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.
That is -23C/-9F with a wind chill of -35C/-31F. I took this screen shot after I came inside, and it was actually colder than when I first headed out! In fact, even as I was about to take the screen shot, I saw the wind chill drop another degree.
Brutal.
I did manage to do a bit of shoveling and going around to make sure various solar panels were clear of snow. The ones for the lights in the kibble and water shelters were completely buried.
When I got to the gate to brush snow off the trail cam solar panel there, I had to get these pictures.
The photos do not do it justice. Those are the largest sundogs – rainbow or otherwise – I’ve ever seen. You can just see a hint of a complete halo.
Sundogs and halos around the sun or moon happen only in extremely cold temperatures. The stronger and brighter the sundogs, the colder the temperatures.
Needless to say, I did NOT check the ejector. I wasn’t going to uncover it and expose it to this cold. With the bright sunshine, the black tarp should absorb some heat, while protecting the heat tape around the ejector from the cold. The heat tape has all sorts of safety features to keep it from overheating, and is just warm enough to keep pipes from freezing. It wouldn’t take much for temperatures and wind chills like this to basically negate anything it’s accomplishing. I’ll see what the conditions are like this afternoon and decide if it is worth slogging out there to uncover it and check things. We’re only supposed to warm up another degree for the high of the day, but if the wind chill drops, that will make the difference.
On a completely different note, today the girls tested out the Instant Pot with rice for the first time. All the recipes and instructions are for Jasmine or Basmati rice. The rice they prefer is a sushi type rice that usually needs to soak in cold water for half an hour before cooking. I got them an Instant Pot cookbook and they looked at various rice recipes, but the chart that came with the Instant Pot said for 4 minutes for all plain white rice (longer for brown rice). They went with 4 minutes, and it seems to have worked fine.
Once they were done with it, I tried it out myself for the first time, to make a beef stew. I found a basic recipe, though I had to substitute a couple of things – carrots for rutabaga, for example.
The cookbook then said to set the pot to manual for 18 minutes.
Our model of Instant Pot doesn’t have a “manual” setting. It does have a rice setting, which put the time at 12 minutes. It has a meat/stew setting that put it at 35 minutes.
We both used the “pressure cook” setting, which seems to be the equivalent for “manual” on our machine, as it allowed us to select heat levels and time ourselves. The stew is cooking as I write this – oh! it just started beeping! – so we shall see how it turns out.
It smells amazing, that’s for sure!
Time to see if I can have myself a nice hot bowl of stew on this cold, cold day!
You can see the times I took the above three screencaps, showing this morning’s temperatures. It’s coming up to 1pm as I write this, and we have not only finally warmed up to -20C/-4C, but it’s such a sunny day that the “windchill” is -15C/5F. The last screencap I took, at 9am, was just before I headed outside to feed the cats (I skipped the rest of my morning rounds), and the south facing part of the house was feeling much warmer. The wind direction just managed to be blocked by the trees to the south, which made a huge difference.
Unfortunately, we still have no septic, and the tank was not pumped yesterday, so we can’t use our plumbing. The septic truck broke down and never made it.
This morning, I tried calling one of the plumbers back – they are supposed to be available 24 hrs, according to their website. I left a message, but no one has called back.
So, we’re still using the honey pot in the bathroom. No showers and using as little water as possible to wash our hands. To do dishes, we’ve got basins on the dining room table, then we dump the dirty water outside when we’re done. We’ve even changed how we’re cooking, to try and dirty as few dishes as possible, and nothing that involves washing things, or dumping cooking water down the sink. I made a “use whatcha got” soup this morning out up leftovers – even the last bits of charcuteries meat and vegetable sticks we’d prepared extra of for New Year’s – for a hearty one pot meal.
—— pause for phone calls and messages and more calls and …. everything has changed! ——
Okay, I feel like I’m going through mental whiplash right now!
I will get to that in a moment.
Where was I?
Ah, yes. Doing dishes!
Basically, we’re being careful to have as little water going into the septic tank as possible. It can handle being at least a bit overfull – we’ve certainly gone more than a little over full just this past summer! – but we really want to avoid that.
I’m actually getting used to using the honeypot, because we can’t flush the toilet.
Yeesh.
Anyhow…
The plumber I left a message with got back to me while I was writing this. The first thing he let me know is that they are booked solid and cannot come out.
