t have a single crumb left in it, and even the water bowl was mostly empty. At this point, I think the top of the isolation shelter may be the warmest place around!
The insulated box nest, however, seems to be in the way. I am considering taking it out and putting it in the lower level, where the little box is. We had to take the cat bed out from there, since they were using it as a litter box. Since this box nest is insulated, it would probably get used more in the bottom level than it is in the top level. The food bowl can then be put in the middle where the box is now, and more cats can eat out of it at the same time.
Moving the box nest will require moving the entry box shelter away, so I’ll save doing all this for when I have a daughter available to help out.
Meanwhile…
My husband and I had plans today. We were going to head to the nearer city, where he can go in to exchange his cell phone, as the 2 year plan is up. He doesn’t use it much, but if he simply kept it, we’d be charged almost $700 for the balance on the phone. Or, he can return it and get a credit, but would have no phone. Alternatively, he can exchange it, have another phone on a new plan, and still get a credit.
So that’s what we were going to do and, thanks to a generous monetary Christmas gift from my mother, we were planning to have an actual sit-down dinner date, too. It might just have been to Subway or something, in the same shopping commons as the phone place, but it still would be a fun and rare treat for my husband.
With the cold, we waited until things warmed up in the afternoon before we started heading out. It was -19C/-2F and the time we left. I went ahead to take out the shopping bags in the back of the cab to make room for his walker while warming up the engine a bit. Since we haven’t been able to get the block heater cord repaired, I made sure to run the engine a bit while I was doing the morning rounds, too.
Soon we were loaded up and on our way.
We got maybe 5 or 10 minutes out, when it happened.
The console started dinging, and the “oil pressure low, shut of engine” light started flashing. The oil pressure gauge had suddenly dropped right down.
We already had the oil sensor replaced from the last time it happened.
So I popped on the hazards and pulled over.
Of course, the first thing I did was check the oil level. We had an oil change done when the sensor was replaced, so it should have been full.
It was. Looked pretty clean, too.
I still added a small amount. It was a fight to get the oil cap off (thank goodness we keep a stool in the truck, or I couldn’t have reached it!), and one of the first things I noticed was the interior. It looked almost as if the black plastic was blistered.
It wasn’t.
It was ice.
So I added a bit of oil, then cleaned out the inside of the cap as thoroughly as I could before putting it back and running the engine for a bit before checking the oil again.
Definitely plenty of oil.
Well, we weren’t going to take a chance. Once everything was put away, we turned around and went home, while my husband messaged our daughters to open the gate for us.
The warning light did not turn on again, and the gauge stayed within the range it was supposed to.
The gate was ready and open for us, so I pulled straight in to the garage, stopping only to get the walker out for my husband before pulling the rest of the way in.
As soon as we were inside and settled, I called the garage and left a message describing what happened. Our mechanic called back within minutes.
He asked a few more questions, and he basically confirmed what I already suspected. Most likely, there was a bit of ice from condensation getting into the sensor and triggering that warning. Basically, the engine needed to warm up longer. He has seen this before, but only with GM vehicles.
Hmmm.
Since we know there is plenty of oil, he basically said, if it happens again, it’s not a panic. That was the main thing. The last time it happened, the truck turned out to be almost completely out of oil, even though there were no visible signs of a leak, nor were we burning blue. There is a separate warning light for low oil, and that never turned on. Replacing the sensor also took care of the leak, and the oil level has been steady, since.
Well, I’ll take this as a sign we weren’t meant to go to the smaller city today.
Tomorrow morning, I’ll be meeting with my brother at our mother’s for a visit. It’ll be earlier than usual, since he has to leave by noon, but this is his Christmas visit to my mother, as they’ll be visiting the grand kids for Christmas and New Year’s.
If the cold we got hit with last night is why this happened with the truck, though, it should be fine, tomorrow. We’re expected to dip below -20C/-4F for a few hours this evening, but start warming up throughout the night. By the time I should be leaving in the morning, we are expected to be warmer than we are right now. Long range forecast no longer says we’re supposed to get as warm as 6C/43F around Christmas, but it does still say we’ll be hovering around the freezing mark on those days. We will be doing our dinner on Christmas Eve. I will be setting aside a couple of meals and plan to go to my mother’s to have lunch with her on Christmas day.
Hopefully, the truck sensors will behave!
For the rest of today, though, it’s another home day, after all! I’ll be working on more garden analysis posts, instead. 😄
On a semi related note, a while back I wrote about how I was suddenly seeing ads on YouTube again. I ended up getting an updated version of Firefox and installing their adblocker, as it was the only one that still worked. I was still getting them on my phone’s app, to the point I could no longer play YouTube videos at all, they were so intrusive. Which meant, no playing background playlists to help me sleep.
Well, that has stopped as suddenly as it started. I no longer see YouTube ads on any browser I use, nor on my phone app. None of them had gotten updates, either.
Very strange, but I’ll take it!
Oh, this is too funny! I just got a message from the Cat Lady.
One of the cats they took from us was a muted calico we called Muffin. She was an outside cat friendly enough that we could get her into a carrier. She went to them to be spayed, get the usual vet checks, then go up for adoption. Instead, she bonded with the Cat Lady’s husband, and they are still inseperable.
Today, she is out with him, delivering Christmas bonuses and drinking Starbucks.
Muffin still hates the Cat Lady, for some reason – she’s never had any other cat behave like this towards here before. Muffin still tries to bite her, every day, even though she doesn’t have teeth anymore. But she adores the Cat Lady’s husband, attended Zoom calls with him, goes out to job sites, and when she has to stay home, sits at the window, crying for him all day. It’s got to the point that all these hardened contractors now look forward to seeing Muffin. Too funny!
