… 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.
As I write this, we are at -23C/-9F with a wind chill of -29C/-20F. That wind chill has actually improved a bit but tonight we’re expected to get wind chills of -34C/-29F.
When I headed out this morning, it felt even colder. I did manage to check on the ejector, just enough to make sure the heat tape is still powered and doing its thing. I didn’t uncover it or check on how the melt is going, as I did not want to risk shattering the plastic taking off the cap and elbow in what was -35C/-31F wind chills at the time.
In a couple of days, though, I’ll probably unwrap it completely, to help it warm up! We are in for some temperature whiplash over the next while.
Yeah. We’re expected to go from -18C/0F to 2C/36F overnight. We’ll have a couple of mild days after that, then drop right back down again.
Looking at the monthly forecast, the next cold snap is supposed to last about a week, then we’ll be warming up at the end of January.
I hope it does warm up at the end of the month, because we now have two cats booked through the Cat Lady, one male one female (whichever ones we can catch). Which means we’ll have to close up the isolation shelter for 2 weeks again, keeping the other cats out.
A lot of them basically live in the cat shelter right now and hardly leave. Between the heat lamp and their body heat, it must be pretty warm in there!
Meanwhile, I’m waiting until Wednesday, when it’s supposed to go above freezing, to do any driving around and some errands.
I am getting really tired of this cold – and this is far from the coldest winter we’ve had since moving here! I’ve spent most of today drinking tea and eating hot soup, because this house just doesn’t really warm up in the winter.
Okay: the plan for the day was to head over to my mother’s and take her for her MRI appointment.
With our New Year’s celebrations, I didn’t make it to midnight, and instead went to bed, so I did at least get some sleep – until I was awakened by a cat starting to hork right next to my head. How’s that for an alarm clock?
I intended to be on the road by 6am, so as to arrive at my mother’s place early. Sunrise, this time of year, is 8:30, so it was still full dark when I headed to the garage. I did meet my goal, though, and was on the road by 6.
I’m glad I did leave that early, because it took an extra 10 minutes to get to my mother’s. We’d had some snow last night – just enough to cover everything with a light, fluffy layer.
Which makes driving on already icy gravel roads even more slipper, so I was taking it slow.
When I got to the highway, I was playing “find the lane” for much of the trip, and doing 10-20km/h below the speed limit. It wasn’t icy for the most part – at least as far as I could tell. I just couldn’t see where the lanes were, and I often would reach a clear spot and find I was diving in the middle of the highway.
Thankfully, there was no traffic. I saw only 2 other vehicles besides me, the entire time.
When I got closer to my mother’s down, I drove into snowfall. Again, nothing major, but so reflective, even on low beams, that it got even harder to see. I was quite happy to get to my mother’s, and not looking forward to the drive to her appointment! I knew that certain sections of our route would not be good.
When I got to my mother’s apartment, her walker was gone. I knocked and the door was open, but I didn’t see her. Popping back into the hallway, I saw her down the hall. She had come out to meet me, but I happened to arrive just when she’d popped into the washroom. 😄
The walk back to her apartment was really hard on her, and she was panting like she’d been running a race by the time she came inside.
I told her that I’d want to leave right away, because of the road conditions. She started asking, what would they do if we came later? There’s something fishy about this appointment. They just want old people to die.
I asked her, do you want me to cancel? It was really last minute, but given the road conditions, combined with how much she was struggling, I wasn’t going to push her on going like I normally would. I can’t make that decision for her, though.
She hemmed and hawed so long, it was past time we should have been on the road, so cancelling it was.
Then I had to find the right number to call, because of course, there’s no number just for the hospital. The only number I could find was for the regional health center corporate office.
It took some doing, but I did eventually find a number for the diagnostic centre at the hospital and called. No one answered, of course, but I left a message about my mother and her appointment, the road conditions and that she was really struggling, so we would have to cancel. I left our numbers for them to call back, but don’t expect to hear from anyone. My mother has her regular doctor appointment on Monday, so a new request can be made then – this time, specifying an afternoon appointment!
That done, we settled in for a visit, because I was not going to head home until it was light out. We made some tea and were chatting when I heard a distinctive noise from the door behind me. Something had been slid under the door.
I went to get it and found a note that read, “Happy New Year, Old B***c”
My immediate thought was that it was our vandal again – he’s slipped many a vile note and letter under my mother’s door over the years – so I opened the door and went into the hallway, just in time to hear a door closing. My mother’s apartment is near one of the exits. I went far enough to see the doors (there is a tiny vestibule in between inner and outer doors), but by then, there was nothing to see, and I wasn’t about to leave my mother and run for the outside doors.
So I went back inside to my very curious mother and showed her the note. Then I documented it, taking a photo and sending messages to my siblings and family back home, describing what just happened (I am so glad I got into the habit of documenting everything, so many years ago. It has come in so handy), when I heard a strange noise in the hallway.
I looked through the peep hole and didn’t see anything, but when I opened the door, I found a woman walking down the hall and just reaching my mother’s door, in her housecoat and slippers. She saw me and started going on about how, my mother shouldn’t be doing this, it’s against regulations, it’s a fire hazard. It took me a moment to realize she was talking about my mother’s walker…
… which was down the hall, next to a neighbour’s door. That was the noise I’d heard.