He also sounded rather upset for me. I’d mentioned the ejector was replaced about a month, month and a half ago. Ejectors are made to work in the winter. He used to install them himself. He has one himself that was installed in the 90’s, and it’s working fine. It shouldn’t be frozen. He suggested I call the company that installed it and get them to fix it. I told him I’d already talked to them, and he asked what they said when I told them it was frozen. I told the plumber that, at the time I called, we were thinking the problem was somewhere else at the time, and he was the one who suggested the ejector might be frozen. I didn’t confirm that until after. I also mentioned he’d asked me to call him back today, which I was planning to do. He told me that, when I did, to tell them they needed to come put and fix the ejector.
*sigh*
I did call the owner of the company back and basically told him what the plumber said. He was quite frustrated by that; apparently plumbers pretty regularly do stuff like that, when they don’t actually know what’s going on.
The problem is not the ejector.
The system we have works like this. The plumbing in the house all drains into one side of our septic tank. The solids sink to the bottom and, once it fills, the greywater drains into the other side of the tank. That side has a float with a pill switch in it. When it fills, the float triggers the pump inside the house. The pump pulls the greywater from the second half of the tank – this inflow pipe is where we have the filter installed, to catch any bits and pieces that might be in the water that could damage the pump – then pumps it out to the ejector. The outflow pipe runs most of the length of the basement and out the wall. The pipe, along with water pipes that supplies the heated water fountains for cattle, and a tap in the barn, runs about 300 or more feet to the barn, then turns away from the barn towards a low spot. From there, the venturi pipe creates enough pressure to draw the water up the pipe and out.
With ours, we’ve got a sheet of metal roofing to reduce erosion and divert the greywater towards a low area, further away from the barn.
That elbow at the top is part of the venturi pipe.
When the septic pump shuts off, any water in the venturi pipe drops down below the frost line and collects at the bottom of the 4″ pipe. The next time the septic pump turns on, the venturi pipe drains what’s at the bottom of the 4″ pipe first.
Here’s the problem.
There has to be enough pressure for this to happen, and that requires a certain gallons per minute rate of flow (he couldn’t remember exactly what that was). If there isn’t enough pressure, the venturi pipe can’t drain the bottom of the 4″ pipe completely. Then the pump shuts off, the water drains to the bottom, but now there’s more than there was before.
Eventually, the water level in the 4″ pipe gets above the frost line.
The septic pump, he told me, should take only about 2-3 minutes to drain the tank.
Ours takes about 5 minutes.
Except, recently, we’ve been having issues with flow.
First, the pump would empty the filter, but there wasn’t more water coming in from the tank. I would have to stop the pump, prime the filter, turn it on again, and it would work. The inflow, however, wasn’t as powerful as it had been, before.
The night before it stopped working entirely, the pump hadn’t gone off at all. The only reason it would was if we were using enough water for the second side of the tank to fill and the pill switch triggered the pump to turn on. That just didn’t happen.
So not only was the flow of water from the pump low, but there was no flow at all during one of the coldest nights we’ve had this year. Flowing water would have helped keep it from freezing entirely – at least for a while longer.
Which means that, ultimately, the problem is the pump and the flow of greywater.
Now, the pump *is* wearing out and needs to be replaced, but that may not be the problem. There may also be an air leak somewhere, affecting the vacuum. Which may have been what I was seeing, with a leak from the filter and the O ring not sealing. Or, there could be an air leak somewhere else.
Now, we could install the diverter and an emergency measure, but we still need to get the ejector thawed out, and we probably still need to replace the pump. I’ve been checking the filter regularly, and even turning the pump on for a few moments. It’s not draining, and the filter is not leaking, which – in theory, at least – means there is no longer an air leak.
Other issues could be that the pipe leading to the ejector is also getting coated with gunk on the inside and getting narrower. This is something we have been aware of and have been taking steps to try and improve. One of those was to use the Septo Bac every two days for two weeks, and we really did see a difference in how things flowed after that. Currently, we’re using Free Flow pipe maintenance twice a week; that is more to clear the pipes inside the house, but it would be beneficial for the tank and the pipe to the ejector, too.
—– Must pause for exciting news. —–
The septic guy just arrived! Our tank is being emptied right now!
We’ll be able to flush our toilet again!
