Corner of Bourbon & Division

Today has been A Day, and I still have to go to work in about five hours. *falls over* 

I cleaned out all the quail enclosures today, as I had been doing only very basic maintenance since getting Covid, and they were pretty gross. The quails deserve a nice clean environment to live in, after all. I also noticed that the quarantine box in which I was keeping my lone male was disintegrating because of the water spilling out of his water dish. The cardboard had softened without my noticing before, and last night I saw that the box was sagging to one side, and the mesh over the "window" in the front was gaping badly.

So today I cut a hole in a new box, lined it with duct tape and plastic, and cut a new window in it so the poor birb isn't just completely in the dark. I couldn't leave him in the old box while I transferred the mesh over, however, so I decided to stick him in for a couple of minutes with the other quail. How bad could it be? I thought. He'll only be in there long enough for me to attach the mesh to the new box. HAH. No sooner had his feet touched the pine chips on the floor of the enclosure, he immediately sprang onto the nearest female, grabbed a bunch of feathers at the base of her head and swung himself onto her back like a cowboy at a rodeo. He was VERY rough with her, and she bucked him off, so he immediately did the same thing to the next closest female. A third female then flew at him and started pecking at him pretty viciously, so I reached in and pulled him out and put him in a bucket while I worked.

Good Lord and butter!

At least now I know that he is, in fact, the problem bird in the bunch. The other male is very gentle with the ladies: all their feathers are growing back, they're all laying consistently every day, and they all like to hang out and tweedle softly together, whereas the first male has been screaming intermittently for the past couple of days. So once I am done with my night shifts he will be turned into dinner. Only gentleman birbs get to hang out with my ladies! Everyone else gets to be eaten.

I then sent my resume to the recruiter who'd asked for it, and then it was time to gather all the pets to take them to the vet for their annual shots. I want to say it went smoothly, but that would be a lie. First off, Octavia decided to hide in the walls and refused to come out. I was able to get Juno in her carrier, and then the dogs freaked the fuck out, because CAAAAAAAAT! I wrangled all three into KK's car and got them to the vet, figuring I would just reschedule Octavia for another day.

Once at the vet, the dogs got their shots, and KK messaged me to tell me that Octavia had graced the living room with her presence. I asked her to put Octavia in her kennel and arranged to leave Juno at the vet's while I drove the dogs home and picked up my truant cat. When I got back, the vet had some very bad news for me: namely, that Juno had lost a lot of weight and that it was very likely due to her teeth rotting in her head. One canine was so loose they were able to just yank it out then and there with no issue, and her other canine is super loose as well. When the vet examined Octavia, he found a really similar problem. So both cats need dental surgery ASAP, and I booked them in for May 28th, which is TWO DAYS before we're meant to move. But honestly, they are in pain and not eating, and I don't want to wait any longer than I have to, especially since I don't know what the vet care situation is in Maxville. There is a veterinary clinic there (I used to take my pets there when I first moved to Ottawa) but I don't know if they're taking new patients, and immediate dental surgery might be a stretch even for them.

So for now we're switching them to wet food until after the surgery, and then we'll see if they can have kibble after that still or if they'll need to be on soft food for the rest of their lives.

I came home just in time to have a Zoom call with my parents, which I totally forgot about until they called me to ask where I was. OOPS. My parents, as usual, immediately told me I should euthanize the cats rather than spend money on surgery for them. My parents are delightful that way. Then my mother asked me how much this "joke" was going to cost me, and when I asked her what "joke" she meant, she listed the number of pets I have (two cats, two dogs). I understand that they are worried about my finances, but fucking hell, it would be nice if they eased up a little. It's not like I'm not going to deny veterinary care to my pets, and I will only give up my pets as a very last resort. 

Anyway, apart from that little unpleasantness, we had a nice, if brief chat. Now it's time for me to go get some dinner, and hopefully have a nap and a shower before work.

*falls over*

The quail hadn't laid any eggs yesterday when I checked on them, but clearly they got busy afterward because I got five eggs when I checked this evening before going to work! This is exciting news because it means the third lady quail is probably getting in on the action as well now. I think tomorrow night it will be omelette time. Om nom nom.

The night shifts are going by kind of slowly, and I have a headache tonight that the paranoid part of me is trying to convince me is the beginning of Covid. I forgot to call my parents yesterday evening and I feel kind of shitty about that. It was 10pm when I remembered, and I didn't want to risk waking them if they were asleep. They are notorious for going to bed much later than me normally, but this week it wouldn't surprise me if they were trying to get to sleep much earlier than usual. I hope they're doing okay. I'll probably call them when I get out of work tomorrow morning, maybe around 8:30 or so.