Well, time to adjust my plans and see what I can get done, now that it’s turned out to be a home day.
Today is now 2 weeks since Kohl and the fluffy boy were spayed and neutered, so it was time to open up the isolation shelter.
I did today’s morning rounds, starting with feeding the outside cats, as usual. When I got to the isolation shelter, I saw Eye Baby’s messed up eye was stuck shut and his nose all crusty. When I opened the sliding window to put food in, he was much more interested in escaping! So I grabbed him and took him inside, where I held him while my daughter washed his face.
Once his face was cleaned up, I put him in the sun room, under the heat lamp. Then I opened up the isolation shelter and put the entry box over the ramp.
Then I went back for the jug of warm water to top up the various bowls. I found Eye Baby on one of the plant stands we have for them to use to get up onto the platform and other shelves. I scatter kibble on it, as some of the cats prefer to eat there, rather than at the trays on the floor. He was eating quite enthusiastically.
When I returned to the isolation shelter, an adult white and grey was already inside and going for the food bowl. The fluffy male was just outside the entry box, saw me and dashed back into the isolation shelter!
There was no sign of Kohl, anywhere.
I kept an eye out for her as I continued my rounds. I didn’t see her until I was back in the sun room. I found Eye Baby in a cuddle puddle in one of the cat beds. As I tried to get a picture, Kohl emerged from somewhere and photobombed me! So I picked her up and cuddled her for a while. She seemed quite happy to be out of the isolation shelter.
Not long after, I started heading out to the garage to go to my mother’s. I found a whole bunch of adult cats in the isolation shelter – plus the fluffy boy! I did try to pet him through the sliding window, but the best I could get was some finger sniffing.
Everything seemed to be going well, though. The cats were really liking having access into the isolation shelter again.
From there, it was off to my mother’s town. I left early so I could make a quick stop at a small department store before going to the gas station. I’d seen that gas prices had dropped to $1.229 a few days ago, but it was back up to $1.309 So I just got $30 in gas to top it up a bit.
By then it was past 11am, which is when their fried chicken is ready, so I got chicken and wedges, plus a couple of smoothies, for my mother and I to have for lunch, as she doesn’t get Meals on Wheels on Thursdays.
When I got to her place, I saw her water jugs already set out on her walker; there is a tap on the laundry room with softened water that she uses for drinking and cooking water. She was talking to someone on the phone when I knocked and went in, so I just left the bag of food on the table, then went to refill her water jugs. She was done on the phone by the time I got back, and told me her niece (who is also my godmother) was wanting to pop by some time today.
So we had our lunch, then went over her shopping list. A few things got added to it, and then I headed out. She didn’t need much, so I wasn’t gone for long, even though I went to a couple of different places to get it all. I did get a couple of extra things for her that weren’t on her list, but I that knew she would be good with, and were within her budget. She was quite happy with the changes.
I didn’t stay too much longer, as there was going to be social activities in the common room this afternoon, and my cousin was going to visit some time after that. My mother was going to have a very full day!
While I was in town, my husband asked me to pick something up, but I hadn’t seen it in the stores, so on the way home I made a side trip to the town closer to us. I found what he needed, but on the way back, I realized I really needed to go to the bathroom, so I stopped at a full serve gas station.
The gas prices here were $1.229!
When I told the gas jockey to put in $20 (which came very close to filling my tank!), I told him what the price was in my mother’s town. He was very surprised, and told me they were expecting their prices to go down again, soon!
That done, I could finally head home. After bringing stuff in and catching up with my younger daughter, she mentioned going the litter in my bedroom/office. She hadn’t had a chance to empty the bucket yet, though. With using stove pellets for litter, we’ve been tossing it behind the outhouse to compost. Since I still had my boots on, and didn’t want the bucket to freeze in the old kitchen, I went through to dump it out.
When I opened the old kitchen door into the sun room, the first thing I saw was a white and grey kitten, lying on the floor next to the door to outside.
It was Eye Baby!
He had been there long enough that rigor was starting to set in.
Damn, damn, damn. He seemed to be doing so much better this morning! What happened in the few hours I was away?
Since we can’t bury him right now, he went into the branch pile for cremation. There are now two kittens in there.
I’ve since updated the Cat Lady about this, as she helped us so much with him, providing him with medication for his eye and antibiotics for longer treatment. Yes, he was still sickly – that’s why we put him into the isolation shelter – but still. It was a real surprise, after how he seemed just this morning.
Damn.
After taking care of Eye Baby’s remains and finishing my errand, I gave the outside cats their evening feeding early, and topped up their water as well.
There were SO many cats inside the isolation shelter! The food bowl was completely empty, so I put a generous amount in there.
Fluffy boy was still in there, and was very interested in the food bowl, but there were adult cats in the way. Fluffy was on the shelf above, so I gave him a handful there. He was shy about my reaching out to him, but was willing to eat.
I even got to pet him! After a couple of times petting him, he even stopped acting like he was about to run away, and fell under the magic of ear skritches.
Kohl, meanwhile, prefers the sun room, and comes right over for cuddles.
I’d hoped we’d find homes for the two of them before we opened the isolation shelter, but the only people that expressed an interest when the Cat Lady put the word out about them were people who lived too far away to make it practical. I’m not sure about the legalities of cross border pet adoptions, either!
The Cat Lady is feeling really bad that they didn’t have space for Eye Baby, even though she knows they probably would have ended up keeping him permanently, and being another very expensive cat.
Speaking of which, she updated me on Button.