The woman kept ranting, swearing and going on about regulations and fire hazards while I retrieved the walker, asking her what was going on (I think she was getting even more angry because she couldn’t get a rise out of me), and she told me she’d found my mother’s walker in the street. So I thanked her for bringing it in, and said my mother hadn’t done this, and that someone had just left a nasty note under my mother’s door. She basically said that she wasn’t surprised about the note because of my mother being how she is. I parked my mother’s walker where it belongs, under the little shelf by her door, and she ranted and swore at me some more, saying it didn’t belong there, while going back to her own apartment at the end of the hall.
I went back inside and was telling my mother what happened when I heard another noise at the door. I opened it and found my mother’s walker against it. The woman had come back and bashed it against the door. She demanded I take it inside and started saying more insulting things about my mother and me (I’m fat, so I must be just like my mother…) and swearing before going back into her apartment.
When I went back inside, my mother was just shaking her head. She could hear some of what her neighbour had been saying. Apparently, this behaviour is common with her.
She’d brought stuff up with public housing people before, and was told to call in and make a formal complaint. They can’t do anything if people don’t complain. So I found the number and tried calling them. I knew it would go to voice mail, since it’s New Year’s Day, but the mail boxes were full, and I couldn’t even leave a message. We will have to try again during regular office hourse.
So we talked about it some more and I documented this to my family as well.
My mother thinks the neighbour is the one who left the note, not our vandal. She says the use of the word b**** is very much her style, while she’s never heard our vandal say it. I’ve heard him use it, particularly directed at me, though not often, so she does have a point. I did hear the door closing when I went out, and I thought it was an outer door, but I suppose it’s possible I’d heard the door at the end of the hallway, which is even closer to the exit than my mother’s door.
So… that was fun.
My mother, meanwhile, was getting very tired, so she soon went to bed while I stayed a bit longer, waiting for it to get light before I left.
The drive home was much better, but I’m definitely glad we didn’t make the drive to the hospital for the MRI in the dark. I got home just in time to meet my daughter coming up to the gate to switch out the trail cam memory cards, as she started the morning rounds for me once it got light out.
So this whole day has turned out far stranger than expected. The note was bad enough, but for the neighbour to get all weird on me was really… something. The woman definitely has issues. My mother tells me there has been police involvement because of her, and her own son had shown up that time and basically told them, he was done with her. This has been going on since well before she moved into the building my mother is in.
Slight pause in writing this; I just got off the phone with my brother, and he agrees that the note must have been from this woman. The door I heard closing had to have been her own door, not the exit door I thought it was. I’m just so used to our vandal being the one doing this sort of thing, and there was no one to be seen at the time, I just made the assumption. If the neighbour hadn’t come out and started making noise and messing with my mother’s walker, I would never have had reason to think otherwise.
We really need to get my mother out of that place and into some sort of assisted living. For her own safety, as well as for her health needs!
As for me, I’m so very tired. I did get some sleep last night, but not much.
Time to see if I can squeeze in between the cats on my bed and get a nap in!
It’s almost 1pm as I start this. Outside, we’re at -17C/1F, which is a huge improvement from the last couple of days. Our predicted high for today is -15C/5F
The wind chill right now, however, is -30C/-22F
Tomorrow, however, we’re expected to reach a high of -6C/21F, then -2C/28F over the next couple of days! It’s going to feel downright tropical out there! 😄
My daughter did the outside rounds this morning. The short rounds, since it was -27C/-17F out there, before wind chill, at the time. When I did the evening cat feeding last night, I saw that the wet cat food in the isolation shelter bowl was frozen. It’s right next to the sliding window, so that corner is pretty cold. I reached in to tilt the clamp lamp so the heat bulb faced the back of the shelter, instead of the hammock below.
I was actually able to handle the metal shield around the heat bulb with my bare hands. It was just warm. Normally, I would have burned my fingers if I’d touched it. Another sign of how cold the ambient temperature in there got, even with the heat bulb!
The kitties are okay, though. Kohl had frost on her face fur again, but her fluffy partner did not. My daughter says there was a bit of frost around the top of the heated water bowl.
The kitties have now been in there for a full week. Kohl is handling her surgery just fine. No sign of infection, and neither of them seem interested in licking their surgical sites at all. They’ll be in there for one more week of observation.
They have company, though.
After talking about it with my daughter last night, we decided to add another kitten. There’s one white and grey that has leaky eyes, a stuffy nose, and has been sneezing and snuffling a lot. My daughter thinks it’s Eye Baby, but I’ll have to look closer to be sure. This morning, she was able to snag the kitten and take him into the isolation shelter. She said, he really didn’t like being carried outside in the wind, so he was very quick to jump into the isolation shelter all on his own!
With the temperatures improving over the next week, he will be better off in there than in the sun room, and will get to share the wet cat food as well. A week not having to fight so many adult cats for food, water and warmth will help him recover faster, as well.
At least, that’s the hope.
Today is a bright and sunny day, so they should have some passive solar heat in there, too.
