Cheese jacket potato with tuna mayo and salad; cookie and ice cream

My first conscious thought on waking this morning was “oh no, not again” – not about anything in particular, just the general prospect of being alive, and awake, and occupying my faulty body and eventful life. I spent much of the day on the verge of tears¹, exacerbated (good word!) by mum having a bad day to the point that I asked if she’d been drinking, which caused some indignation until I clarified that I meant drinking water, i e. was she sufficiently hydrated?

Despite my low mood I’ve got a lot done: booked an appointment for mum to have one of her regular blood tests that send her spiralling into anxiety every time, arranged transport for myself to a hospital appointment next week and scored an invitation to join a members only transport service which I have been trying to track down since the end of last year, and put away this week’s batch of groceries. The delivery driver kindly didn’t comment on the fact they had delivered five pots of ice cream in various flavours, and I didn’t comment, because I didn’t notice until they had left, that what they hadn’t delivered was the apple peeler and a couple of other items that I had added to our order late in the evening, but well before the cut-off time. They hadn’t been added to our bill, so there’s no room for complaint, but I’m annoyed at the lack of peeler as we have two cooking apples sitting in the cupboard just waiting for me to work out how to peel them. (Using a knife, the way I have always peeled apples, is not something I’m going to even attempt now!)

Dinner was, once again, a combination of pre-prepared items: cheese jacket potatoes from Tesco, with additional cheese to supplement the pathetic sprinkling on top – other than this, I found them better than expected, with a decent baked potato flavour and a nice fluffy texture². I added tuna and sweetcorn mayo sandwich filling to mine, as that’s how I think a jacket potato should be topped, added some salad and salad cream, and pretty much inhaled the result as all that activity left me ravenous.

Then I had some of mum’s giant birthday cookie – from Millie’s Cookies, which I remember being delicious but are, at least in this form, mostly just sweet flavour (which isn’t a complaint, mind you) – warmed in the microwave for 15 seconds and topped with vanilla ice cream (the posh stuff from Tesco), and so good I could have eaten it again. Instead I had a cup of coffee, tried to explain to mum how the fake delivery text message scam works (because I received such a text – I wouldn’t even have tried unless I had a good reason), and am now watching the athletics.

And with that fascinating anecdote, I’ll sign off. Tomorrow is another day, and hopefully a better one. I might even work out how to peel those apples (which isn’t a metaphor but probably should be).

1. Which eventually materialised when I re-found a t-shirt I haven’t worn in several months, and is still lightly decorated with fur from my much missed soul cat, Isis. Which in turn prompted me to start encouraging (nagging) mum about getting another cat: as she finds something wrong with every candidate I think I’m just going to arrange for a trip to one of the local shelters, knowing she won’t be able to resist when faced with a friendly furball or two. 😺 ↩︎
2. They will, of course, never come close to the quality of a proper, slow cooked potato, but for a meal ready in half an hour it will do nicely. ↩︎