Not only is he deaf, but he’s now almost completely blind! He’s had so many tests since they took him in, they’re just done with it. He can no longer find his food bowl, and they constantly keep an eye out for him. Even their dog has been helping! He’ll actually pick up Button and carry him to the food bowls, or to his cat bed, or out of harms way. The Cat Lady has fallen completely in love with Button, as has one of her daughters. He’s such a unique looking cat, with his eyebrows and deep blue eyes, he’s actually had a few people express interest in adopting him, but nope: they are keeping him. I expect he will not be long lived, with all the health problems he’s turned out to have, but he’s wildly loved and is having the best life he could possibly have.
We’ve had a gentle snowfall all night. It has stopped for a while, but we’ll be getting a little big more, this evening.
We were actually already at our high of the day (-1C/30F) when I headed out to do the morning rounds, and it will be slowly cooling down for the next couple of days.
As relatively warm as it was, that didn’t stop this kitty from taking advantage of the empty heated water bowl!
Alas, this is one of the more feral cats and it ran off very quickly. I had to zoom in and crop to get the image above, because I couldn’t get any closer without scaring it.
The isolation shelter was very warm in the food corner, where the heat bulb is facing.
You can also tell where the two pieces of insulation under the roof touch. Enough heat is escaping in between to cause the snow on the back of the roof to melt more!
I’m a little concerned about Kohl, though. She has one eye that’s leaking a bit. When I took a closer look, I could see some redness and swelling in the corner. She’s also snuffling a bit. Something to monitor.
Eye Baby, on the other had, is looking a bit better. His eyes and nose are still leaky, but his eyes were not stuck shut this morning, like they were yesterday. He was also quick to jump down and start eating the wet cat food I gave them. Kohl was more interested in human attention.
The fluffy male meanwhile, is looking clear eyed, hale and hearty! I couldn’t touch him, though. Kohl and Eye Baby kept getting in the way!
After doing the food and water for the outside cats, I got a decent amount of shoveling done around the house. In the process, I piled up more snow around three sides of the catio. The cats quite enjoy using it! The only issue is when the more feral cats are in there when I come closer to put food in the bowl in there. They start panicking and bouncing off the wire mesh of the walls a few times before going for the open door.
I got a path cleared to the garage, wide enough for a walker, and cleared in front of the garage so the doors where Spewie is stored could be opened. My daughter will use Spewie for the driveway later on.
I will most likely be heading out before then, though. Just a quick run to the post office. I checked online and discovered that a gift I’d ordered for my daughters arrived on Friday. The last time I looked, tracking said it would arrive on January 7, because of the postal strike. This was to be delivered with Purolator, but they are (90%?) owned by Canada Post, so they weren’t delivering either. With that delivered, it means regular mail might have been delivered, too. There has been a back to work order made (since Canada Post is a Crown Corporation, it’s federally controlled), but I think that kicks in this week.
Whatever the reason, I’m just happy the gift made it in, and hopefully, so will other important mail that should have arrived, weeks ago. We don’t get a lot of mail, as most stuff is now done electronically, but the mail we do get tends to be things like letters from clinics for my husband, or other similarly important stuff.
Since I’m heading to the post office, anyhow, I think I’ll stop by the old church again and see what is left inside, after yesterday’s closing service. I expect people took as many mementos as they could, and the only things left will be too damaged, but you never know.
Oh, I almost forgot to share one more adorable photo! As I was coming back inside after doing my rounds, I spotted these boys.
We’ve got Midnight, Gouda and I believe the tabby is the one the girls call The Toe Biter.
What a face I caught on Gouda!
They are all more friendly than feral. They have their moments. Some days, they eagerly come over for attention. Others, they act almost completely feral and won’t let us near them.
Gouda is the only one we’ve been able to get fixed, in this group.
Meanwhile…
Last night, I had a chance to talk to my brother on the phone. I told him about what happened with our neighbour, before the church service yesterday. We are both perplexed by some of the things he was saying. Clearly, our vandal has been telling him things, but any time I tried to ask for more information, he just kept ranting. After talking to me, my brother said he would call our mom, then let me know when he was done so I could call her and tell her about the service, since she couldn’t be there.
In almost no time at all, he called me back to say he was done; he had brought up about the church service, telling her that I was going to be calling her to tell her all about it. She kept asking him questions, but he wasn’t there and couldn’t answer, so he just told her I would be calling to tell her all about it. She kept asking, so he told her he would get off the phone so I could call her.
Which I did.
When she answered, my mother started telling me she was watching a show and “a problem like Maria” – which I promptly started singing, then told her it was from The Sound of Music. She was watching it, but didn’t know the name, even though she watches it when this channel plays it this time of year, every year, apparently.
I told her why I was calling, but in the end, she was more interested in her movie and said we’d talk about it later.
??? 😄😄
She did call me back today, while I was working on this post, so I got to tell her all about it. I told her I recorded the entire service for her, and just have to figure out how to get it so she can see it, since I couldn’t have such large video files taking up space on my phone. I did tell her about what happened with our neighbour, and she was perplexed by it, too. I told her what I had picked up for her, and about the Bible stand I took for myself. She was really happy that I had taken that stand. She remembers it well, too. There were a few other things we talked about as well. My mother used to regularly go to clean the church, even after it was no longer being used. Over the decades, she picked up things like shelves and other items for it. I’m sure the artificial flowers all over were from my mother, but I didn’t know she had bought several shelves, as well, including one that was in the tiny room the fire was started in.
I told her about the print that was donated by my “uncle”, how damaged it was, and who I thought had taken it. I told her I planned to go back, too, and she was happy to hear that. I also explained to her what was going to happen to various things, as much as anyone was able to confirm for me. She was particularly interested in the statue of Mary outside. It turns out, that was donated and installed by a (distant) relative of ours!
Then Meals on Wheels showed up with her lunch, so I let her go.
Things are still looking good outside. As I write this, the post office is closed for another hour, so I think I will head out and go to the church first and see how things are now, and take my time until the post office opens again. I don’t have to wait to pick up the one package I know about, since it was delivered to the store, not the post office, but we might have others.