My daughter doesn’t stop to take any pictures when she does the morning routine, though, so I’ll give you this, instead…
It may be warming up out there, but today will be another home day. I think, tomorrow, I’ll make the trip to a feed store. I’m looking to get the 40 pound bags of cat food, but also want to see what they have for heated water bowls. I’d like to get another smaller one. They seem to last longer. When I took the one my SIL gave us outside to chop the ice out, and flipped it upside down to spill out the shards, I found there was a melted spot in the plastic in the middle of the bowl’s bottom! I had intended to go to the town north of us for that, but we are almost out of lysine, and the feed store in the town my mother lives in was able to order some for us. Since I’m also thinking of another smaller shopping trip in preparation for Christmas and New Years, in the nearer city, it would be along the way.
Until then, I’ve got another day to enjoy my hibernation.
Today was a good day to just hunker down and stay out of the cold as much as possible. As I write this, at almost 3:30pm, which is usually the warmest time of the day, we are at -25C/-13F and the wind chill is at -35C/-31F, though we did hit wind chills of -39C/-38F earlier on.
Once I had my glasses on and could see properly, I did find the sun room thermometer really is working. The temperatures in there had dropped to about -10C/14F, though by the time I headed out to do the evening feeding, it was just below freezing. The cats were taking full advantage of the bright sunshine and sitting on the shelves at the south facing windows.
Or on the shelf near the bathroom window. That spot is pretty popular!
Of course, the cat beds on the platform had their cuddle puddles, too!
In the first photo of the slideshow above, we have the isolation babies. It is downright WARM in there! So much so, that I would say that confirms my hopes of getting passive solar heat from the windows is actually working. After putting the wet cat food into their bowl, I opened the window wider so I could reach in and pet the fluffy boy – which he let me do – and they have zero interest in going out!
In the next photo, there’s a couple of kittens at the window shelf. The canopy we got on clearance this year is currently stored there, and it heavy enough they can’t knock it down. Instead, they like to perch on it. The little black and white kitten is not socialized and was getting nervous with me untying the doors to I could get food to the outside bowls, so I dropped a bit of kibble for him, and he stayed!
The last photo is of one of the fluffy babies, on that shelf near the bathroom window, watching me. 😄There’s two fluffy tabby kittens that are mostly grey and I know one is female, but I’m not sure if this one is it. I have no idea what the second one is. Too fluffy.
Considering the temperatures we’ve got right now, I am very pleased with how that isolation shelter is working out. The other cats have their various shelters as well, so if things get cold, they can find the best spots, and just pile together to keep each other warm. Cats that normally don’t get along are now being seen using each other as pillows in their cuddle puddles. The isolation shelter is small and there’s just two kittens – I suppose they’re more catten then kitten at this point – in there, so not a lot of shared body heat, and they can’t go anywhere to find a better spot. Turns out, the isolation shelter IS the better spot, and that makes me happy. It will be good when their 2 weeks are up and we can open the ramp door, put the box entry back, and the other cats can start using it again, too.
The only down side is, that freshly washed cat bed I returned to the bottom level was immediately being used as a litter box again.
*sigh*
On a completely different topic…
Please let me know if you are finding this, too…
We all tend to use YouTube quite a bit. For me, one of the things I like to do is use the YouTube app on my phone to play videos to help me sleep. Usually, just certain styles of music (the music I would normally listen to would keep me awake) or, if I’m having a really hard time sleeping, something with a soothing voice speaking.
Well, last night, I started up one of my playlists and immediately got hit with a very loud ad. I haven’t had ads on my personal YouTube account in years! (oddly, if I log in as Re-Farmer, I always get ads, but if I switch to my personal account, no ads, even though I’m using the same app or browser). It was so bad, I gave up and just stopped trying.
Then I tried to watch videos on my desktop computer this morning, and the ads were there, too. I’ve been using the Opera browser and yes, the ad blocker was on. The ads were absolutely aggressive. There would be 2 or 3 short ads before a video would start, then more interrupting the video, with no “skip” option. When I started to get ads that where three and a half minutes long …
THREE AND A HALF MINUTES LONG!!! with no “skip” option!
… I gave up. Most of the videos I watch aren’t even that long.
I asked my family, and none of them are having this problem. My older daughter told me that every now and then, Google managed to get through the ad blockers, and it takes a while for the blockers to adjust.
The problem is, Google owns YouTube. And Chrome, And Opera. And most of the “independent” browsers. The only one she’s found that isn’t part of the Google monopoly is Firefox with their Ublock extension.
Guess what I’m using right now?
The problem for me is, I have been using Opera because it has sidebar features on it that I use frequently. Specifically the Instagram extension, since I use Instagram for my images and embed them into my posts here, now that I’ve almost run out of storage space on my WP account.
So I can watch videos now without the ads, but I hate switching browsers. There are just too many things that need to be switched over and logged into, settings adjusted and so on. That’s a pain on its own, but to do all that, just so I can watch videos without ads? Is it worth it?
Anyhow.
Has anyone else had this happen to them? I find it strange that I’m the only one in the household it’s happening to. If it were just my phone app or just my desktop, that would kinda make sense, but it’s both, and only with me.
Honestly, I wouldn’t mind the ads, since that is how content creators get paid. I don’t mind sponsored ads done by the creators themselves; at least with those, if I don’t want to watch them, I can skip through. These ads I’m seeing now are just badly made, annoying and loud – and there is no excuse for an ad being THREE AND A HALF MINUTES LONG! Insane!
*grumblegrumble*
All it does it make me stop trying to watch the videos completely.
Well, we’ll see how long it goes on for. It’s likely the next time my Opera browser is updated, the ad blocker will be working again.