I did get a peek into the tank when he popped the lid off. The level had not reached the pipe that the pill switch cable runs through yet, which was quite a relief.
That guy deserves one helluva tip.
Okay, where was I…
Right.
So there are a number of possible reasons why the ejector wasn’t able to drain properly, which resulted in the freeze.
I then got instructions on how to thaw out the ejector (that doesn’t involve ice fishing tents and heaters, as one plumber suggested trying).
I wasn’t able to pull the venturi pipe out because it’s frozen, but could rotate the cap. I couldn’t take the cap off, because of the elbow.
Well, that elbow has a screw, and it comes off.
We could take off the elbow and remove the cap.
We could then start pouring boiling water into the 4″ pipe, around the venturi pipe. However, he said to put some copper pipe down, first. The pipe itself will heat up and help thaw things out faster, but it would also help get water down more directly and further through the ice on the bottom.
Once it seems like enough ice was melted, someone could turn on the septic pump and, hopefully, it would drain the water at the bottom, and empty the septic tank.
That would take a long time, and it’s still colder than -20C/-4F out there.
—- pause for more calls —-
Oh, my goodness. More changes! This time, for tomorrow, too. I’ll get caught up to that, later.
With all this, I’ve been keeping my brother and his wife up to date, pretty constantly.
Given our concerns with the truck, another thing I had to deal with last night was how to get my mother to her medical appointment on Monday. Plus, I was supposed to come early enough to do her laundry for her. She called last night to tell me she was able to get her laundry done herself and that I didn’t need to come early. I told her a bit about what was going on (I didn’t want to overwhelm her!) and that I wasn’t sure if I could get her to her appointment. She tried calling my sister to drive her (which she didn’t want, as I’m the one who normally accompanies my mother, so I’m on top of what’s going on), but my sister starts her shift at work less than an hour after my mother’s appointment.
I passed that on to my brother as well. Today, I was supposed to run the engine a few times, so see if the problem continued, then decide Monday morning, if I’d be rescheduling my mother’s appointment. Possibly mine and my daughter’s on Wednesday, too.
I got a call from my SIL. They were going to be coming home on Sunday (today), and she offered to drive us. She would pick me up first, then we’d pick up my mother, drive her to her appointment, then she’d drive us both home again, then head home herself.
I was stunned by the offer – that’s a LOT of driving for her! Once I was sure this would not be too much of a problem for her, I gratefully accepted the offer.
Today, I’ve been messaging them the whole time, while they are on the way home. My SIL was driving, so my brother was able to respond to my messages.
When I told him about thawing the ejector and needing to look for a long enough copper pipe (I know I’ve seen some, somewhere!), he called me. I was just bundling up to go outside and check the barn.
Which is jam packed with their stuff.
I’m sure there is one long enough in one corner of the old bull’s stall, but it’s full of my brother’s gardening supplies now. I wasn’t sure if it was there, and I wasn’t sure if I could reach it! I’m pretty sure there are lengths of copper pipe in the rafters, too, but again, I’m not sure I could reach them. The centre aisle of the barn is full of tractors and snow blowers and rotary mowers, and I’m… well… short.
My brother called to tell me not to bother trying to thaw out the ejector. They would go home, then come here with both their cars. My SIL would follow later. He would take a look at the ejector, see what he could do, then she would drive him home.
They would leave one of their cars with us. It’s already parked outside, so they know it can handle the cold.
My truck should, too – it certainly did last winter! – but that’s another story….
The thing is, they were still about 3-4 hours away from home! Add in the time to come here, and he won’t get here until after dark!
But he felt he had no choice. No one is coming out to install the diverter, and no one was going to come out to thaw out the ejector. The one company would have, but they are so far away, it would be a lot more expensive, and they didn’t want to ding us with a huge bill. It’s not like they’d be coming out to fix an actual problem with the ejector they installed, that would be covered by any kind of warranty.
Plus, by leaving us with their car, my SIL won’t have to do all that driving.
Then my brother told me to sit down with a cup of tea and relax for a while. He knows me well enough to know how all this has been stressing me out.
Which is about when my husband called out, saying “are you expecting someone with a big truck?”
I’d opened the gate for the septic truck last night, and never closed it. He was able to drive right in!