Then I have to figure out how to get the gift for my daughters wrapped without them seeing it. For the space I need, I might have to use the basement! 😄
Since the truck was booked to be looked at tomorrow morning, I rescheduled my mother’s shopping and errands to today. The plan was to do her errands, making sure to bring along our water jugs that needed refilling, so that I could go to the town nearer to us and fill them while running some errands of our own before going home.
Early this morning, I got a text reminder – at about 7am! – from Canadian Tire for our 7am appointment on Monday, saying to make sure to be there ahead of time and be ready to drop off the keys; standard stuff. I responded by saying the vehicle was already there, and they already had the keys.
It was probably around 9am when I got the first call from them.
They had already looked at the truck!
The problem was, indeed, a wheel bearing. I asked how much it would be, and it was thankfully lower than I feared. Being just the one tire, the total came to less than $500. I was half expecting both tires and a $1000 bill.
I authorized the work, which took a few texts, another call, then an email, because the link they texted me wouldn’t work on my phone. Instead, I got a message saying I needed to complete the process on my computer – but I don’t have text to desktop set up on this computer. In the end, all I needed to do was text back “approved”, but what they were trying to send me was the document showing an itemized list of what was to be done, and the cost of each item.
So that got approved just in time for me to start heading out to my mother’s.
Except…
I didn’t realize it, but my younger daughter was planning to come with me! I misunderstood something she’d said. She was behind on doing the morning cat feeding and the morning rounds, so I switched out one of the trail cam memory cards while she did the other. Everything else got skipped.
The slight delay turned out to be a good thing, because I’d forgotten the water jugs!
It’s a good thing I started heading out early. By the time we finally got everything ready, we were on the road exactly when I knew was the latest we could leave and get there for the time I told my mother I would be there.
When we got to my mother’s, I went in to get and go over her list with her. My daughter stayed in the car. With how my mother behaves towards her, she has no interest in being around her grandmother anymore and, to be honest, I can’t blame her one bit.
Normally, our first stop would have been the pharmacy, but they were still closed, so we went to the grocery store instead. They opened their doors at 11am – pretty much as we were parking! I keep forgetting about Sunday hours.
My daughter stayed in the car for that part, too, as there was nothing she needed there. That done, it was back to the pharmacy. It was still closed, so we went looking for the posted hours and realized they opened at noon, so we still had time. We took advantage of that and went to the gas station to fill my brother’s tank, which was just below half by then – it still feels so strange to be able to fill at tank for $30! That’s a quarter tank, on our truck.
I also picked up some fried chicken and wedges for our lunch, along with some drinks, since we would still have to wait. After parking by the pharmacy again, I called my mother to let her know we were waiting for the pharmacy to open at noon, so we would be longer. Then we had our lunch – very carefully, so as not to drop any crumbs in my brother’s car! – and watched all the people going to the pharmacy doors, realizing they were locked, then leaving again. 😄
As we were waiting, I got a text from the garage.
The truck was ready.
!!!!!
At this point, I’d already made arrangements with my brother and SIL for switching vehicles tomorrow. The garage already knew about this, so that was not an issue.
They were done so early, though. After updating my brother, he wondered if we meant to get it today, instead.
On finding out the garage was open until 6, and it was barely noon, we decided to just finish my mother’s shopping, then head straight to my brother’s, then to the city to get the truck.
After I did my mother’s shopping at the pharmacy and my daughter did part of hers, we went back to my mother’s place. She isn’t up to going to church lately, even though it’s just across the street, so someone comes over with communion for her, after services. She was all set up for this when I got there, so I quickly told her what was going on as I put her things away. I was just packing up my reusable bags when there was a knock at the door. Perfect timing! It was the guy from church.
So, off I went and soon, my daughter and I were on the road to my brother’s new place.
This is the first time I’ve driven to their place myself; I’ve been driven there as a passenger, and I’ve driven FROM their place, and everything looked different. I kept second guessing myself when I knew we were getting close. I had a landmark building I told my daughter about. It’s been there for probably 100 years. I told my daughter, it’s now an antique store.
“But what do they sell?” she asked me.
…
It took me a few moments. I’m not too swift with jokes.
I then laughed for the next 5 minutes!
Finally we got there, and then I had to remember which driveway was the right one. They’re in a row of townhouses now, and they all look identical, and I couldn’t remember their unit number. I recognized a car in another driveway, so I pulled into a driveway that I was pretty sure was theirs. I figured, if it was, their garage door opener would work. I knew which button closed the door, so I tried the other buttons to open it.
No garage doors opened.
I was still pretty sure we were at the right place. I could see some decor items near the door, but couldn’t remember if they were familiar to me or not.
Then, as we got out, I saw the block heater extension cord on the step, recognized that, and knew I was in the right place.
😄😄
Oh, and it turned out the same button on the garage door opener that closes it, opens it. We have no idea what the other two buttons are supposed to do. 😄
When we got there, they were all ready to set up a pot of tea and stuff, but I didn’t want to delay. The garage would be open for a few more hours but, since we were in the city, we could still do our errands at a nearby Walmart, and fill our water jugs at the Canadian Tire. So we were soon out the door again. Both my brother and SIL came along and drove us to the garage, taking advantage of the trip themselves to look for things.
When we got there, we were able to spot the truck fairly easily, so my brother pulled in behind it while we transferred my daughter’s shopping to the truck box – where I found the box with the old wheel bearings they’d left for me – and grabbed the water jugs, then my brother parked.
My brother went in to the auto service area with me while my daughter and SIL took the water jugs into the store to refill them.
I got the keys and paperwork for the truck and then got sent over to the cashier on the store side of the barrier to pay for it. Boom, boom, boom, and it was done!