Until then, my YouTube watching, at least, will be limited to my Firefox browser.
Ah, well. Small problems. I was just wondering if anyone else was having this happen to them.
As for me, it’s time to check on some winter squash I’ve got roasting in the oven.
This is the sort of weather that calls for comfort food!
That’s -28C/-18F with a windchill of -38C/-37F, in case the image isn’t showing up.
Brutal!
The wind is coming from the northwest, though, and we are pretty well sheltered from those.
Our high for today isn’t supposed to be much warmer, either. We’ve got one more day like this, then things are supposed to warm up dramatically for a while.
Checking the critter cam, the cats in the sun room are active and prowling around, waiting for food and warm water. There must be something wrong with the wall thermometer, though. The needle is just below freezing. I didn’t have my glasses while looking out the bathroom window, but it looks like it’s reading around -5C/-23F and there’s no way it’s that warm in there.
The first screencap image is Celsius, the second in Fahrenheit. Instagram wouldn’t let me show the whole image, even though that’s what I set it for. Underneath, it gave the expected overnight windchill of -36C/-32F
I keep telling myself, the isolation babies are okay. They like to curl up together on the cat bed in the upper level. It is under the lounging shelf, so there is a low ceiling, the back wall is insulated, the side wall in that corner is insulated, and the box nest next to the cat bed forms another insulated wall. In front of the cat bed is the heated water bowl. All this, plus the insulation forming a ceiling, plus the heat lamp. They should be just fine.
Today, I’d hoped to stay home for a few days (I really, really didn’t want to go to the dump today!) but when my husband needed something from the pharmacy, I figured I’d do that right away, since it was supposed to be milder. The next couple of days are supposed to get much colder.
A high of -9C/16F is milder, right?
It seemed all right when I headed out to feed the outside cats.
The full belly kitties were content to stay in the sun room. Not all of them, but enough to make nice, warm cuddle puddles!
The isolation kittens are doing fine, too.
It was a different story, once I started heading to town!
The first thing I realized was that the driveway needed to be cleared. Best to do it while the snow is still light and fluffy, too. Much easier on little Spewie. After closing the gate behind me, I made sure to message the family about that, because I knew I would forget once I got going again.
Driving conditions really sucked!
Once on the main gravel road, visibility was low with blowing snow, made all the more interesting when I had to cross paths with oncoming trucks bringing in bales. The trucks alone are wide loads, but their trailers were loaded 3 round bales wide. To fit them, about a third of a bale sticks out on each side of the trailers, adding about 3 feet to the total width. The main gravel road is wide enough for two vehicles to pass each other well enough, with room to spare, but it’s a very different story with these trucks! They did try to go to the side as far as they could, but with how slippery things can be under the snow, it wouldn’t take much to hit some ice on the shoulder and slide right into the ditches… and these ditches are narrow, steep and deep!
Even on the highway, it wasn’t much better. I found myself doing 70-80 kph (43-50mph) in a 100 (62mph) zone – and no one was trying to pass me!
I’m glad the roads were plowed yesterday, or it would have been so much worse!
Once in town, I did my errands, with my last stop at the grocery store. My husband had called in a prescription delivery for Thursday that I was able to pick up today, instead. At the grocery store, after refilling a couple of our 18.9L/5 gallon water jugs, I ended up taking advantage of some sales and picked up a few extra things besides what was on my list, and my older daughter’s list that she send funds for, once she found out I was going into town. Poor thing is not feeling well at all, today. PCOS sucks.
The drive home was not any better than the drive out, so it was slow going. I’ve driven in far worse. I just didn’t want to be driving at all today! Ah, well.
With the water jugs on top of everything else, I drove up to the house to unload, but had some troubles backing up to the main doors. The truck had to go over the sidewalk from the house to the gate, which was shoveled, and it was just too slippery!
I was quite happy to be parking the truck back in the garage!
My younger daughter was a sweetheart and took care of clearing the driveway after everything was put away, and the outside cats got a light feeding to keep them distracted. The isolation kitties seem very content in their shelter. I was even able to pet the fluffball! He started to run away, but once I started petting his back, he stopped and let me!
I’m going to be worrying about them over the next while, though. As I was writing this, I could see the temperature on my task bar dropping. We’re down to -14C/7F right now, but the wind chill is -30C/-22F!
The isolation kittens are protected from the wind, so that shouldn’t affect the heat lamps ability to keep them warm, but we’re supposed to drop to -25C/-13F tonight, and the high tomorrow is supposed to only reach -23C/-9F, with an overnight low of -26C/-15F, before wind chill. The next day is supposed to be slightly warmer, before our highs are supposed to get back into the single digits below freezing (Celsius).
Those would be good days to stay home, but I’m expecting to pick up our 1/8 beef share on one of those days. I’m just waiting on an email to confirm the date.
I hadn’t been home for long, when I got a phone call from my mother.
Guess who had just showed up at her place?
*sigh*
Yup. Our vandal. My surprising him by being there yesterday didn’t scare him off for long.
My mother was in the common room, though, and our neighbour was with him again, so he was on his best behaviour. Apparently, he was in the nearer city for “treatment” (chemotherapy?) so they stopped by on the way home.
I’m glad my mother called me as soon as she got back into her apartment after they left. In the past, she wouldn’t tell us if he showed up, even when he was alone and his behaviour was verbally abusive.
