Herby fish with chorizo roast potatoes and mixed veg

Another decent day today, thankfully. Mum didn’t get up until late, but once I was up and doing stuff she decided to join me.

I ordered my Christmas present from mum (a towelling dressing gown and a pair of ridiculously expensive slippers that I bought for a fraction of the RRP thanks to the wonders of the internet), and did a few other bits that stick in my mind as having been productive even as the details escape me.

Then I did my meds and mum’s using my new toy accessibility tool: a pill opener that extracts tablets from their foil and catches them in a little pot without them ending up on the floor from my fumbling fingers. Well, mostly, anyway: one still managed to escape.

It’s available from Amazon. [NB: this is an affiliate link, meaning I get a very small amount of money if you buy one.]

This afternoon mum had a catch-up call with a mental health practitioner. They have my number because mum often has her mobile turned off and responds to the landline ringing by staring at it suspiciously until it shuts up. I answered, put the phone on speaker – and mum carried on playing mahjong on her kindle, occasionally responding to direct questions with a vague “mmm, it depends”. It took a direct request for mum to put her kindle down with a sheepish apology.

After the call was over, with the conclusion that a) mum needs to listen to my knowledge of breathing exercises when panicking, and b) she’s going on the year-plus waiting list for counselling, mum said that she thought it was strange that the practitioner hadn’t discussed how she was getting on physically. I had to explain that we’d gone through at the beginning of the call, and she just hadn’t been paying attention.

After that, I called the GP surgery to arrange our flu vaccinations (yes, I know I should have done it ages ago), only to be told they had run out of vaccine and I should try one of the local pharmacies instead. I did try, but the line was engaged so I sent them an email. Mum then spent a few minutes panicking about not being able to get vaccinated, until she caught herself and actively tried to calm down. And then forgot all about it, I think.

For dinner I prepared a meal from a Simply Cook box. I tried my hand at fancy plating, as you can see, and I think it looks quite nice. Mum declared it “not bad”, which is about as good as I get from her these days.

So… game, set and match for another day. No, that’s tennis, not mahjong. Oh well, near enough.