Garlic chicken, roast veg, crushed potatoes; cakes and ice cream

Today didn’t start well. Mum continues to be more clear-headed and that allowed her to remember that the solicitor was due to come, and that the point of the visit was to ascertain her mental capacity, and to worry herself into chest pain, fits of tears, and a very uncharacteristic physical assault on a sofa.

She had just about composed herself when the phone rang¹ and someone from the solicitor’s office informed me they weren’t coming today but could do the same time next week. I wonder if they wrote the visit down on the wrong week on the calendar, but I guess I’ll never know for sure.

The friend who was coming to help mum manage her anxiety during the solicitor’s visit didn’t get my message that it was cancelled, so turned up at the agreed time bearing cake. She stayed for a cup of tea, then went for a very brief walk with mum, giving me ten minutes or so of solitude.

Thankfully mum has continued to be much like her old self, and aware enough to notice when she started getting overly anxious and to practice some breathing techniques to calm herself. Long may it last.

Dinner was a bit of an assembly job, but a tasty one: garlic chicken legs, frozen from either Iceland or Tesco (frustratingly I can’t remember which, as they’re really good and I would like to get more), various veg chopped and tossed in Aromat seasoning², and some crushed potatoes from Tesco (which were meant to be tossed in the supplied Caesar dressing before serving, but I knew mum would turn her nose up (and she did) so I left them plain and just poured some of the dressing over my serving). Mum cleared her plate and gave a thumbs up, and there’s leftovers for lunch tomorrow.

For afters mum had coffee ice cream (of course) and I had a selection of cakes: vegan and gluten-free carrot cake with avocado icing (under-fruited and over-sweet with no discernible carrot cake flavour) (not pictured); bakewell tart (under-flavoured and over-sweet, but with a proper bakewell texture); and coffee cake (the best of the bunch, and I now want to try to recreate mum’s signature coffee cake as that was even better), with caramel ice cream.

Tomorrow is a day without appointments, so I can get on with my 50+ item to do list. For tonight, though, the only item on my list is sleep. Great stuff, sleep. 😴

1. The landline number, which I didn’t give them, rather than my mobile number which I did, I’ve just realised. I guess they must have mum’s number on their files and figured they might as well call that one. 🤷‍♂️ ↩︎
2. Huge thanks to whoever recommended that to me: it’s great stuff. ↩︎