Then she told me that the doctor that was supposed to call her at 2pm, did finally call! It was past 4pm by the time he did. Thankfully, my mother still remembered our conversation, and on telling him how things went, his recommendation was exactly what I said was most likely. He wanted to increase the dose of the medication.
Then my mother, being the way she is, asked him if she could just stop taking them. What would happen? His response was, probably nothing would change. She could stop taking them, if she wanted, but to call him again if things got worse.
*sigh*
I just had to express my frustrations with her, as carefully as I could. She keeps complaining about all sorts of health problems, but when people try to help her, she won’t do the things that she is supposed to do to make things better. When we first moved out here, she mostly complained about her knees, but refused to wear the braces my brother got for her (as recommended by her doctor at the time), for her knee that’s bent sideways. I forget it he got two or three different braces, trying to find one she was willing to wear, but she wouldn’t. Instead, she would wear sport knee pads. They kept her knees warm, therefore, in her mind, they were helping her knees more than the brace.
It’s the same thing with this new medication. I tried to explain again, it takes time to see if a specific medication would work, and at what dose. As an example, I told her how my husband it still trying to get the dose right on the new pain medication he’s on (the previous one is no longer available), and it’s been about a year. Her response was to start talking about how much she pities us for him having health problems, but I had to cut that off. I told her, this was just an example of something that is common. Everyone is different, so they have to take the time to figure out exactly what will work for each person.
Her bubble packs are due for new ones, and the doctor would be faxing the increased dosage to her pharmacy, so I told her that when she gets her new bubble packs, they should have the new dosage, and nothing would change. Just keep taking her prescriptions as always, and give it time to work.
I don’t know if I got through to her. I might have, at least for a little while.
I’m so glad she has homecare doing med assists, now. Even with the bubble packs, she was messing with her prescriptions. Which is more of a problem because she forgets what some of them are for, and gets them mixed up.
I need to remember to call the home care office and see where her application for assisted living or a nursing home is at! There’s only so much my siblings and I can do to help her. Especially when she isn’t willing to help herself at times!
So today didn’t turn out the way it was intended to, but things got done and, more importantly, my mom is okay after our vandal showing up at her place again.
I really, really wish she would just tell him to not come around anymore, but she still holds out home that things will get better.
Another reason to get her into some sort of long term care! She can move to a better living situation, and no one needs to tell him where she is. As long as she doesn’t tell him herself, of course. 🫤🙄
Ah, well. It is what it is! All we can do is deal with the cards we’ve got.
I did the morning routine today. We were under weather warnings yesterday for snow, but from what I could see, we didn’t get much of any, overnight. Or, if we did, it melted right away, then froze by morning, because it was SO slippery! It’s snowing now, though, so we’ll see how that works out.
Of course, the isolation babies got their extra treat of wet cat food. The cat beds we washed last night were returned, so they now have two in their shelter again. Unfortunately, they seem to be ignoring the freshly cleaned litter box and just using the floor on the bottom level. At least some of it will be easy to clean up once they are frozen. 🫤
Kohl really wanted attention! I spent quite a bit of time petting her through the sliding windows. She made no effort to get out! The closest was when she rubbed her face against my arm so far, she almost fell through the doorway.
Her partner in crime deigned to sniff my fingers a bit, but Kohl was so aggressive for pets, she got in his way. When I saw him at the food bowl, I thought I might pet him while he was eating, but as soon as Kohl saw me at that sliding door, she came right over. She was pushing her way through to get pets so aggressively, she pushed him away from the food! So I stopped, to give him a chance to eat. He, also, made no effort to leave the isolation shelter. Other cats, however, saw the open sliding doors and wanted in!
Later on, I got to enjoy another bit of adorableness. Our elderly grandma managed to get access to the new cat bed again. With the other cats, we’ve found as many as three of them squeezed into there, all at once!
There’s barely room for Grandma in there, never mind three cats!
After yesterday evening, I’m happy to say that today really has turned out to be a day of Peace, for the Second Sunday of Advent.
I got a call from my mother “late” last night. It actually was pretty early, but had been dark for so long already, I thought it was closer to midnight, not early evening!
She had clearly called for a reason, so I asked what was going on.
Very long story short…
She was dying and needed to go to the hospital.
Of course she did. It was a Saturday night. *sigh* It’s always on a Saturday, or Sunday on a long weekend.
I really don’t want to be so jaded by this, but she does it so often!
I told her, we’re under a weather watch. If she really felt she needed to go to the hospital, it would be safest to call an ambulance.
Then I had to keep asking questions to get some idea of why she felt she needed to go to the hospital.
Her cold was getting worse. She was coughing lots. There was pain in her stomach. She had a headache, which she thought was connected to her stomach.
Even the pain in her stomach took quite a while to get straight. About all I could get out of her is that she felt pain directly below her sternum. Every time I tried to get a clearer description, she’s start to tell me, then launch into something else, like did I know where her important stuff in her apartment was hidden (in case she dies or is in the hospital, and people go into her apartment to snoop).
She didn’t want an ambulance, because she wanted someone with her to watch her purse for her; she has important stuff in her purse, and she didn’t want people going through it while she was getting tests done.