He’d backed into the yard, so I threw on my parka and headed out. We went over to where I’d cleared things to make room for the truck and the hoses, and got the insulated tarp freed from the frozen ground. He then went to back the truck up the rest of the way. I confirmed how much we owed him, and told him it might be a couple of days before I can get the cash to him. He was fine with that. We’ve done this before, and he knows he can trust us.
With that, I went back inside and let my brother know the septic truck was here. It didn’t take him long at all to empty the truck, so when my brother said he wanted to call, I delayed it long enough for me to go back out, put the weights back down on the tarp, which the septic guy had put back, and put everything away.
Not before using the toilet and actually being able to flush it!!!
Ooooo… Very exciting! 😂🤣😂
While it was great that the tank was emptied, it does make thawing the ejector a bit more complicated. It will take probably a few days before both sides of the tank filles enough to trigger the pump again. Which means that, if we thaw the ejector, there’s not way to test it.
My brother thinks he should be able to use his heat gun and the copper pipe to thaw the ejector.
We’ll see how it works out, though. We won’t really know what we’re dealing with until we get that cap off and can actually see how high the ice it – or use the copper pipe to find how far it goes.
When they reach their place, he’ll grab a few tools, but we really only need a screwdriver to remove the single screw to get that elbow off.
Of course, things never turn out as expected, so who knows.
They don’t have a lot of tools at their place right now. They brought most of them here, to the farm. However, they’re scattered all over. They didn’t have time to be organized about it, but just jammed things wherever they could. My brother won’t be able to start organizing things until spring, at the earliest.
Well, we’ll do what we can with where we are at.
Meanwhile, they will be leaving a car here, and it will need to be plugged in. So I headed out to the garage to get a 100′ extension cord and set that up through the back door of the garage, so the car can be parked in the more sheltered yard.
While I was at it, I finally got to the truck and got the engine running. Then, after puttering with the extension cord, I set up my OBDII scanner.
The first thing I noticed was that the oil pressure gauge was still sitting at 0 and not moving. The check engine light was on again, too.
I did a full module scan. What I’m getting is “Engine Oil Pressure Sensor/Switch “A” High. Five times.
Looking into more detail, the scanner tells me this code frequency is “very common”. The recommended fix is to replace the engine oil pressure sensor.
Which got replaced not that long ago. Unless “switch A” is a different sensor.
I took screen captures of the results. When I’m somewhere with enough data signal to send images through text, I’ll send them to the garage.
Otherwise, the truck sounded just fine. In fact, now that the MAF sensor has been replaced, I do hear an improvement in how it starts, when using the remote car starter. Definitely smoother. I’d checked the oil yesterday, and it was fine, too.
Phew.
This post took a lot longer – and became a lot longer – than I expected!
As of right now, I’m basically just waiting for my brother to arrive and will accompany him to the ejector.
My brother is the best. So is his wife! I am so glad my mother transferred ownership of the property over to them. I don’t know what we’d do without them!
I counted 11 while I was taking the photo. It’s hard to tell, with all the reflections. Altogether, I think I counted 32 cats this morning. They were running around so much, it was hard to keep track of which ones I’d already counted.
Last night, my husband glanced out the bathroom window and saw the heat lamp was out. I went to check and found the cats have managed to knock the plug loose out of the power bar.
While there, I realized there was a cat using the heated water bowl as a butt warmer.
Even though I’d given them an early feeding so I could park the truck, they were out of both food and water! Even the broken heated water bowl we replaced, which had been full of ice and slowly melting, was down to just dregs. So I gave them another feeding, then rinsed out and filled the water bowls.
This morning, the water bowls were all empty again! Well. Except we have two outside that aren’t heated, so they were just solid ice. Both are in shade, so they never melted with the warmer temperatures. The cats were more interested in the water than the food!
I just got back from doing the evening rounds. We’re still at our predicted high of -3C/27F, but it’s so lovely and sunny out there, any ice and snow still on the sidewalk blocks are melting. The cats are just loving it. I think I counted 29. They needed their water bowls topped up again, too, though at least they weren’t completely out, this time.
With the warmer weather, I’ve actually seen a couple of visitors in the sun room on the critter cam. Once, a skunk, and another time, a single massive racoon. Hopefully, they won’t be visiting more often, and will stay in their hiding places when the temperatures drop again!
