Chicken kyiv and salad

This morning I woke up early to find that mum had a headache, a stomach ache, and was having a flare of her urinary condition. I got mum some painkillers, explained again why she’s feeling like this, gave her a hug, then went to have a shower.

By the time I had finished in the shower – including an unintentional slide across the shower floor into the door (I have now ordered a non-slip mat) – mum had already forgotten that she had taken the painkillers and wanted to know if “anyone” was going to help with her headache.

Then I made sure mum ate some breakfast and supervised her morning tablets, then did the same for myself. Then I disposed of a cardboard box that mum kept tripping over, put some WD40 on the hinges of the garden door, put on a load of laundry, all the while mm-hmm-ing along to mum’s constant litany of her woes and how “it isn’t fair”.

It isn’t fair, I agreed. “What did I do to deserve this?!” she wailed. I pointed out, not for the first time, that she didn’t deserve her condition any more than I deserve a life of chronic pain and being unable to walk, when I always loved walking out in nature and will never be able to do it again. I might have sniffled a bit.

For once mum actually listened, and stopped complaining to comfort me. I really do feel for mum – it can’t be any fun to have her combination of pain symptoms and to struggle to remember why – but I do sometimes feel the need (or at least a very strong desire) to try to snap her out of her terminal self-absorbtion and endless complaining.

Later in the afternoon, our groceries arrived, accompanied by mum’s usual complaint about me ordering more food even though she specifically asked me to do so. 😤 Mum stood in the kitchen doorway, watching me putting everything away, adding only the occasional comment on what I had bought. There can be few things more dispiriting than the ingredients for your carefully planned meals for the next week being met with a heartfelt “urgh – I hope that’s not for me”.

Thus dispirited, I abandoned my plan to make a (very mild, previously enjoyed) Thai curry with aubergine, and instead put a couple of ready-made chicken kyivs in the oven. Two minutes later, mum asked if dinner was ready yet. 🙄

Now mum’s watching Strictly, occasionally calling out to ask if I want to watch a particular couple dance (not really, thanks all the same), and I’m sitting here on my bed, about to eat my feelings in the form of some chocolate chunk cookies.

If the giant chocolate brownie that was delivered in place of the pudding I ordered is still intact by tomorrow morning it will be a miracle.