She didn’t want to go to the same ER as last time, because that hospital is run by Muslims now. The last time she was there, when I went to pick her up, she told me she had a Muslim doctor (a hijabi woman), and that she had “stolen my heart”. She’d had a very positive experience with her, but has since rewritten her memory again. Now, because there was one Muslim doctor, she has decided that means the entire hospital is run by Muslims. *sigh*
Then she didn’t want to go to that ER because last time, she was in the waiting room for 15 hours (she did get called for tests in that time frame, but I had to explain triage to her again).
I ended up going online to see which hospital ERs in our region were open. The one nearest us was still open, but closing at 9pm. The other, in the hospital her doctor’s clinic is in, was open for the night. Did she really want to go to the ER? We talked about how, every time she’s gone, they would do tests, find nothing wrong, and send her home.
Oh, they found something, but they won’t tell her, because they want her to die. They take advantage of old people. They don’t care. Etc.
It was while I was looking up to see where there were any open ERs in our area, and talking about how busy they get on the weekends, that my mother even commented on how this always seems to happen on a Saturday! I wonder why? she asks. 😄
Then, because I wasn’t leaping to drive her to the ER immediately, she launched into how her children didn’t care about her, either. When that didn’t work, she shifted to, “oh, you are already dealing with so much. I’m sorry I called you. I shouldn’t have called you.” (a regular passive aggressive dig about my disabled husband)
*sigh*
After straightening that out, too, she started talking about how she needs to be in a nursing home, she can’t take care of herself anymore, she needs help.
I told her (again), you can’t just walk into a nursing home and get accepted. We are working on it. There is a process that has already been started, but it can take a while. Nursing homes are for people who are a lot further along than she is, and we would basically be waiting for someone to die for a bed to open. She forgets how my dad was before he went into the nursing home. By then, he was getting home care visits for personal care three times a day, and had declined to the point that they could not longer meet his needs. Very different from my mother getting three med assists a day, to make sure she takes her pills properly.
I was finally able to calm her down and told her that I would talk to my siblings and let them know what’s going on, suggesting she have herself some hot tea and rest. Which she agreed to do.
Once off the phone, I created a group chat to message my siblings, thinking it would be faster than email. My sister turns her phone off when she’s at home, though, and didn’t respond until well past 1am. I was finally able to reach my brother in a side chat, and he only had time to ask if Mom had been eating those mandarins my sister had picked up for her. I completely forgot about those. My mother isn’t supposed to eat anything citrus, as it triggers her acid reflux, but my sister got them for her because she felt they were mild enough *sigh* and because my mother had a cold and needed the vitamin C.
For someone who was really sick with a cold, my mother had sounded really great on the phone. Just some mild coughing, towards the end of the conversation.
So I finally went to bed and didn’t see my sister’s response until past 6am.
After doing my morning rounds and having breakfast, I figured it was a good time to try calling my mother. Her morning med assist should have come and gone by then.
I’m happy to say that my mother reported feeling much better. The “pink medicine” (the Pepto) helped so much. Her stomach was hurting much less and her cold was getting better.
Her voice was sounding hoarser this morning, though, and she was coughing more throughout our conversation, but overall, she said she was improving.
I remembered to ask her if she’d been eating the mandarins. She bounced around the answer, saying things like, not this morning, or, let me check, and, only during the day (since she insists on eating foods that will trigger her acid reflux, I’ve suggested that she at least tries to eat only a small amount, early in the day, since it’s when she lies down to sleep that it really bothers her) and so on. So I concluded that she probably did have several of them before all this started, but wasn’t about to admit it.
We talked a bit about the list of foods I gave her that could cause her problems, and which were okay. I think the printout I gave her might still be taped up on one of her cupboard doors. I brought up tomatoes, because I knew my sister had been giving her tomatoes from her garden, first fresh, then canned, over the past while. She said, no, she’d already finished those off. My mother even had given me one of my sister’s jars of tomatoes a while back, because it was just tomatoes; my sister didn’t even put salt in it. 😄 I forgot to bring up onions, though. I think she does still have some of those. So anything citrus, anything in the onion family, and tomatoes are the things she most commonly eats that are causing her problems. She is on acid reflux medication, and I’d hate to see how bad it would be for her if she wasn’t! The Pepto helps her for these short term problems, though.
At one point, when I was asking her questions about how she was feeling and what she had been doing, she brought up dry mouth again – this time, blaming the mandarins. We talked about her need to hydrate, but she just doesn’t want to drink water! As she put it, her mouth wants water, but her stomach doesn’t.
I do get that, so we talked about other ways to hydrate, including through some kinds of foods.
With her voice being so rough and her coughing, I didn’t want to keep her talking on the phone for too long. I tried to say good bye a few times, but she kept finding other things to talk about, like how she had “forced herself” to change her bedding, and mopping her bedroom floor with disinfectant while her bed was moved away from the wall, and how she was so sick, she never even got out of her nightgown, all day…
Honestly, my mother has no idea how strong she is, and how well she’s doing. She’s practically indestructible, but constantly complaining about how sick she is and increasingly talking about how she is dying.
Today, though, she was able to recognized that yesterday was a combination of things that made her feel so much worse, and now she’s glad she didn’t go to the hospital.
I really do hope they are able to get her into some sort of assisted living soon. It’s so hard to know what’s going on with her, how much is real, how much is her deciding things are worse than they are, and so on. She really does need someone around that can monitor her. Between me and my siblings, none of us are in a position to be that for her.
