Vietnamese veg with ginger rice

There are few things that annoy me more about living with mum than her habit of waking me up to tell me that she’s going back to sleep. Seriously: why?!

Another, more recent, habit is asking if we can watch something on my laptop then wandering off to get and eat some food, brush her teeth, go outside to do some light gardening, then an hour or so later ask with some impatience if I’ve found anything to watch yet. By that time I have powered off the laptop to save its battery, so I switch it back on, cue up something to watch, then mum says she just needs to use the loo, get a drink, take something out to the recycling bin…

We can go through this cycle three times or more before we finally sit down to watch something, and then mum will often ask me to pause every few minutes so she can go and do something she’s just remembered. This is nothing to do with dementia, or even anxiety: it’s just that mum has always been a fidget who can’t sit still for more than a few minutes.

Her natural fidgetiness is exacerbated by her anxiety, which has been high all day with two hospital appointments looming in her near future. At one point mum declared that she wouldn’t go back to church until her urinary condition is sorted as it’s just “too embarrassing” and everyone will “think [she’s] stupid”. I got quite frustrated: does she think I’m stupid because I have health issues? If not, why would anyone think it of her?

She did eventually decide that she will go to church as long as she’s not in pain, which seems a reasonable compromise. I’m just pleased that we can compromise, as usually it’s mum’s way or the highway. (Or ‘motorway’, I should probably say, as we don’t have highways in the UK.)

(As an aside: I got a short and to the point email this morning confirming that my appointment at a mainland hospital has been converted to a telephone consultation, “per [my] request”. I’m really pleased as that makes my life considerably easier.)

For dinner I did a Simply Cook recipe for Vietnamese pork and instead made it with aubergine, mangetout, and baby sweetcorns. Mum really enjoyed it, but I found it a bit sweet for my taste. I’m thinking of cancelling my Simply Cook membership as mum doesn’t like so many of their recipes and the boxes are piling up in the living room. If they ever decide to bottle the chilli garlic sauce that is part of many of their Asian recipe kits, though, I will happily buy a fridge-full. (For the avoidance of doubt, I only put a tiny amount in the sauce tonight and drizzled the rest of the little pot over my bowl of food.)

So now it’s tv and sneaking a glance out of the window at every opportunity to see if the promised / threatened snow (depending on your opinion of the white stuff) has arrived yet. I’m definitely in the ‘promised’ camp – let it snow, please!