Overall, though, it’s been a home day for me, and I’m quite happy to not have to go anywhere. I might make a quick trip into town tomorrow, though, to get the last couple of things I wasn’t able to get on the stock up trip, and check the mail. The strikers might be back at work, but we’re still missing mail. At least my husband got his bloodwork requisition, even though we can’t do anything about it until after the holidays.
In other things, I got to see the first files from the new solar powered trail cam. I am quite happy with it. I won’t need to move the stand it’s one, for starters. I will probably need to reduce the resolution and motion sensitivity, though. I have it set to take a photo, then a short video, just like the camera it replaced. I was amazed by how well it picked up audio! With the other camera, it would have a recording of me right next to it, talking to a cat or something, and barely pick up sound. This thing’s microphone is so sensitive, I could hear the sounds made by the chain and sliding bar when unlocking and opening the gate, some 30 feet away!
We shall see how it holds up when the temperatures drop, though. That’s always the litmus test for the cameras!
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.
The power is back on again, and stayed on long enough that I turned my computer back on and will try posting this.
We’ve got another brutally cold morning. While doing the morning routine, after feeding the cats, I took the litter buckets out to their compost pile behind the outhouse. They had been in the old kitchen, which is not heated. I couldn’t empty them completely, because of the damp sawdust frozen to the sides of the buckets! Normally, I’d knock the buckets against a tree, but I didn’t want to shatter the plastic.
By the time I got back inside, it had warmed up to -25C/-13F, with a wind chill of -34C/-29F. I just checked again now, and I have three different weather apps telling me three different temperatures! I’ve got one saying it’s -24C/-11F, another saying we’re still at -25C/-13F, and another saying we are at -26C/-15F. Only two of them give me wind chills, with one saying -30C/-22F, and another saying -33C/-27F
I was supposed to pick up our beef share today, but I had already tried to reschedule last night, on seeing the temperatures expected for today. We haven’t replaced the cord on our block heater yet, so I don’t want to try driving the truck. It’s not cold enough to crack the engine block (yes, we’ve had that happen before), but I still would rather not take any chances.
With there being power issues today as well, that’s even more reason to stay home.
In the second photo of the above slide show, you can see the ice and frost accumulated on the inner door of our main entry. There’s frost on the bottom, too.
The next photo shows Caramel in the bigger cat bed inside the shelf shelter, with frost on her face. She could go into the sun room (the thermometer on the wall was reading -15C/5F), or the heated cat house, but she chose the shelf shelter.
In the next photo, you can see that even Kohl has frost on her face! The other fluffball didn’t have any frost on him at all. The insides of the windows were frosted, though. Even the heated water bowl was starting to show ice freezing near the top. After giving them their wet cat food, I scooped out most of their water bowl (the power cord is wrapped around the support on the top, so I can’t take it very far out of the shelter to spill it out) and replace it with warm water.
I noticed a corner of the plastic wrapped around the bottom was coming loose. When I checked it, I found that cats had pulled the plastic down, all along the back of the isolation shelter. So I got a cardboard box and opened one corner, to make one long, flat piece. Three sections were just long enough to cover the entire back, with one section was enough to cover the side of the shelter. I quickly tacked the cardboard in place, but after taking the picture, which is the last one in the slide show, I secured it a bit better and bent the flap, so it wasn’t overlapping the sliding door.
The water bowl in the sun room was frozen solid. It was also completely full. Normally, it just top it off with the warm water, which melts through the layer of ice to reach liquid water below, but that was not going to happen. I ended up taking it outside and chopped the ice out with a hatchet, being careful not to hit the bowl itself. The heated water bowl in the water shelter is still working fine, so they at least had that.
There was still quite a lot of kibble in the outside food trays. No surprise there, really. They would have had to be incredibly hungry to go out there in last night’s cold for food! I know for sure we hit -29C/-20C before I’d gone to bed last night.
With the power going out, we needed to keep tabs on how long it was out. With the heat lamp in the isolation shelter off, it would get dangerously cold in a very short time, and it would be hard for two small cats to keep each other warm, even with the cat bed in the most insulated corner. The cardboard would have helped some, but not enough. We would have had to take them out to join the other cats in their cuddle puddles to stay warm, as there is no way we can bring them inside the house.
Thankfully, the power seems to be staying on, now.
It did get me thinking of alternatives.