After I was done talking to her on the phone, I updated my siblings. My sister later reported on her own phone tall to my mother. It seems she’d picked up some cup-o-soup for my mother when she did her grocery shopping for her – something my mother would never had bought for herself – and that Mom was going to have some for lunch.
So all is improving with my mother.
Meanwhile, it has been slowly snowing throughout most of the day. We have another ongoing weather warning for “snow showers” right now, because we’re at only -3C/27F, though the wind chill puts us at -12C/10F. It’s supposed to keep snowing, heavily, at times, until about 3am. It’s also supposed to slowly keep getting colder overnight until we reach about -11C/12F by about 7am, and stay that temperature all day.
Hopefully, the roads will be cleared and no longer slippery, by the time I have to go to my mother’s, tomorrow, for her telephone doctor’s appointment.
For now, though, it does look all peaceful outside, and I’m much relieved that my mother is doing better today.
As I write this, with less than an hour to sunset, we are at 3C/37F. I was just outside, getting a few more things done, with no coat on, and it was awesome! The only down side is that, with everything melting, some things were a bit slippery.
I will get to that part in a bit!
My SIL had let me know last night that she and my brother would be coming out this morning to park their truck here for the winter. They expected to be here around 8:30 am, so at 7:30 or so, I headed out to feed the outside cats and do the morning rounds, and open the gate for them.
When I came outside with the cat food, there was a set of headlights at the gate!
By the time I put kibble out in all the food bowls, including the isolation shelter, and added some warm water, they were in the yard and my brother was parking the truck. He got a solar trickle charger for the battery, so he wanted to make sure the windshield would get the most light for as long as possible.
So I went to my SIL, who had followed in their car, and we had a nice visit. A rather longer visit than expected, as my brother kept finding one more thing he wanted to do before they left.
As I was walking to their car, though, I saw that my SIL had started it again, and moved it a few feet. An odd thing, since she wasn’t in the way of anything, and they weren’t leaving yet.
It turned out that our vandal had showed up, driving every so slowly as he passed the open gate at our driveway, trying to see what was going on! They’d been there less than 5 minutes! How did he know they were here? He lives nearby, but not THAT nearby!
As we chatted, with me standing in the open door of the car, we saw him again, coming back the other way. We knew he was coming before we could identify the vehicle, because we could see headlights through the trees, slowing down as they got closer to the driveway. By the time we could fully see his vehicle, he was driving at a crawl. I just stood there and openly watched him. I don’t know that he recognizes either of my brother’s cars, since both had to be replaced in the years since we moved here and he lost his mind. With the trail cams set up, he’s been behaving, but in the last little while, I’ve been seeing him more often. All of the activity that’s been going on in the past couple of months, from stuff being moved here to the excavation and repair of the expeller, must be driving him nuts.
When I had the chance, I called my mother to warn her, he might show up out of the blue again. She’s sick with a cold right now, so after telling him what’s going on here is none of his business, she can also tell him to go away because she’s sick.
Anyhow.
I had a good long visit with my SIL before they were finally ready to leave. I had to switch out the trail cam cards, so I went ahead of them to close and lock the gate behind them. On changing the card, though, I found that the new batteries we’d put in were at 2%!
So, after finishing the rest of my morning rounds, which included giving the isolation babies a can of wet cat food and getting more warm water to top up all the water bowls, I grabbed some fresh batteries and headed back to the camera.
I figured I could change the batteries there, since it wasn’t so cold that I needed to come inside while I was doing it. This camera has a battery case that pops out, but in order to do that, the camera has to be removed from its holder. I did that, took out the case, then set the camera on top of its post so I could have two hands to change the batteries out.
*sigh*
It fell into the snow, opening as it fell, and landed right on its innards. Even the memory card sprang out into the snow when it landed. When I picked it up, there was sticky snow all over the inside – some even got into the space the battery case goes into!
*sigh*
So I took that in and set it up where it could melt and drain. I had to quickly do something else, and my daughter was sweet enough to change out the batteries for me. After trying the whole thing off with paper towel as best I could, I left it while I had my breakfast.
When that was done, I put everything back together and tested it out. With no power for so long, the date and time had reset to default – 2022! – so I hit the menu button to reset it.
Nothing happened.
I tried again. And again. And again.
The menu would simply not come up. It was in set up mode, and I could see it was functioning. The screen was working find, and I could even see the seconds on the time changing. I just couldn’t do anything with it.
So I took the battery case out again and left it to dry longer, then headed back outside to get some things done.
The first was to fix the wind damage on the catio.
The first image in the slideshow above shows how it looked before I started. The vinyl tore at the cord that is wrapped around the whole thing, but that cord is also what kept it from getting blown off even more. In the second photo, you can see where, even in the back, the vinyl was torn loose from the push pins holding it in place.
I picked up some foam mounting tape, with double sided adhesive, to help with the repairs, and also had some clear Gorilla tape, to tape the torn section together. I removed a number of push pins, first, then added the mounting tape to strategic sections of the frame. The mounting tape won’t stick to the wood very well – especially when it gets colder – but the vinyl will stick to it. This way, when the push pins are added back, they vinyl shouldn’t tear away anymore, and it will still be easy to remove in the spring.
In the third picture, you can see where the mounting tape was used in the front and on the door, but I also included it at the back, where the sheet was torn loose from the pins.