I won't be getting much sleep tomorrow anyway. KK has asked me to drive her to the hospital because she has an endoscopy at 9:00 that she has to be sedated for, so she is not allowed to drive herself back from the appointment. So that means I won't be getting to sleep until at 11:00 at the earliest and more likely noon. Normally that would be fine, and I'd just sleep until 8:00pm, but I also committed to a phone call at 4:00pm that I don't want to miss or reschedule.

I think I mentioned that I'd started looking for my birth parents last year, right? Anyway, my birth mother wasn't super keen on staying in touch after a few emails, which I understand, even if I'm a little disappointed that I won't get to know her any better. At least I got some answers to the questions I had, and that's good enough for me. I actually found a 2nd cousin through ancestry.ca, Cousin Karen, and she is VERY invested in helping me find all of my birth relatives. She and I are Facebook friends now and chat pretty regularly. She seems super nice. So, once I learned the identity of my birth father and, more importantly, his parents, she was finally able to pinpoint how we were related (we share a grandmother on my paternal side). The social worker on my file wasn't able to locate my birth father, but Cousin Karen is apparently far more resourceful. She recruited Cousin Suzie and they found him on Facebook under an alias (the way many people don't use their full name on Facebook, it's nothing nefarious). So I relayed this information to my social worker, she got in touch with him, and he is open to communicating with me.

I will confess to creeping on his Facebook beforehand, to get a sense of who he is these days. My birth mother had explained to me that he was very emotionally abusive with her, and basically abandoned her to be homeless during her pregnancy. He adamantly didn't want children, and she says he gave her an ultimatum: him or the baby. Since she didn't have a job or a place to live, I was a medically very fragile baby, and she wasn't ready to divorce him (they were married), so she gave me up for adoption. So, you know, he sounds like he was a world-class asshole.

His online presence has led me to believe he may have changed for the better over the years. Very shortly after he and my birth mother split up he met another woman (name unknown to me) and they remained together until her death last year, by the looks of it. He also became a registered social worker after, I assume, giving up on his dreams of going to acting school. He doesn't post much that's very personal, but then again, neither do I on social media, but his politics appear to be very left-leaning.

The social worker gave me his cell phone number, and he and I texted briefly today and agreed to talk tomorrow afternoon. Well, technically this afternoon now, since it's well past midnight. I'm very interested to hear his version of events, to see what kind of accountability he's willing to take, what work he's done on himself, and to learn if he's ever attempted to make amends, or what. He may have done a lot or nothing at all, but I'm interested to know.

Anyway, yeah, it has been a week, and we're not even done yet!

I'm going to go heat my "lunch" and wait for this shift to finally end in a few hours. Catch you on the flip side, friends!

The day started out quite promising. I was up in time to get out the door for my appointment. KK, however, slept through her alarm and therefore didn't go to the office today, and worked from home instead. Luckily her job doesn't require her to be at the office to perform her duties, and she has come to a tentative truce with her manager about letting her work from home a bit more in order to manage her pain levels better. She had intended to go in today, but the weather change combined with the natural end of the effects of the injections she got in January (it's a special lubricant thing, I think, but I don't know what it's called) have been wreaking havoc on her lately.

The doctor ran 15 minutes late for our appointment, but the appointment itself lasted for maybe five minutes, tops. The doctor confirmed what I already knew, and performed a fairly perfunctory exam of my lungs and throat. Apparently my throat and neck structure are "built for apnea," with an extremely narrow pharyngeal opening, and it seems that still having my tonsils contributes to that, or so I gathered. He wrote me a prescription for a CPAP, and cheerfully told me that about 50% of his patients reported feeling better after CPAP therapy. Not gonna lie, I found that a little disheartening. A 50/50 chance of still feeling like absolute garbage. Boo. I asked if there was perhaps a commonality between the people who did feel better after using a CPAP, and it turns out it works best for people who experience the apnea during REM sleep, which is exactly when I experience it! So I am a little encouraged by that.

Anyway, I called the local CPAP supply place nearest to my house as soon as I left the appointment, and then realized that they were still closed. I called a few more times while I was driving home (using Bluetooth, have no fear), and got no answer. Since it's a literal five minute drive from my home I decided to just go there directly and ask in person, and it worked! I spoke to a nice lady at the counter, and she said they could see me next Tuesday at 1pm. That's not ideal, since I'm working night shifts next week, and an appointment right in the middle of when I would normally be sleeping sounds kind of awful, but I was willing to take it if it was the earliest available one. I pulled out my now tried-and-true "do you have a cancellation list?" card, and she promised she'd let me know, but that their provider was actually only in three days a week since they were "in-between." I had to ask in-between what, since surely there can't be an apnea season, or whatever, and it turns out she meant they're in-between providers, so I guess they just have one person covering multiple locations.