I was so happy!!!!! What a relief!
We reconnected with my daughter and SIL soon after. They couldn’t find the refill station. I went to where I thought it was, completely forgetting that this is a different store than where I’d refilled at before. After looking around, I finally asked an employee.
This location doesn’t have a refill station. They only did Culligan brand exchanges.
Well… so much for that!
I put the jugs back in the truck, then met back up with everyone else in the store again. Since we didn’t need to get anything else and my brother and his wife were going to do some more looking around, we said our goodbyes and parted ways.
With the Costco pretty much across the street, I figured I would at least go there to fill the tank with cheaper gas.
Then we saw the lineups of cars at all the pumps.
We went straight to the Walmart, instead.
It was really busy, too!
My daughter had her list and I had mine, so we parted ways for a bit, then reconnected in the grocery section. We didn’t bring in the water jugs, though, because I didn’t know if this Walmart had a refill station.
We never did see one, so probably not.
By the time we were done and paid for our stuff – I didn’t take any stocking up photos, like I usually do, as we were just in high gear, the whole time – it was starting to snow quite a bit. So we just took the time to update the family before we started out. Well… updated my husband, as my older daughter would have still been in bed. She just closed the slots for her Christmas quick commissions sale, while also having several regular commissions to complete, last night, so she is going to have some very busy work nights for the next couple of weeks. She then takes time off for Christmas and New Years.
I also updated the Cat Lady whenever I could, throughout the day, and confirmed that we will NOT be rescheduling those spays she booked for us on Thursday!
She had good news for me, too. A friend of hers had donated 50 cans of wet cat food to us! That’s on top of the 100 or so, she is going to pass on to us because her own cats won’t eat that flavour, plus some kibble a grocery store donated. When we meet up with her at the vet, she’s going to have all sorts of donated cat food to pass on to us! In fact, we might find ourselves with enough wet cat food that we might be able to treat the outside cats to some cat soup! The Cat Lady is so awesome in being able to do this for us!
If we can keep it from freezing.
We’ll figure it out.
She said she even ordered more kibble for us from Amazon, though with the postal strike, it’s hard to say when it’ll get here. It’s a rotating strike; mail gets delivered in some places, while others are picketing, then it changes every week. So mail can potentially get through, at some point. We just have no idea when or where.
This strike is killing a lot of small businesses that depend on shipping out orders. Especially this time of year, when most businesses have their highest sales, putting them in the black before the end of the year. Some things just can’t be shipped by courier.
Anyhow.
For most of the drive out of the city, we took things easy. Nearer the city, roads were icy, but they cleared up the further north we drove. Which was good, because visibility decreased at the same time!
We got to the town nearest us and made our first stop for my daughter to run in and get what she needed while I updated the family again. Then it was to the grocery store. This time, I ran in with the water jugs to refill them – and picked up some food for my daughter, since she was too stressed out to choose something to eat on the road. She’s even worse for crowds and shopping than I am!
By the time we were done there, it was full dark. We made one more stop for gas, since we didn’t get any at Costco, then finally we headed home.
The snow was coming down harder by then, and I was very glad my daughter was with me. I had to focus on the road directly in front of us, just to stay in my lane. I couldn’t see the centre line, but I could make out the shoulder, at least. Thankfully, there wasn’t much traffic. Still, at times we were doing only 60 kph in a 100 zone.
My daughter, meanwhile, was on deer watch, scanning the ditches for me. You’d think deer would be hunkering down in shelter somewhere in weather like this, but nooo. These are Canadian deer. They’ll stand in the middle of the road and wait for the vodka to freeze.
Credit to my daughter for that one… 😄
So this day ended up being much, much longer than expected. The outside cats hadn’t been fed before it got dark, like we usually try to do. My older daughter wasn’t up yet, and my husband can’t manage getting kibble to all the spread out food bowls anymore, now that there’s ice and snow on the ground making it more dangerous for him to hobble about, even with a cane.
Which worked out, really, since we had to feed them to get them away from the truck before I could park it.
We had some very hungry babies. By the time I finished doing the outside trays and bowls and came back into the sunroom, the sunroom trays were almost empty!
As for me, I was very happy to be parking our own truck in the garage, instead of a borrowed car.
I’m so incredibly thankful they were able to get it done today, and that we could work out the transportation and vehicle switching with my brother and SIL on such short notice.
Best of all…
All the time that we were driving, all I was hearing was normal road noises. 😄
When I get a chance, I want to bring in the old part from the truck and take a look at the damage. I’m curious to see what kind of damage would make the noise I was hearing, since it was so different from the last vehicle we had to replace wheel bearings on.
To top it off, we now no longer have anyplace we will potentially need to go to, tomorrow. My mother’s errands are done, and now the truck is home, too.
We can actually *gasp* stay home for a day!
Which is good, because it’s supposed to be colder, tomorrow. The next day – Tuesday – is supposed to be warmer, so that will be a good time to make a much needed trip to the dump and, since I’d be going in that direction anyhow, go to the town north of us and get a couple of 40 pound bags of kibble. Yes, we have cat food donations coming, but you just can’t have too much kibble! Especially in winter. It’s looking like we will have a mild winter, but if things ever change and we end up not being able to get out for some reason, we need to have the pantry stocked up with enough for all of us – humans and feline alike. In the winter, I want to have at least one, preferably two, months worth of supplies on hand. We’ve already have a few times when we’ve relied on our stocked up items. It’s getting harder to keep it up, with the cost of everything going up, but I view this as an essential.
An essential, like our truck is!!
Have I mentioned, how glad I am that our truck is back?
I just wanted to share the adorableness of Syndol, as he accompanied me on my morning rounds. That’s all. 😄😄
Anyhow…
Today turned out to be a rather productive day, all in all.