If we really needed to, we could use the fire bricks we’ve bee slowly accumulating for our future outdoor kitchen to create a radiant heater in the isolation shelter. A brick or two on the second level floor, more bricks to form a wall around, tea lights inside, and bricks on top to make sure no kitty could touch the flames. The bricks themselves would absorb heat and continue to radiate heat out, even after the candles burned out. For a small space like that, it could work.
We have the ability to do things like cook if the power goes out, but that’s all outside. With temperatures like today, it just wouldn’t be feasible.
Another reason to put a priority on building the outdoor kitchen. Even if we just had the structure up, it would give us a sheltered space for a fire pit to cook over. I’d love to find a way to have it closer to the house, but there just isn’t a good space in the inner yard for that. Too many trees and other structures. As it is, we’ve changed our minds on the outer yard location a few times before settling on the space between the pump shack and the old chicken coop.
Things to think about!
In other things…
I was so happy to get that call from the new pain clinic. They have just opened recently, and my husband’s new doctor had referred him to it already. They needed to send him a questionnaire, which they normally would have mailed, but the postal strike is still going. So they wanted an email address to send it to, instead.
This is why having a corded phone on a land line is still important. We don’t get enough signal to get phone calls on our cell phones – I’m amazed I was able to make my earlier post, with how poor our signal was at the time. Far less signal strength is needed to send things in text, thankfully. At least there was a signal. Usually, there’s nothing.
Hmmm… I’m going to try something here. My current computer with the current OS has features my old one didn’t. One of those is the ability to do a video screen capture. Check this out…
This is the animated weather on my desktop app. From the colours, you can see that large swaths of Canada and the US are as cold as, or almost as cold as, the Greenland glaciers!
Thankfully, days like this will apparently be few and far between, this winter. We’ll have some cold days in the week before Christmas, but the long range forecast is now saying to expect 3C/37F on Christmas Eve, 1C/34F on Christmas Day, and 5C/41F on Boxing Day! Then stay with highs above freezing, through to New Year’s Eve!
Of course, I expect those forecasts to change, but so far, we’re not going to be getting weather like today very often. Quite the change from our first couple of winters here, when we saw entire months much like what we’re getting right now.
Funny. As I get older, I’m finding I can handle the cold a lot better than I used to, physically – but mentally, it’s the other way around!
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 swear, it was more hectic as soon as I got home than with the running around I did earlier!
The Cat Lady and I met up after I dropped the cats off at the vet, then had breakfast at McRaunchies at the Walmart. She started handing me things for the back of the truck.
The big reusable bag, the cat bed, the small bags of cat food under it, and the big bag on the other side, are all from the Cat Lady. These are all things she can no longer feed her own cats, because it all has chicken in it, and The Wolfman keeps steeling into it, even though they give him things like freshly baked salmon way too often. There are five small bags under the cat bed. They are some fancy type of cat food – she described it as a prescription cat food, though the bags say senior cat on them – that normally cost $60 each. *gasp* She got them at half price, which is still insane. She warned me that this kibble really stinks. It’s a herring and chicken blend, so it’s likely the fish smell, she says. The cat bed is one her cats have stopped using for some reason, so she passed it on to us.
I am more than happy to take her cast offs!!
The other two bags were donated by a friend of hers for us. She’d never seen the brand before, so she couldn’t tell me anything about it.
After we loaded up the truck box, parted ways. I headed to the Dollarama to get new vinyl to repair the catio covering and things I thought might help hold it in place better – and some spring cat toys.
Then it was off to the Walmart to get some stuff my husband asked for. I also got myself a pair of slipper shoes. I’ve been trying to replace my inside shoes for ages, and can’t find any that are as comfortable as the old ones. So I tried the men’s slippers. I wasn’t able to try them on, but I got some size 9’s – the size I usually get – that were indoor/outdoor with memory foam insoles. I figured, if they didn’t fit, my daughter/s would have some new inside shoes.
I would have looked around for other things, but so many people were blocking the aisles, I gave up, paid for my stuff and left.
I still had time, so I drove across the street to the Canadian Tire to hang out there. Usually, I would have just stayed in the truck and napped, but it was too cold.
