Aubergine parmigiana with chilli-garlic green beans and crusty bread

In which a blogger runs out of patience

Mum had a headache today, again, and asked me why it was happening. I said it was a tension headache, which can be caused by stress and anxiety, such as panicking over a hospital appointment for the urinary issues she was insisting she doesn’t have.

I suggested she tried to relax her shoulders. Mum insisted she wasn’t tense and it wouldn’t help.

Shortly afterwards, she started experiencing urinary issues (“the ones you just told me you didn’t have?”, I asked. Mum gave me a Look) and asked me why it was happening. I said that finding out was why we were going to the hospital, but that anxiety made it worse.

Mum said she wasn’t anxious and didn’t understand why we were going to the hospital as she had “never had this problem before”. Then she went to the loo again.

Later still, mum was complaining that her head hurt. I said that spending too much time looking at a screen, like on her kindle, could make it worse. Mum said “I don’t use a kindle”. I said she had it in her hands at that very moment. Mum said “what, this thing? That’s not causing my headache.”

I suggested she try putting it aside for a while, to see if that might help. Mum said that, if she couldn’t use her kindle all she could do was go to bed – not in a sulky way, but as if it was simple cause and effect. I didn’t (and don’t) understand the logic, but the result was that mum refused to put her kindle aside.

Less than five minutes later, she again started complaining that her head hurt, and couldn’t I do something?

My patience ran out. I told mum that I had suggested several things that might help and she had refused them all, and that it was hard to be sympathetic when she dismissed all my attempts to help.

She apologised over and over, begged me not to leave her, hugged me, told me she hadn’t realised she was such a bad person, assured me she loved me, and again begged me not to leave. [I’m starting to understand why she and dad never argued: dad obviously knew what I’m (re)learning, that it’s not worth the guilt trips and passive-aggressive assaults on the conscience.]

On the plus side, mum didn’t mention her headache again for several hours.

This evening I made an aubergine parmigiana, using a Simply Cook kit rather than my own recipe. I didn’t think it was as good as mine, while mum enthused over how good it was, even though she “doesn’t like” tomatoes.

Then, for dessert, I got another guilt trip as I didn’t include any coffee ice cream in our last grocery order as there were four tubs in the outside freezer and one in the inside freezer. Sadly I miscalculated how much ice cream mum can eat and we’ve run out, and now what’s mum supposed to eat?

(Mum just made another “isn’t it a shame you forgot to order more ice cream?” comment, and I mentioned how much she’d eaten. She responded by suggesting, apparently seriously, that someone had stolen it. 🙄)

On that frustrating note I will bid you goodnight, with only the observation that the large box if discounted chocolate that I received earlier today will probably be noticeably emptier by the time I go to sleep.