So close to done, Each day, Water Belly

Friday I deemed my mowing day and I am glad I did so as a couple torrential rain episodes since then have left standing water in areas around the yard.  I made a video Friday morning about the Tesla transaction.  All that remained was for the payment to be sent to the bank for the loan and the remainder to my bank account.  Well one of those thing happened, a big fat 11k plus deposit hit my bank late Friday afternoon, great!  However when I checked the Fedex number for the bank loan payment that was sent to my email on Wednesday night there was no activity other than the label being generated.  This was like a bad version of Groundhog Day.

Those of you that have been following this story closely will know that I had a similar issue when it came to Vroom sending me the paperwork I needed to sign.  I got a tracking number but no activity, it appeared to have never been picked up and I had to have them resend the paperwork.  Well this was the exact same deal, someone at Vroom is really bad at making sure their Fedex envelopes get in the right hands.  As of today, Monday there still has been absolutely no status change on the bank payoff check.  I called the Indian help desk once again and got a shoulder shrug as to why this is.  The guy said that sometimes Fedex doesn’t update the status.  That has never been the case  for me, ever.  Supposedly the original check will be cancelled and a new one sent out along with a fresh tracking number for me.  I just want this 100% done.  Sure it’s great I have my money but paying off the bank loan is a detail that I can not ignore.

My big task for Saturday was pressure washing.  I did both sheds and all of the castle stones.  The castle stones are the biggest pain in the ass as they get coated with black slime that winds up covering me from head to toe as I clean them.  The process was made worse by all of the fire ants that have retreated to higher elevation.  Repeatedly I would wind up blowing fire ants onto my legs which I couldn’t see because they were coated with the black slime.  The way I handled it was with quick pressurized water blasts to my body to blow the ants off, while being careful to have the wand far enough away that it doesn’t start peeling off flesh.  I was about 15 minutes away from finishing the four hour task when the sky opened up with close lightning, forcing me indoors.  However the second there was a brief break I was back out there to finish the aggravating and dirty as hell chore up.  Holding a high PSI hose all day will wear you out.

Saturday night we watched The Way Back, starring Ben Affleck.  Ben plays a former high school basketball star that turned into a raving alcoholic after his daughters death.  For some reason the plot felt disjointed to me.  I would only give it a B but your mileage may vary.  Cindy liked it more than I did.

I had been making steady progress on my list and I even did some other non-list items like cleaning the bathrooms and changing the oil in the Tacoma.  The list item I wanted to cross off yesterday was fixing the one robot vacuum.  It had one wheel that was locked in place.  I found a replacement wheel assembly on Ebay for a little less than $40.  It’s been awhile since I ripped into a robovac, the last thing I recall fixing was the laser scan motor in one of my Neatos.  Years ago I used to rip apart/fix Roomba’s like crazy.  I had 7 or 8 of them both working and for parts.

I couldn’t find an exact tear down guide for my model.  The one I did find had some key differences to mine but to my surprise I was able to fill in the blanks and get the vacuum operational again.  It turns out the “bad” motor actually just had hair bound up around the pinion gear.  Once I removed the hair it spun freely so I kept it as a spare, just in case.

I played BTD6 with Griffin multiple times over my staycation so far.  Last night we discovered we can do voice communications through the Steam client, making game play even more fun.  It’s crazy how well he knows every last detail about that game.  I know enough to do basic game play but most of my decisions are just best guesses.

Today when I went out to tend to the chickens Cupcake was by the fence waiting for me, just like she normally is.  She has always been one of the most energetic birds we have and has never had any sort of serious ailment, until now….  So I immediately noticed she was sitting in an odd way.  Once I got closer I saw that it looked like she was sitting on a balloon, her belly was all blown up.  I am pretty dialed into the chickens and notice very quickly if something is wrong, however prior to today I saw absolutely no abnormal behavior from Cupcake.  To go from seemingly normal to this in one day was insane.

So of course I was very concerned.  When I went inside I looked up the condition and quickly came up with a condition called Water Belly, also known as Ascites.  In a nutshell it happens when there is some sort of serious health issue with the birds organs which produces all of this fluid.  What I didn’t get was it seemed to be something that happened over a period of time, not overnight.  It’s possible this was going on for a little while and perhaps she just didn’t show it.

The news with this condition was not good.  If nothing at all is done the bird is likely to die however some chicken owners have had success draining the fluid periodically to prolong the birds life.  I immediately felt compelled to look into this, hell I already had my finger up a chickens rear end twice, this can’t be much worse.

So I watched a video of a women doing this to her hen.  She slowly drew out a bunch of yellowish fluid.  They say you want to drain a good amount but not all of it as it could cause the hen to go into shock.  I got the specs on the syringe and the needle that was used and picked one up on my home from dropping off Sadie.  I needed to ask Cindy to hold Cupcake still as I would try to pull fluid.  I did not have the success I was hoping for.  I got a little bit of clear fluid but mostly nothing at all when I would draw back on the plunger which was bizarre.  I poked her several times in the area that was advised but it really did nothing except made her bleed a bit from the injection spots.  I couldn’t draw any appreciable amount of fluid.

I was very frustrated and told Cindy to let her go.  With the return of standing water we have had the return of the chickens preferring to drink filthy ground water instead of clean water we have placed around their coop.  Who knows if this is related to Cupcake’s problem but it certainly isn’t a good thing.  Later I soaked Cupcake in an epsom salt solution for a little bit just to clean her up a bit.  At this point my game plan is to see how she is tomorrow and I may try to pull fluid one more time since I have all the tools to do it.  It sounds bad I know but in a way I will feel a sense of relief when our last chickens pass.  I look at them as one of the pet family and having to go through all of the suffering, illness and loss with the birds again and again carries too much emotional weight to be offset by some free eggs.

The only remaining list item I have is to get the Tacoma aligned.  I hope to do that tomorrow but the place I normally have do my work has had their alignment machine broken for the last several days.