I thanked her, left, got in my car, and hadn't even pulled out of the parking lot when she called me to let me know she could fit me in tomorrow, with an array of time slots, no less! I'm guessing that the provider added a day to the calendar right as I was leaving. So I am getting in tomorrow afternoon at 3pm, which was the latest I could get. I'm working 7 to 3 tomorrow, so I wanted to lose as little work time as possible, given that I had to take nearly two hours off today as well. But the good news is that as of tomorrow afternoon I will likely be coming home with a CPAP to trial for the next three to four weeks! I am VERY excited to get this going. One more (more) sleep!

I was scheduled to work from home the rest of the day, and spent most of that time fighting with Outlook, which has decided it doesn't want to send emails anymore. They just hang out in the inbox and refuse to go anywhere, which is extremely inconvenient. Grr.

Then, right when I was about to get dinner started, all hell broke loose in the house. For some reason, Juno decided to be Very Brave and came downstairs while the Brittanies were loose. The dogs immediately lost their collective shit and took off after her. There was barking and shrieking and growling and hissing, and a million things got knocked around as they proceeded to trash the fuck out of my house. By the time I caught up with them (less than a minute) Pixie had Juno in her mouth and was using her as a chew toy. She let go as I arrived, and she and Peggy took up sentry positions on the stairs, so that they would have easy access to Juno if I tried to carry her up the stairs. Poor Juno was soaked in her own urine, and so all of that got transferred onto me as I picked her up and sent her to the basement for temporary safety. Then a a few minutes later Pixie busted through the baby gate to the basement, and there was another round of me chasing her around. Luckily Juno was well hidden, so at least the only thing to do was chase her back up the stairs. 

So then I took a very long, very hot shower. To quote a D&D character of a friend I play with: "Never clean! NEVER CLEAN!" And THEN I made dinner. While I was brushing the dogs' teeth, I noticed that Pixie absolutely reeked of cat pee, so I took her upstairs and gave her a bath, much to her consternation. KK had already mentioned she smelled and had tried to scrub her down with some dog wipes, but they were unequal to the task. Pixie does NOT enjoy the non-consensual wetnesses, specifically she hates being in the rain and also being rinsed, so there was a lot of screaming and carrying on. My poor neighbours must think I routinely torture my dogs, based solely on the sounds that Pixie produces. Jeez.

Anyway, Juno is none the worse for wear after I gave her a more thorough going-over a few minutes ago to check for injuries. Pixie is now clean, and I got absolutely soaked, but I am calling it a win. I have changed the quails' food and water, and they gave me another egg! Luckily I always keep the laundry room door closed, so they were undisturbed by the earlier cat-and-dog antics. I did notice one of the males pecking at the other birds, and I don't like that at all. If he continues to be aggressive he may have to be separated from the others for their well-being. Time will tell, I guess. I will definitely hold off on drastic measures like culling until I get them into larger quarters when we move, since this might just be due to the quail being in slightly too close quarters to each other. But yes, if he keeps it up longer than that he may well end up being dinner one night.

All right. Time for bed. I need to be up at stupid o'clock tomorrow to be at work on time. Catch you on the flip side, friends!

I overslept this morning for the first time in a very long time. I've been waking up anywhere between 4:30 and 7:30 am for the last three weeks or so, and because I've often had external commitments of various kinds, I've been crowbarring myself out of bed almost immediately and just getting on with my day. Today was the first day in all that time that I didn't have an immediate reason to get up, and so my brain took that as a sign that I should just sleep until 10:30. By the time I showered and got dressed and got the dogs organized, it was nearly 11:30 (I know, poor dogs, but they forgave me).

KK wanted to go to City Hall today for our Solemn Declarations, so we hopped in the car almost immediately and drove off. I suppose I should explain, because I haven't properly done it before except in bits and bobs here and there, and never completely. Because people have asked: no, KK and I are not romantic partners (she is lamentably straight, but also not the type I would be romantically attracted to anyway), but we have decided to become common-law spouses. We're forming a weird little family unit because we are compatible in every other way and are basically Platonic Life Partners™ at this  point. Neither one of us has any plans to move out, we share all the household expenses, and it just makes sense. So the Solemn Declaration is to officially inform the Federal Government of our marital status, and it's for the purposes of estate planning so that we each get to be the other's beneficiary for the federal pension after we retire.