Our main goals for the day were to get my husband’s bed and computer set up again. He was telling me this morning how my bed is soooo comfortable – but is absolutely killing his back! He needs to be back in his hospital bed.
Which isn’t as simple as it sounds. Since the plastic covered mattress causes him to sweat, he had several layers of bedding on top to at least try and alleviate that. It took 4 loads of laundry to wash everything, pillows included.
What I ended up doing was laying out a king size cotton sheet over the entire bed, folding up and laying out the various layers of bedding as close to the dimensions of the bedding as I could get them without being lumpy, then pulling up the sides and ends of the cotton sheet to encase it all. Then the fitted sheet could cover the whole thing and hold it in place.
With this being the smallest bedroom in the house, and the wardrobe is still in it, getting this done involved a lot of shifting the bed back and forth so I could reach from both sides, layer after layer, until I could finally put it back in its corner….
Only to have to move it again, to set up one of the power bars with a super long cord that had to be removed earlier. This room has only two outlets, and one of them is in the wall the bed is against. Handily, both outlets are higher than usual. More typical of the height for accessibility in modern homes. I’m not sure why these ones were placed so high. Especially since they are both in log walls. I’m not going to complain, though!
After the cord was run under the bed in such a way as to not touch the floor (because, cats…) it was done.
Until my husband asked about some of the bedding and I realized I’d padded his mattress with bedding he preferred to sleep under.
One of them being the cotton sheet I’d used to wrap the whole bundle.
I found a replacement for that one, at least, but the covers I’d left out, thinking those were what he’d want to sleep under, now that winter is coming, were supposed to be part of the bundle.
It didn’t take much to readjust things, but it did involve having to move the entire bed back and forth repeatedly, while I did it!
Eventually, I was finally able to bring back a side table to hold the internet router, other electronics and the CPAP machine.
In between doing this, I also got my own laundry going, then cleared a spot for the girls’ bar fridge to be moved to my room, so that they can then move the wardrobe upstairs. That will open up quite a bit of space in my husband’s room.
Eventually, we had to head out for a dump run; my younger daughter came along to act as spotter again. The pit area looked even worse than last week. At least this time, she wasn’t having to kick away nails the whole way in!
While we were out, we got a message from my other daughter, asking if we were up to a trip into town. Which we were, so she transferred some funds to me, along with a shopping list.
While we were in town, she and my husband moved things off the table he uses as a desk, he set up his computer, and they got his chair in. He also moved his CPAP back, so he’s now set, even though the room is not done.
Once the wardrobe is out, we’ll be able to access the closet again. The bottom of it has storage boxes, some filled with some of my late father’s things, but the closet rod and shelf above are open. There isn’t a lot of space between the footboard of the hospital bed and the closet door, since the bed is quite a bit longer than standard, but it’s enough to be able to open the door completely and access it. There’s still another shelf and his little medication fridge that needs to be set up again, but not until the wardrobe is emptied and taken upstairs.
Most important of all, of course, is that the corner where the tub’s plumbing is, is now clear and accessible.
I don’t want to cut the access panel from this side of the wall, though. At least not at first. Once we are able to cut away the rotted aspenite around the taps, we should be able to see where best to set the access panel. Even if we just make some holes from the bathroom side, to mark the corners, we can use those as guides to finish cutting the panel out from the bedroom side. If we do it neat and tidy enough, we might even be able to use the cut out piece to make a removeable cover for the opening.
It’ll be the girls taking care of getting that wardrobe upstairs, which means that tomorrow…
Oh, my goodness!
Tomorrow I might even be able to…
*gasp*
… get some work done OUTSIDE!
😄😄😄
I noticed today that the sunchokes are starting to die back, so I might start harvesting some of those. I definitely want to get the potatoes harvested. We should be able to use both with our Thanksgiving dinner.
If we have one.
With the hot water tank managing to produce only warmish water, it makes it rather hard to keep up with the dishes. We’re rather not be boiling large amounts of water again, as that makes the entire house ridiculously humid.
We could use disposable dishes, though. I think we still have some. I forgot about that, entirely!
Speaking of hot water tanks.
In going over the manual, it looks like our bottom element might be burned out. The anode rod likely needs to be replaced, too. It might be premature, since we haven’t confirmed this, but we’ve ordered a Corro-Protec rod (not an affiliate link), which we had to do on a payment plan, unfortunately.
The main hesitation we had for ordering one earlier was being able to plug it in. There is an outlet near the tank, tucked next to a floor joist above, but it already has two things plugged into it. One, we can remove; I traced the line and it’s an extension cord that goes up into the closet in my husband’s bedroom, along with a TV cable. When my late father used this room, there was a TV set up for him to be able to watch from bed, but we don’t watch TV, and that power cord isn’t being used.
The other thing plugged into there is the well pump. The problem is, the plug for the powered anode rod is fairly large. We might still be able to fit it in with the well pump’s plug, if we move the well pump’s plug up to where the extension cord is currently plugged in, but I don’t know that there’s enough space around the outlet to fit the powered anode rod’s plug. We won’t know until we actually get it.
Hopefully, we’ll be able to get the hot water tank repaired affordably, but we have no idea when that’ll happen. It’s not like we can afford to call a plumber for that, any more than we can afford to call a plumber for the taps in the tub.
Until then, we’ll be making do with tepid water, and boiling water if we can’t get away with tepid.
It’s a good thing we only do laundry with cold water!
Still, it’ll make Thanksgiving dinner a bit more challenging to prepare!
The red onions have been left, since they can handle the cold nights, and still aren’t quite ready for picking. With various distractions related to our plumbing issues, the potatoes still need to be harvested. The sunchokes are still green and growing, so they won’t be harvested for a while. Mostly, the beds are ready for winter clean up – once we can get to them!
