Bacon sandwiches; cold rice pudding with raspberry jam

This morning I woke at about quarter to five with a full bladder, but didn’t want to go to the bathroom as I knew it would wake mum up.

I went back to sleep, and woke again just over an hour later with a really full bladder, got up to go to the loo and woke mum up. Sorry, mum, and thanks for accepting my sleepily muttered “paracetamol” as a full response to your complaints of back pain.

I woke again, very late, to a message reminding me of mum’s medical appointment today, which was a shock as I thought it was next week. (I really need to get my act together with appointments: writing them on the calendar doesn’t help if you write them on the wrong week.)

I called half a dozen taxi companies, all of whom were busy, then two friends, one of whom was working and one, who also has a chronic illness, who was conserving her energy for an evening event. Eventually, I called the surgery to ask if they had any ideas, and was offered a telephone appointment instead of an in-person one. Phew!

The appointment, when it came, was marred by technical difficulties: the mobile signal round here isn’t very good, and after a few pleasantries it became apparent that our medical professional couldn’t hear us. She called back on the landline, which worked until the wifi (also dubiously reliable) cut out (which is how I learned that the landline here runs through the internet), and we went back to my mobile.

Mum asked me to speak for her, but got annoyed with what I was saying (the truth, which was not what she wanted me to say, apparently), and stormed off. And quickly returned with apologies, which I returned for my part in upsetting her, which made her apologise again. The end result, after all that, is to wait until the hospital Urology department have done their bit before addressing mum’s mental health further, which I completely agree with.

After that, mum went off to take out her frustrations on some plants that needed deadheading

and I went to add a couple of extra things to the grocery order I placed yesterday, only to discover that, according to the Tesco website, I had no open orders, and the ‘thank you for your order’ message I got yesterday was a lie.

I redid the order – luckily the same delivery slot was still available – and just hope I haven’t forgotten anything too important. (I have ordered the most important things – loo roll, fruit juice, coffee ice cream – so I think I’ll be forgiven if something is missing.

Some time later, while half watching the tennis and half watching the game I was playing on my phone, I realised I had nothing planned for dinner. I mentioned that we had bacon in the freezer, and mum said “I wouldn’t mind a bacon sandwich”, so that’s what we had. I didn’t take a photo because you know what a bacon sandwich looks like.

Then I had ready-made rice pudding, cold from the fridge (Rachel’s Organic Divine Rice, a name I thought rather daft until I tried the stuff and found that it really is amazingly delicious), with a spoonful of raspberry jam. Mum had strawberry cheesecake, as she had already had some coffee ice cream today and is trying to eat it a little more slowly.

Then I refilled the bird feeder outside my window for the second time today, this time with help from mum that proved that an extra pair of hands isn’t always useful (not mum’s fault – we were just getting in each other’s way), and soon it will be time to sleep until the whole circus starts again tomorrow morning.

As usual there’s no proper conclusion to this post, which might be frustrating. Welcome to my world.