I did remember to pick up a carabiner for the isolation shelter latch, and a windshield fluid funnel for the truck. I was able to pay for it with change. I’m glad I had some, because I wouldn’t have wanted to make such a small purchase on my debit card! 😄
I did almost buy myself a new winter “going out” coat. I found a display of nice parkas on clearance that were very affordable. Alas, it was not to be. Being built like a tank has its disadvantages. I found an XXL to try on, and it mostly fit, until I tried to move my arms. My shoulders were too broad for it, and they didn’t have any bigger sizes.
Ah, well.
I still had time and it was coming up on noon, so I headed over to a nearby Timmies for lunch. For my readers outside of Canada, Tim Horton’s, aka: Timmies, is an iconic Canadian coffee and donut shop, though I don’t think they are Canadian owned anymore. Tim Horton was a hockey player. Today, they now do all sorts of sandwiches, soups and so on, as well as coffee and donuts.
Until yesterday, when my daughter and I went to one for breakfast, I hadn’t been to one in ages.
My daughter worked at the local one for awhile. She ended up quitting because of the health and safety violations from one employee. When she made a complaint to the manager, she was the one who got in trouble. After seeing more health violations by this employee that got ignored, she quit. She later got a job at the pharmacy across the street. During her interview, she told them why she’d quit her last job. The manager that was interviewing her just nodded and told her, that manager was gone.
The problem employee, however, wasn’t, yet.
We don’t go to that location at all anymore.
Then the illegal lockdowns and mandates happened and the entire franchise went full gestapo, right down to the physical assault of patrons.
I would rather have gone somewhere else, but it was either Timmie’s or back to McRaunchies. I do like their chili. A nice, thick, robust chili that is low on spice heat, so it’s something I can actually eat, served with a generously sized baguette style bun. I figured I would have chili for lunch.
It was quite the disappointment. It wasn’t chili. It was soup. I ended up literally drinking it out of the cup, because I could barely get anything with the wooden spoon they now provide. The bun was half the size, too. Meanwhile, the price was higher than it used to be, too.
Ah, well. At least the Boston Creme I also got was still tasty! A donut used to be part of the meal deal, but I had to order it separately.
I should have gone back to McRaunchies.
At this point, I still hadn’t heard from the vet clinic, but I figured I would be hearing from them soon, so I decided to go back and stay in their waiting room until the cats were ready to go home.
When I got there and told the receptionist which cats I was waiting for, she went to check their status for me.
They were ready!
It turned out, they had tried to phone me and left messages, but I never got a call. I had given my cell phone number before I left earlier, and asked what number they had.
One digit was wrong.
Someone out there must be getting some very confusing messages on their voice mail! This happened last time, too. I will need to take extra care in enunciation when I gave them my cell phone number in the future.
I’m told the kittens both did really well. They got their spay and neuter, basic vaccinations, tattoos and treatment for ear mites.
Since the rescue was covering the cost of this, they had to call the Cat Lady before they could release the cats, and then I was on my way.
Once they were loaded up, it was straight home. I’d already arranged for my daughter to take care of getting the isolation shelter ready, making sure the food and water was topped up, the litter box was good, moving the entry box and closing the ramp door so that there would not be other cats in it. She had to use the bricks that were under the entry box to keep the ramp door closed, though, until I could get the carabiner on the latch.
When I got home, I backed the truck up to the house, then dashed inside for a quick bathroom break while my daughter headed to the truck to get the carriers out.
When I got back to help her, I discovered she had slipped and falling, landing hard on one knee, on the concrete.
She is now walking with a cane again, because of it!
😢😢
As for getting the cats in, we used one of the sliding doors on the second level. I tossed in a couple of the spring toys for them, first.
Kohl was easy to do; she let me pick her up and cuddle her a moment before I put her on the shelf board with the sheet of insulation on it. She promptly loafed on the insulation and stayed there.
The fluffball – we still haven’t named him – wouldn’t let me take him out of the carrier, though, so my daughter just brought it up to the open window in the second level and opened the carrier door. He dashed right in, then down to the lower level and tried to get out!
My daughter took the carriers in while I unloaded the truck. Kohl stayed calm, but the poor male was having panic attacks, in between stopping to eat a bit. He really wanted out.
With the stuff brought inside, I fed the rest of the outside cats early to occupy them, so that I could safely drive the truck out of the yard and park it in the garage. When I came back, I grabbed a can of wet cat food and added it to the food bowl in the isolation shelter. While they are in isolation, they will get to enjoy wet cat food, since we know it won’t freeze in there. Hopefully, that will help socialize the male.
