Teriyaki king prawn and vegetable stirfry with sticky coconut rice

First, and irrelevant to this blog, but still: huge congratulations to the Eagles – you played fantastically and totally deserve to win the FA Cup. (I’m not a Crystal Palace fan, but I’m a Londoner by heritage so was supporting them over Man City on principle.)

And now on with your regularly scheduled blathering.

When I left you yesterday, I was gloomily forecasting an early awakening and much maternal anxiety. I was wrong on the first point – my bladder woke me early instead 🙄 – but was spot-on on the second: most of today slipped away from me as I consoled, calmed, explained, hugged, explained again, had more hugs… We ate lunch together sitting on my bed (well, I had lunch – mum had ice cream, and I was just glad she was eating something), after which she calmed down a little.

She’s currently back to wanting to go to church, and is aware that all her scary symptoms are just manifestations of her anxiety, but I’m dreading tomorrow morning when it comes to her actually going out.

At one point mum went to have a doze and, in the brief silence, I started my latest attempt at writing a novel. I suspect it will go the same way as my half-dozen previous attempts, most of which are drifting around out in the cloud somewhere.

When the time came that mum asked what was for dinner, I realised that I had gone off (meal) plan and had no idea what I was going to cook. Some digging through freezer, fridge, and cupboard produced the ingredients for a prawn and vegetable stirfry, flavoured with teriyaki sauce and served with my favourite sticky coconut rice (standard basmati cooked with a chunk of creamed added to the water, leaving the rice sticky enough to be shaped with your bare hands, should you so wish).

Mum served herself a small portion under my watchful eye, and ate it all: I’m not sure if she actually enjoyed it, even though it’s the sort of thing she would usually like, but the important thing is that she did eat it.

I’ll let you know how tomorrow goes: please wish mum lots of courage, and me lots of coffee. We’re going to need both.