(permanently annoyed)

Pepper and prawns in sweet chilli sauce with coconut rice; carrot cake and ice cream

I slept well last night, despite odd dreams about thunder snow and giant hailstones, but have spent the day wandering around (or, more accurately, sitting around) in an exhausted haze. I have also now developed the uncontrollable foot / leg twitch which is a marker of me being over-tired, so please ignore any odd typos which can possibly be attributed to my leg going “boing” at odd intervals.

Despite being so exhausted I have been fighting off both tears and unfounded irritation – unsuccessfully in both cases, as mum has commented that I look sad and has apologised for being annoying, which made me feel dreadful as it’s clearly not her fault¹ – I have had to arrange transport for mum to get to choir practice tomorrow and to church on Sunday. The church secretary / organiser / lay preacher / anything else needed to keep a church running has been predictably helpful, but a joke by one of mum’s friends that I’m mum’s PA is getting less amusing by the day.

For today, mum has bee birdwatching, which I would enjoy more if it didn’t involve her walking into my room without asking or, embarrassingly often, knocking, particularly at times when I’m changing my clothes. 😳 We both enjoyed watching a male blackbird feeding his recently fledged offspring, and I reminded mum of the name of “the orange one” (either a robin or a male blackbird, depending on context) more times than I can remember.

[On the topic of wildlife, I’m very keen to know the identity of the critter that came for a drink out of the filthy tray of water outside my bedroom window last night. It sounded big – not unlike the drinking noises made by our friend’s border collie – and I would have thought I’d imagined it except that mum noted the water level was obviously lower this morning. It’s a bit of a mystery, tbh.]

Today was grocery delivery day so I had plenty of fresh produce to make an easy meal. I opted for something dad used to cook – not that mum could remember that – with added red pepper for purposes of health. (Dad used to make it with just prawns, which was nice, but I prefer a bit of veg in my meals.) It’s dead simple to make, particularly if you use microwave rice (Tilda brand – nicely light and well-separated grains with a good coconutty smell but no real taste of coconut – I wish I’d cooked my own after all) and mum declared it “just the right amount of spicy” and seemed to really enjoy it.

For afters we had carrot cake, from my box of discounted goodies, which both mum and I enjoyed enough that we went back for a second slice, although from my itchy throat I now know it had a generous amount of citrus in it. Ah well, it’s worth the irritation occasionally.

And there, with my customary lack of elegant wordsmithing, I will end. Goodnight, sleep well, and keep a keen eye out for mysterious, large-sounding critters.

1. Well, the memory problems aren’t her fault. The refusal to use her hearing aids while complaining she can’t hear is more fault-worthy. ↩︎