Chicken goujons, stirfried veg with sweet chilli sauce, pitta

Today has been a difficult day.

Mum spent much of this morning feeling very unwell due to an experiment in increasing her daily intake of laxative as she insisted that what she was taking (roughly half the recommended dose) wasn’t working.

The increased dose worked, too well, leading to several hours of complaints about feeling “worse than I’ve ever felt”, the occasional groan, a more than occasional rush to the bathroom, and several variations of “what did I do to deserve this?”

The first time I thought it was a genuine request for information and reminded her that we had discussed the dosage of laxative and agreed that…

That was not the right response. Mum just wanted to rail against some unknown “them” who had conspired to ruin her day. After that I stuck to the old favourites “mm-hmm” and “I know”.

Then, just to make things worse, the friend who had agreed to stay with mum while I go out tomorrow texted to say she has a vet visiting and wouldn’t be able to make it until afterwards. In her illness, mum stopped even pretending that the end goal of her anxiety and guilt trips was anything other than to persuade me to stay home.

When she started feeling better she apologised and insisted she will be fine alone until the friend can get here. This led to a circular conversation that, in abbreviated form, went:

“What time will Friend be here?”

“About lunchtime “

“What time’s that?”

“About the time we eat lunch. 12 o’clock or so.”

“What’s 12 o’clock?”

“When the two hands of the clock both point to the top.”

“You mean around lunchtime?”

🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️

Dinner was very simple: ready-made chicken goujons, and a pack of stirfry veg with sweet chilli sauce. I chose a variety of veg mix that had peppers (capsicums) in, as mum loves peppers. Or, at least, usually she does. Today, when I offered her one of the three pepper slices (just three, in a “sweet pepper stirfry mix” – not impressed, Tesco), she wrinkled her nose with an “urrgh, no thanks”.

I give up, I really do.

A short while ago, mum decided she was still hungry and went to get a bit of the fruit crumble she turned her nose up at yesterday. As she ate, I suggested that I had finally mastered the crumble, and a satisfied “mmm” was her only response.

Maybe I’ll hold on a little longer.