Courgette carbonara

Headline image featuring a photo of my younger sister, when she was much younger, in her first pub job. Miss ya, Jen-Wren.

I don’t think it’s a surprise to anyone that gaining a disability means that a lot of things become more difficult. What has been surprising, to me at least, is what things have become more difficult.

Showering, for example. I have a shower stool, as I can’t stand up for long enough to wash even my now very short hair, but the shower in mum’s house has a shower-head that’s set to one side. My left-hand side gets nicely washed, while my right-hand side stays soapy. I have to twist around and take down the shower-head, without slipping off the stool and / or spraying water everywhere.

Then there’s the issue of bottles. (Of shower products, not of anything more fun, more’s the pity.) The shower’s only shelf is behind my stool, and I can’t twist round that far. Instead the bottles sit on the floor, and I just have to hope they don’t fall over, as I can’t bend over that far, either.

Other things that are more difficult than expected are using a mouse and keyboard, which is why the writing of both my cookbook and my novel are taking a while. (Well, that’s one reason. A lack of energy and motivation are a big secondary reason.) I have never learned to touch-type, but I have always been able to typec fast and accurately enough that that didn’t matter.

Now my typing is both slow and inaccurate, enough so that I don’t know if I would be physically capable of doing a full-time computer-based job even if I wanted to.

Then there’s taking a break from work. Getting up is a challenge, then I have to walk, duck-fashion¹, to the kitchen. Then I have to get water into the kettle, and then from the kettle to my mug, without washing the kitchen counter, the floor, and my clothes in the process. I’m very grateful that mum is generally good at interpreting my big, sad eyes as being an unspoken request for caffeine.

Going out is, of course, a major problem, and going out with mum is a problem on top of a problem. Tomorrow we’re going out for mum to get her hair cut and, in what is surely a surprise to no-one, mum is already getting in a minor panic about it.

The appointment is too early, what if she has a headache again, how are we going to get there, how are we going to get back, what should she WEAR?!

The panic has temporarily overridden normal brain functions. Mum wanted to refill the sugar jar, so got the packet of sugar out of the cupboard. Then she got out a bowl to put the sugar in.

“No,” said I, “it goes in the jar.”

“What jar?”

“The jar we keep the sugar in. The one you literally just told me was empty.”

“Sorry?”

I had to get up, go out to the kitchen, and physically point to the jar before mum reconnected with her original thought that the sugar jar was empty.

Then we did the whole thing again with my mug of coffee.

Before that was dinner: a carbonara made with back bacon, courgettes, and – most unconscionably of all – a generous splash of cream. It wasn’t exactly traditionally Italian, but mum rewarded my efforts with the prestigious award of a quiet “yum” after her final mouthful.

And thus ends another day. I’ll see you all tomorrow, unless I’m too exhausted from getting mum’s hair cut, and from hiding from the never-ending ubiquity of ballroom dancing content, in which case I’ll see you on Sunday.

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1. Because when I was first re-learning how to walk, the physios told me to focus on putting my heels down before the balls of my feet, and not to put my feet down too close together. That has the effect that, when I’m tired, I tend to waddle like a duck. ↩︎