I got home, and somehow the day kind of frittered away, and the next thing I knew it was time to get dinner started. I had ordered a little chick feeder and waterer for the quail, and the package came during dinner, so after dinner I checked on the quail and changed out their entire litter, since I'd decided to stop separating the males and the hens today (they kept jumping over the barrier to visit with each other anyway). The feeder and waterer are smaller than I'd like, so I may order a second set depending on how quickly they go through the food and water in a day. I will check the levels tomorrow and go from there. I also got another egg today! I initially thought there was nothing, but it turned out one was buried in their bedding, so clearly one of the ladies is feeling pretty relaxed and productive.

I didn't get any packing done today. I am honestly feeling a little overwhelmed, and the overwhelm is leading to paralysis, but this is a terrible idea for packing up the house. I don't have the time, energy, or stamina to do a last-minute packing rush in, say, the last 10 days to a week before the move. There's just too much to do. I'm going to have to find a way to snap myself out of the overwhelm. If I can pack at least three boxes a day, then that will keep things on track for me to move around May 28th, but that will require me to actually DO that, and so far I am batting zero. Ugh.

Actually, that reminds me of a cute flow chart I saw the other day that went sort of like this: This task feels too overwhelming ---> I will break it down into smaller steps ---> I have too many tasks and now I feel overwhelmed ---> I will consolidate them into one task ---> This task feels too overwhelming.

The struggle is real, what can I say?

Okay. Time for bed. Catch you on the flip side, friends!

Everything is settled about the house purchase except for the infamous desktop appraisal, and of course everything hinges on that. If it doesn't come back in my favour that may scuttle my chances of purchasing the home entirely. Given how late it is today, I doubt I'll hear back before tomorrow. The deadline is tomorrow at the end of the day (either end of business or 8pm, my real estate agent couldn't remember which), but the external company isn't obligated to stick to my deadline, because it's more of a me problem than a them problem. My only role is to pay them money, it would seem, and keep my fingers crossed that they provide an answer in time (and really hope it works out in my favour).

So I just have to wait for another 24 hours. God, I hate waiting so much, especially for big things like this. I am really bad at uncertainty.

There was a mix-up at the hair salon with my online reservation for an appointment, so I will have to continue dealing with my hair looking like someone took a weed whacker to it for a few more weeks at least. Boo. I suppose it's not a bad thing, since I have spent most of my available money on house hunting stuff.

What they don't tell you when you're buying a house is just how many extra expenses there are before, during, and right after the purchase. There's a deposit for the house (not the same as a down payment) to provide along with an accepted offer, building inspectors, surprise desktop appraisals, then the actual purchase of the home, lawyers' fees, closing costs, moving costs, the welcome tax, and then a score of smaller costs as you try to fill in the gaps in equipment needed for the maintenance of your home.

Anyway, today was a reasonably productive day. I got up at a halfway reasonable hour in order to get out to a local feed store to get quail feed and suitable bedding in the form of pine chips. The quail are very happy with their new bedding, and are just as enthusiastic about the new food as they were about the old food, so it's hard to say if they like it the same or more. I also got them a small lamp with a bulb that mimics daylight, and KK pulled out an extra timer she had in her room, so now the quail can get a lot more light during the day, and a little bit of light even if I forget to turn on the main overhead light (or oversleep one day). I'm glad I have them settled in with more appropriate food: quail need more protein than you typically get in chicken layer feed, so I didn't want to keep them waiting longer than absolutely necessary. They are super cute, and a lot more active now that they've had a chance to settle in. I hope to get some eggs once all the stress they underwent for the auction and subsequent move to my house goes away.

In related news, I will require supervision the next time I go to Ritchie's Feed & Seed Garden Centre. There is everything there that an aspiring homesteader could want, including beginner bee hives! I just got the quail, so even if we do get the property I won't be adding any new livestock to the equation until I'm confident I can adequately care for the animals I have, even on a bad day. The bad days have to be my bar, not my good days, because even on a bad day all the animals will need to be fed and watered and potentially have their living spaces cleared out, so I have to be absolutely sure they won't be neglected. That being said, I have a long list of critters I'd like to get, supposing that we're able to purchase this property. Probably more than I would ever be able to manage, but my goodness I want them. XD

I am still spectacularly tired. I've had next to no break for two weeks now, because I scheduled the professional organizer in on all my days off last week, and then I had the bird auction and other sundries on Saturday, and yesterday of course was the mostly impromptu trip to Montreal. So I've had some very long and very busy days. The plan is to go to bed as early as possible tonight to try to get myself back on track, sleep-wise. I'm going to my follow-up appointment for the sleep study in exactly one week, which is pretty exciting. I am hopeful there will be better quality sleep and therefore more energy and better health really soon!

