Cheese and onion crispbakes, roasted Mediterranean veg, chips

[Headline image: the Nativity scene at All Saints Church in Freshwater.]

Today has been a long day. Mum has a hospital appointment tomorrow morning, so she has of course been worrying around the house all day. I have said “it will be fine” more times than I have ever wanted to say anything.

The car is coming for us at 9.15, which mum is complaining is way too early despite her usually waking up by 8 at the latest. I expect that, with the anxiety in play, she will wake up earlier than that tomorrow, and that she’ll be waking me up too: I’m just desperately hoping the wake-up comes after it’s got light.

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I have been feeling increasingly exhausted recently – enough so that even mum has noticed and expressed sympathy – so I was planning on a day of taking it easy. With mum worrying around that was never going to happen, though, so I did phone calls.

Mum has been stressing about not having had a flu jab yet, but arranging it has proved more difficult than expected. Today I managed to get mum on the appointment list for when the local pharmacy receives its next batch of vaccine, and got myself on the waiting list. I couldn’t go on the appointment list as there are apparently two versions of the vaccine, one for those over 65 and one for those under. They only have 20 doses of the under 65 one coming in, and I’m the 22nd person to ask for it. Fingers crossed that two people on the list have managed to get vaccinated elsewhere so I can have their slot. 🤞

I also made an appointment for mum and me to have our hair cut in the new year, chased up someone who hasn’t responded to an important email, and had a catch-up with the OT.

This afternoon our Christmas groceries arrived. It is of course ridiculously early to have the Christmas food delivered, but all the slots nearer to Christmas were booked up. Our cleaner Lil said that another of her clients had had to get up at 6am on the day the Christmas delivery times became available, and if you don’t do that you won’t get one.

The main component of our Christmas dinner is going to be chicken, and I ordered a pack of six chicken thighs so we could have some hot on Christmas day, and the rest in a chicken and ham pie the next day. However Tesco had apparently run out of chicken thighs, and sent us a pack of two chicken breasts instead. Some rapid reshuffling of the meal plan took place as a result.

(I’ll do the chicken breasts wrapped in bacon so they don’t dry out (I prefer chicken thighs as they’re much less likely to end up dry) and the Boxing Day pie will be ham and vegetable pie instead.)

To co-opt Tesco’s Christmas advert slogan: having to accept an inconvenient delivery slot only to not get what you ordered – that’s what makes it Christmas.

(They also – tragedy – had only two of the four tubs of coffee ice cream I had ordered, and substituted two tubs of Belgian chocolate ice cream. Oh dear, whatever am I going to do with those? 😉

I managed to prise open the dodgy top drawer of the outside freezer to put some of the frozen Christmas food in and – surprise! – found two forgotten tubs of coffee ice cream. Oh dear, whatever is mum going to do with those? 😉)

After some extensive freezer Tetris, we managed to get everything into the freezer except for a pack of wholemeal rolls, a pack of wholemeal tortilla wraps, and a box of cheese and onion crispbakes. The crispbakes became dinner, along with some Mediterranean veg and the remains of a bag of oven chips. The tortillas will be dinner tomorrow – there was something on television the other day about quesadillas and, once I had explained to mum what they are, she was keen to try them. The rolls will be lunch, and I will hopefully be able to eventually squeeze into the freezer the loaf of decent sourdough bread I had bought for that purpose.

Later this evening there will be no longer repeat of last year’s Repair Shop Christmas special. Mum’s memory was much worse last year and she watched that episode three or four times, so I’m going to treat it as a much-loved bedtime story that can be repeated comfortingly as often as needed. All together now: “Nestled deep in the British countryside there is a very special place…”