When my daughter harvested this bed, she left behind the really tiny tomatoes, or the damaged ones. However, as more of the foliage died back, I could see some green tomatoes that looked fine, and seemed to have gotten missed. The foliage in this bed was so dense, that’s no surprise. I basically ignored them, though, figuring they were frost damaged by then.
This morning I could see they had continued to ripen! Hidden in the middle like that, it seems they got protected from our first frost and following cold nights, too.
So I picked them and added them to the bins and boxes of green tomatoes in the old kitchen to ripen.
We have quite a few things slowly ripening. Yesterday, my older daughter grabbed all the ripe hot peppers, cleaned and prepped them, then set them in the oven to dehydrate. Eventually, they will be made into a powder.
Now… my older daughter is pretty much the only one that can eat these. My husband used to love spicy food, but the medications he’s on have really messed with his ability to taste or tolerate foods. My younger daughter can handle a bit of heat, but not as much. My, I can’t tolerate spicy food at all.
So she has taken over preparing the hot peppers as they ripen and, once dehydrated and powdered, she will have enough to last a very long time! We won’t need to grow hot peppers for some years. 😁
Now, these are hot peppers, but not exceptionally hot peppers. They’re not the kind where you need to wear gloves or anything.
Normally.
It turns out that, after processing about a dozen remarkably large hot peppers, that becomes a problem.
Not right away, though. My daughter had no issues at all while working on them. She was careful about washing her hands before touching things, too.
Then she made herself a sandwich.
The pepper oils from her hands – even after being washed – got onto her sandwich, and it was so spicy, it started to burn her mouth. She ended up having to drink straight cream to reduce the pain!
Then her fingers started to burn.
It happened slowly, over several hours, but eventually she could barely even use one hand.
She sprung for take out for supper, so I went into town to pick up the food. By the time I got back and she regaled me on what had happened, I could see the tips of all her fingers were bright red!
Lesson learned. Even mildly hot peppers can become a problem, if you’re processing enough of them at once!
Gloves needed!
Meanwhile, even her lungs were starting to burn!
These were being dehydrated in the oven. We had the kitchen window open and the fan running. The house smelled amazing, but we still had to stay out of the kitchen as much as possible, so as not to breathe too many of the hot pepper fumes. Even the cats were staying out of the kitchen!
Speaking of cats, they added another distraction. My younger daughter tried to go to bed early, only to discover a cat with a messy butt made a mess on her bed. She had to wash all her bedding.
We had been working to clear my husband’s bedroom, and started doing his laundry, too, so that was already set up (yes, we are still running the hose out the window for the washing machine to drain into the yard). The girls were going to start the laundry and my younger daughter was going to use her sister’s bed for the night.
Which is when they discovered more mess in the middled of her sheets, from a cat or cats that squirmed its way under her covers.
So they were both up all night, doing load after load of laundry. Some things needed to be washed twice, just because of their size. They didn’t get to bed until past 6am.
We’ll be more laundry today, too. My husband has set up his CPAP in my bedroom so he could sleep with me.
Sleeping in the same bed as my husband! Imagine that. 😄
That will give us a chance to strip his hospital bed and wash things like his pillows and body pillows, along with the extra blankets he puts under his sheets. The mattress for the hospital bed has a sort of thick vinyl instead of fabric, so it’s easier to clean. Unfortunately, it doesn’t breath, and causes my husband to sweat. The extra layers under the sheets help prevent that.
I did finally find an XL twin fitted sheet on Amazon for his mattress, which is several inches longer than a standard twin mattress. We’ve confirmed the new sheet fits properly, so we’ll need to get a few more. For now, though, he has only one fitted sheet that actually fits the mattress on his hospital bed.
We’ve been working most of yesterday on clearing his room so we can access the corner behind the plumbing for the tub. This is where we will be cutting an access panel, but it’s still covered by the wardrobe. My husband doesn’t really use the wardrobe, and the girls have said they’ll take it upstairs – but they will need to move out their little bar fridge for the space. They don’t use that much anymore, so we were already talking about moving it to my room. I’ll have to find space for that, though.
Once we get that figured out, we can start moving things around but, for now, we still have one more corner of husband’s room to clear and clean, where has his own tiny fridge to store his injections. This will give us the opportunity to defrost and clean it, too, then move it to where it will be more easily accessible.
The bonus of moving the girls’ fridge out from upstairs, to make room for the wardrobe, is that it frees up a grounded outlet.
That means they can get an air conditioner and actually be able to plug it in! The upstairs gets so insanely hot in the summer, they really need one up there.
That will not happen for a while, though, since my daughter will be paying for what we end up needing to get the bathroom walls repaired.
So all of this rearranging and cleaning and figuring things out is happening at the same time – all because the hot water tap in the tub broke.
There is nothing we can do in the bathroom itself right now. The fan it still running to dry the rotted aspenite. My brother will be looking at it when he comes out on Friday evening (today is Wednesday).
We will have to pull out the tub to be able to find and cut away all the rot, and I’m not even sure how that will be done. It does seem like the tub is in two parts; the tub itself, resting on top of a flat panel that hides the underside of the tub.
Well, we’ll find out when the time comes.
Until then, we’ll just take advantage of the disaster and do the clearing, cleaning and rearranging we need to do, anyways.
On the one hand, I’m glad this has happened now, and not in the middle of winter.
On the other, this keeps me from getting outside stuff done, and from finishing the cat isolation shelter!
Hopefully, I’ll be able to get some of that done today, since there’s only so much I can do in my husband’s bedroom before I need my daughters to help out. It’s so close to being finished, too!
