Teriyaki vegetable stirfry with savoury rice

Arachnophobes beware!

If you don’t like spiders, please don’t click on the bit below, and instead continue straight to the paragraph below that.

Spider story

This morning, as usual, I fetched my clean clothes from the back of the sofa I use for storage, then sat on the edge of my bed to get dressed, dressing while standing now being beyond my abilities. A loose hair tickled at my neck, I put my hand up to brush it away, and came into contact with something rather more solid than a strand of hair. I pulled my hand away with a squeak of surprise, sending the giant house spider that had been strolling up my neck flying across the room.

After a few moments to recover from becoming a flying spider, it sauntered across the room to the garden door, and waited there patiently until I got up and let it outside. I’m seriously impressed with the guy’s manners, and can only apologise to it again for the unscheduled flying lesson.

Today initially promised to be a better than usual day: mum was bright and cheerful, wandering out into the garden to prune some plants, took her tablets with only a single prompt from me (she checked with me that she was taking the right ones, and she was), and generally seemed OK. I asked if she still wanted me to contact the GP practice, as I promised over the weekend, and she asked me to hold off as she didn’t feel too bad.

It didn’t last. By lunchtime the headache was back, as was the stomach pain, and when I asked again if I should contact the GP, the answer was a sad “would you?”

Contacting the GP in writing allowed me to arrange my thoughts more easily than in a telephone conversation (there’s a reason I’m a blogger and not a podcaster), but did mean going through seemingly endless pages of fields that had no relevance to the situation.

It was worth it, though, as a couple of hours later I got a phone call from one of the Advanced Nurse Practitioners (ANP), who had done as I asked and reviewed mum’s case as a whole, rather than focusing on the individual symptoms. She took my point that mum’s quality of life is currently quite poor, with pain overshadowing everything she would otherwise enjoy.

Finally – finally! – mum has a prescription for stronger painkillers, on a trial basis for a week after which the ANP will call back and review if the painkillers are helping. I also got approval for the barrier cream I bought for mum, and that’s also on a week’s trial to see if that improves the soreness mum is experiencing somewhere private and personal. Explaining to mum how and when to use the cream was a trial in itself, and I’m still not convinced it’s sunk in. (The instructions, not the cream.)

At least I now have something to tell mum when she asks if I can help, rather than the helpless shrug I have recently had to use with increasing frequency.

In other news, I’ve arranged for someone to come round and give a quote for a repair to the conservatory roof, which has started letting rain into places that rain shouldn’t be. I also contacted a couple of local electricians for quotes for replacing the pull-cord for the living room wall light, which disappeared sometime between Friday night and Saturday night. I’m genuinely mystified where it went, unless my spider friend ate it. 🤷‍♂️

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Dinner was a simple stirfry of various frozen veg plus some ribbons of carrot (done with a veg peeler, until the carrot got so thin I feared for my fingers), with teriyaki sauce from a bottle and savoury rice from the freezer. All very boring, but it’s helping to empty the freezer so I can get it defrosted and back up to speed before I start buying Christmas stuff.

So far all I have are two huge boxes of shortbread which were on sale at a ridiculously low price, and I doubt they’ll both still be around by Christmas somehow. If they both make it intact to next weekend it will be a miracle.