Once the vinyl was being held in place by the mounting tape, I got out one of the dollar store dining table protectors I’ve been using for this and set it up right on top, starting at the door, pinning it along the top. It was long enough to just reach around the corner at the back, so that edge got taped to the old sheet. Once that was taped, the push pins were added back, then the excess vinyl on the bottom was tucked under the bottom of the catio. Then the cord was wrapped back around and tied off again.
I had to kick away the snow that was added along the bottom of the shelter, so the last thing to do was get a snow shovel and put that back. The door, one corner and one end now have a double layer of vinyl.
The cats were really, really liking it.
I took some video after I was done, starting from the back of the catio.
Stinky REALLY enjoyed being in there! The vinyl creates a pretty decent greenhouse effect inside, so it’s pretty warm in there, too. At least during the day.
The next thing to do was patch up some tears in the isolation shelter, from the cats trying to get in.
Before I started, I took advantage of the fact that there is now an insulation ceiling and lifted the roof to drain off the melting snow and slush. With how uneven the patio blocks are, the slow slope of the roof is pretty flat, instead, so it doesn’t drain much at all, and I didn’t want to take a chance of any water getting inside. There is quite a bit of overlap in the roof panels, but until we can properly seal the edges in the spring, water can still get in between and potentially cause problems.
Next, I cut away some of the more tattered pieces of vinyl and removed some of the pins. I then cut pieces out of another dollar store table protector to create the patches.
At one corner, I taped the patch in place, but ran out of tape, so I used the last of the foam mounting tape to hold the other patch in place. Then the pins were put back. There is still one tiny corner near the back that is torn, but I no longer had suitable tape to hold a patch in place.
I had to be really careful while doing this job, though. It was warm enough to melt the snow, but the patio blocks were cold enough that the water was trying to freeze again. Water on ice is not a safe combination!
The isolation babies were quite interested in what was going on. Especially Kohl.
Not that Kohl would let him get close to my hand. She really, really wanted attention!
That done, I decided to take out the cat bed in the lower level, since I’d seen Kohl had used it as a litter box, yesterday.
It looked like they used it as a litter box for the rest of the night, too!
I got it out and cleaned it off in the snow as best I could and set it aside. Then I changed the litter box by grabbing another one, getting it ready with pellets, then simply switching them out. The lest time the ramp door was open, the less chance the isolations babies could escape!
The litter box was well used, too, so they probably didn’t start using the lower level cat bed until it got unpleasant to use the litter box.
With today being to warm, we’re taking advantage of it to do laundry. My daughter and I replaced the leaking hose extension on the washing machine, then set it out the storm door window. With the washer already set up for laundry, I grabbed the cat beds from the shelf shelter, too. These were the ones we took out of the cat house and weren’t sure if we were going to bother washing them. The cats are using them in the shelf shelter, though, so I figured I may as well do a load of just outside cat beds, once our own laundry was done. The shelf shelter beds are getting pretty tattered, but they’ll be nice and clean and fluffy again, soon.
As I was finishing up inside and getting ready to head it, I spotted this adorable one, on the isolation shelter roof.
Someone is happy the snow was cleared from the roof!
I thought this was Magda, but it wouldn’t let me come close, got scared and ran off. Magda is a mostly socialized cat that lets us pick her up and cuddle her. So now I’m not sure.
I did get another chance to pet Kohl, though, and this time she let me pick her up and check her incision. It is healing very nicely!
As I was finishing gathering the supplies to take them inside, I started hearing something that sounded off.
Like someone driving really, really slowly at our driveway. So I tossed everything into the house, then went to check.
This time, our vandal was driving his tractor. Once again, very slowly driving past our driveway, staring down our driveway the entire time. So I just stood there, in the open, watching him as he finally turned his tractor around and drove off. He had the snow blower attachment on his tractor which is rather odd, since we don’t have enough snow to use something like that right now.
I checked the trail cam again after that, and its still not working right, so I switched up trail cams to make sure the driveway is covered.
I also went looking through my Amazon shopping list, where I have several solar powered cameras with battery back ups saved. After looking through them again, I ended up ordering two of a cheaper one that had a higher rating, and lots of very positive reviews by Canadians. Including some mentioning how well the solar panel was able to keep it powered, even in winter.
No idea when we’ll get them, though, since the postal strike it still going.
By the time everything was done and I got the cat beds in the laundry, I really, really didn’t want to go anywhere. I was supposed to go to the dump, then the feed store, but when I checked their hours I discovered the feed store had already closed for the day. They close really early on Saturdays!
So… no feed store. We’re still good with kibble for the outside cats, so a few days wait should be fine.
Tomorrow looks like it will be a quiet, indoor day for us. We’ve got snowfall warnings for 10-20cm/4-8in of snow, starting around noon and continuing through to Monday. It’s not a lot of snow, but I’d rather not drive in it if I don’t have to.
We’ve got a few milder days ahead of us, then a couple of colder one, before it starts getting mild again. We are no longer getting temperatures above freezing in the forecast for the week before Christmas, though, so who knows how things will change over the next few days.
For now, I’m just glad to have been able to take advantage of today’s lovely weather and get those outside jobs done!
Meanwhile… we have a fluffy kitten in the isolation shelter that needs a name.
The Re-Farmer 