Yesterday, I was able to connect with the scrap guy, and he was scheduled to come over this morning to see what there was to see. After opening the gate for him, I stayed out to give the garden a watering, while keeping an eye out to make sure our vandal didn’t suddenly show up. Given his recent threat of “retribution” in a phone message to my brother, we just never know what he’s going to do next.
As I was watering the winter squash interplanted with now-dry corn, I spotted a tiny green friend on a leaf.
I paused to take a photo, then continued watering – and spotted another one.
And another.
And another!
There were so many tree frogs, just chilling on the dried corn leaves!
There was one larger frog, sitting with its eyes closed. Most of the others were no bigger than my thumbnail! I was absolutely enchanted by the one that was just sort of peeking at me over the bend of the leaf it was on.
I so love our tree frogs! Especially when they’re in the garden.
Eat those slugs, my little friends! Feast away!
I had just finished watering and was putting the hose away when I heard the scrap guy driving in. Perfect timing!
The first thing to look at was right nearby – the years of aluminum cans that we’ve been collecting since moving out here. Then we went to look at the old threshing machine and the three cars. There is other metal around those cars that they can take, too, plus a stack of salvaged steel doors that have been sitting outside for so long, they are no longer useable. I almost forgot to show him the old truck (or half a truck) that’s almost completely buried in burdock and weeds. He took photos as we went around, and asked about the old vehicles and farm equipment beyond the outer yard that we could see. I need to get clearance from my brother on those, because I think he has plans for some of them. There are also the old appliances and even the old bikes my daughter and I took down from the hayloft in the barn, and other things laying about that I was able to say yes to having removed.
I took him through the barn – the old cow stall where the collection of batteries we found while cleaning up is partially blocked with my brother’s stuff – to the former hay yard. I need to clear it with my brother, but we should be able to get almost all those old vehicles, and the old, broken snowmobiles, removed. Having them there is dangerous for the renter’s cows. They will actually try and eat things like the vinyl seat covers on the snowmobiles.
In fact, we had a hard time getting into the old hay yard because of them. We haven’t had any reason to go through that door in the barn until today, so I was expecting it to be blocked by overgrown nettle and weeds, but something else was blocking the door. Thankfully, I was able to open it wide enough to reach and move it, though not without difficulty.
It was a radiator.
Small, but rather heavy for its size.
I remember seeing it leaning against the barn along with some other junk. How the cows managed to drag it in front of the door, I have no idea!
After our walkabout, he was honest with me. For just the threshing machine and 3 cars, plus the appliances, it isn’t worth it for them to come out. When they go to a site, they bring along an excavator and other heavy equipment, plus a scale to weigh on site, to be able to load things. If, however, we were able to include the vehicles in the old hay year, that would make it worth the trip for them. If we could add some of the other old vehicles and farm machinery beyond the outer yard, even better.
So I will have to talk to my brother about that.
We will also need to go through some of the vehicles to take things out, as some of them seem to have been used for storage. One of them looks like it has at least one heavy duty tarp in it. Until we take it out, there’s no way of knowing if it’s still useable, or if it’s been there so long, it’s become brittle.
As for the aluminum and batteries, I asked him if it would be better for us to just load it into the truck and take it in ourselves. He said yes.
So that is something we will need to plan on. We might have difficulty fitting it all into the box of the truck. If we remove our bags of hard sided grocery bags from the back of the cab, we should be able to fit the dozen + batteries in there.
That should give us a few bucks, at least. The aluminum would be by weight. I have no idea what the batteries would give us. There are some very different sizes and shapes in there, too!
He’s going to email me with some information later, and I’ll ask them what their procedure is for drop offs.
After that was done, I was talking to my younger daughter, and she asked what plans I had for the day. She was wondering if we could make a trip to the city. She has been saving up for a really good pair of boots – she’s after something all season and high quality, to last her for many years. There is a specific outlet in the city she wanted to go to.
The location of this store is near the Costco we normally go to, so I was familiar with the route. My older daughter transferred some funds so that we could also pick a few things up at a nearby Superstore. So shortly after the scrap guy had come and gone, my daughter and I were on the road to the city.
We drive right into the predicted storm.
I love the tires on our truck! It’s been almost a full year since we got it and, while the monthly payments make things tight, it’s worth every penny!
We stopped at my mother’s town to pick up gas and breakfast (at lunch time), then continued on our way. My daughters were messaging each other to keep us up to date, and we learned that the rain we’d left behind as we got closer to the city, did reach our place with a lovely downpour. I was so happy to hear that!
Once we reached the outlet my daughter wanted to go to, I dropped her off then went to the nearby Superstore. I had barely started shopping when I got a message from my younger daughter.
It was a bust. They recommended a different store on a street I’m not familiar with.
I quickly finished my shopping – we didn’t need much – then went to pick her up. We considered trying this other store, but my daughter was pretty upset – I still don’t know what went wrong, but I’m sure she’ll be able to tell me later – plus we had refrigerator items among the groceries, so we went home, instead. Courtesy of my older daughter, we took a different route to go to the town nearest us, first, and pick up some Dairy Queen using coupons we got in the mail recently. That was a lovely treat from her!
Once we were at home, I looked up the store on the street they recommended. It turns out that, while it’s on another part of the city, it’s in the north side, and pretty easy for us to get to.
It also turns out they have another location, under a different store name, that was just a couple of blocks up from the store I’d dropped my daughter off at! The only difference it that the recommended location includes “casual” shoes by this outlet, which is not what my daughter is after, so that doesn’t matter.
*sigh*
We really need to get this done before winter, so I will happily make an extra trip for it.
I know my daughter feels bad about dragging me out for a “wasted” trip, but it did allow me to pick up some stuff that’s not available locally, so it’s not wasted at all. I just wish she could have found what she was looking for!
The Re-Farmer 