If the house purchase goes through (and it's anybody's guess at this point, because house valuations are 100% arbitrary), then I will be spending the rest of the week making a packing plan, getting some packing supplies, and starting the packing process. We'll only have 60 days to downsize a lot of stuff from the house (and I'm guessing it will be mostly my stuff because KK doesn't like parting from her things) and pack up the rest of it, and given KK's physical limitations I think it's a safe bet that I will be doing most of the downsizing and packing. I do plan on keeping all the receipts for moving supplies and asking her to chip in for about half, and I do expect her to do her own packing when it comes to her bedroom and her office space. I think it's only fair she do that if I'm going to be packing up the entire rest of the house.

Okay, that's it for today. Time to get myself to bed. Good night, friends!

 I spent another day cuddling with Peggy on the sofa. She spent a good chunk of it blissed out, which was nice for both of us. We just chilled out, and now it's not even 8pm and I am in pajamas and in bed, ready to call it an early night before work tomorrow. Truly, my life is a wild rollercoaster of excitement. ;)

I am going to get her started on training again, and with that in mind I contacted her trainer today. He suggested that I leave her with him during the week while I'm at work and come get her on weekends, like a boarding school, and I am giving it some serious thought. With my 9-5 schedule I haven't been able to take her out for really long runs on weekdays the way I used to--mostly because I actually have been working more like 8-6--and while before I was able to take her out in the very early mornings it's now too dark to see if we go to our usual places for runs. If I leave her with her trainer she'll get to run free every single day and work on her training (obedience, recall, fetch, etc.), and then spend weekends with me. Part of me feels really guilty because I'm "supposed" to be taking her for runs every day and outsourcing it to someone else feels like a shortcut and laziness, but since I'm not likely to start working shorter hours and I want her to get the exercise and training she needs, this is a good solution for now.

A small but really neat opportunity fell into my lap today. A woman I met this summer who owns a farm about 45 minutes outside of Ottawa put out a call for someone to come help clear and plant some farmland on her property. It would be an exchange of labour for harvest, basically, and an opportunity for me to learn and practice skills I will need if I ever manage to get my own property (which is looking unlikely in the current market, but whatever). She's a farmer but she also gives workshops and teaches all sorts of skills (butchering, seed saving, all that jazz), so I am seizing the opportunity while it's there. This is a good way for me to do it, because having some external accountability will make me far more likely to get up off my butt on the weekends than if I were to, say, get a plot in a community garden. I am very bad at task initiation, especially when it is a "complex" task like "get up on time, get dressed, have breakfast, organize the pets, pull together your supplies, get in the car, go to the place, do the thing at the place" and the only person impacted is me. I have learned from experience that I often will stall out on that and just stay in my nice comfy house. Having a commitment to another person who will be depending on me to do this work is going to be a pretty good motivator, I think.

On that note, it is time for bed. More tomorrow. :)

The Five Year Plan is looking a little shaky tonight. I did some very inexpert number crunching, and the numbers are depressing. For the kind of mortgage I'm looking for I'd have to come up with a down payment of at least $30K. $20K is doable (at the rate I'm going it'll happen in five years), but the extra $10K (or even $20K if I want to have some wriggle room when it comes to my price range) is going to be trickier.

Add to that the purchase of a car (likely on a four-year-plan), and suddenly I'm looking at a whole chunk of cash I didn't really consider when first coming up with the Five Year Plan.

The long and short of this (don't mind me while I angst pointlessly) is to talk to my Finances Guy and figure out just what I have to do in order to make all this happen. I think it's doable, but for the life of me I can't figure out how to do this by myself. What I need is someone better with numbers and finances than I to walk me through a bunch of options, to see what I can come up with.

Someone please remind me that I'm not insane for thinking I can do this by myself?

( In which Phnee goes on a tangent about lack of romance )


Mostly I'm kind of terrified that I'm going to fail epically when I get out there. I'm one person, and there will be lots of acreage to take care of, and livestock, and so many things that can go wrong which would be more easily dealt with if I weren't on my own. I just worry that I'm going to get a mortgage approved, move out to the godforsaken howling wilderness, only to fall flat on my face financially when things don't work out. Usually I'm more optimistic than this, but usually I don't think quite so hard about how I'm supposed to manage by myself what most people manage as a couple or as a family.