In between things, I took the new cat bed and set it on my bed next to our elderly Freya, who was asleep on one of my pillows. I came back a few minutes later and found this.
There are three cases of 24 cans from the Cat Lady – plus the 6 I used to make cat soup. There were also two big containers of treats. Made with Real Chicken! There’s another case of 12 same size cans from her friend, plus I think 9 of the big cans. There are also 3 boxes. They are labelled duck paté, but also as “sensitive” and as grain free. The boxes look like they should have liquid in them, though, not paté. I’m curious to find out what these are!
There were also three more bags of kibble hidden under the cans, the same size as the five small bags of kibble from the Cat Lady.
I’ve looked up the brand for most of these, and it looks like they are the house brand of a specific pet store franchise, which would explain why neither the Cat Lady nor I were familiar with it.
After I got all the cat stuff done, I finally settled down to try on the new slipper shoes I bought.
My daughter now has new indoor shoes.
I couldn’t even get my feet into them! I do usually get size 9 men’s shoes – in triple wide. These were NOT triple wide. *sigh*
Then I remembered that, since I had cats in the truck, I hadn’t stopped to close the driveway gate behind me, so I bundled up and took care of that. On the way back, I got a couple of pictures.
The entry box is just off to the side, and as you can see, it’s also being used as a shelter, even though it’s completely open at the back!
A lot of cats were trying to get into the shelter. Some of them had gotten used to being able to stay in there. Unfortunately, we can’t be letting other cats in and out when we have one that needs to recover. The fluffball male could probably be let out, but then Kohl would be in there by herself, and that would not be good. The male does seem to be calming down and only panics a bit and tries to get out when the house door opens and startles him. If you click through to the next picture, you can see that Kohl is still quite content to just loaf on the insulated shelf!
So the isolation shelter is getting its first test run. So far, it seems to be holding well, though it already looks like cats have tried to claw their way in from the outside! The vinyl on one corner at the back is tattered a bit. Not that they can get through the wire, but they may be trying to reach the window. They know it opens.
As I write this, we are at -16C/3F. The wind chill is -33C/-27F, but with the plastic around the bottom, that should have little effect inside the isolation shelter. The vinyl wrapped around the lower level should keep the wind out. They have the heat lamp, two cat beds to curl up in, one on each level, plus the insulated box “nest” under the shelf. Even the heated water bowl would add some warmth to the upper level. Some wind might get through the spaces between the boards of the ramp door, but this will make sure they get some fresh air coming in. With colder air coming in from the bottom, and warm air escaping through the gaps around the sliding windows and the space in the insulation ceiling the extension cord runs through, there should be decent air circulation in there, while still being warm.
Our temperatures are supposed to go up overnight, and keep going up for our daytime highs. Our forecast for Saturday is now a high of 4C/39F. It’s expected to slowly drop after that until we get a sharp drop on Wednesday, which is supposed to have a high of -20C/-4F, though the overnight low is supposed to be just a few degrees colder.
The long term forecast has changed and, while we are still supposed to reach highs above freezing in the week before Christmas, the overnight lows around Christmas and Boxing Day are expected to dip below -30C/-22F. 🥶 The cats will no longer need to be isolated well before then, so they will be able to join cuddle puddles in various heated areas by then.
Of course, the forecast is different pretty much every time I check it, so we’ll see how things actually go. I just want things to stay mild during their isolation period!
Meanwhile, tomorrow I will finally be able to do my Costco shopping. December is a weird month for my husband’s disability payments, though, and it comes in before Christmas instead of at the end of the month. Usually, that has meant us doing our Christmas/New Year’s shopping and January stock up shopping at the same time. This trip is so much later in the month than usual, I might be able to do most of that tomorrow, but we’ll see.
The less time spent shopping, this time of year, the better. I’d hibernate all winter, if I could! I don’t like shopping and I don’t like crowds at the best of times, never mind with holiday crowds and winter driving! Even just today, by the time I got home, I found the donated canned cat food I used to make the cat soup had started to freeze!
Ah, well. It is what it is. No point complaining about it! 😁
As for me, I didn’t get much sleep last night and had to get up extra early, so I am more than ready to go to bed early tonight!
Who am I kidding. I’ll probably be lucky to get to bed before midnight, anyhow! 😄😄
The Re-Farmer 