Aubergine parmigiana with garlic bread / Eve’s pudding with ice cream

Sorry for yesterday’s lack of post: whether because of green cheese, or for some other reason, I woke up feeling unwell and continued to feel tired and off-colour all day.

Mum commented that she’s noticed that I feel a tired a lot of the time. That called for either a reminder of the details of my chronic illness or a simple “yes, mum”. You can probably guess which one I opted for.

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Today is Sunday, which means church, which means the day starting with mum lying in bed telling me she’s too ill to get up. I get her tablets, and tell her she’ll feel better if she gets up and starts moving around.

Mum grumpily gets up, gets dressed (“happy now?”), refuses food while she paces the house complaining that her head hurts, her stomach hurts, other parts of her hurt, and that she expects she’ll be home early as she really doesn’t feel well enough to go out.

Then her friend arrives, and mum is bright and enthusiastic, and tells her friend that she initially didn’t want to go but changed her mind. I smiled and didn’t comment on my role in said change of mind!

This weekend was the Big Garden Birdwatch, the annual citizen science event where people count the number of birds in their garden (or nearest park / open space / wherever). I firmly intended to do our count with mum this afternoon, hoping for a better result than last year’s pathetic total of three birds.

Then I glanced up from my laptop and spotted a little bird that sent my brain into a stuttering loop that amounted to “what the heck is that?” A bit of Googling later and I identified it as a blackcap, a handsome little warbler that I last saw on a holiday in Italy many, many years ago.

Our bird count therefore started at that moment, and I eventually reached a total of 17 birds of 7 different species. Still not great in relation to what we usually get in our garden, but a vast improvement on last year.

The afternoon mostly consisted of mum complaining about one of her many various pains, and me reminding her that she’s only been treating it for less than a week. That’s a conversation I expect to have many more times in the coming days.

I decided to do a two course dinner, because it’s Sunday, and forgot how exhausting cooking with a disability is. Exhaustion means fingers that don’t work as expected, which means suddenly it’s snowing sugar. Thank goodness cleaner Lil is coming tomorrow.

Mum ate the main of aubergine parmigiana with enthusiasm – she’s very fond of aubergines, except when she isn’t – and probably would have enjoyed the Eve’s pudding if it had been cooked on time. As it was, I opened the oven to check on it, and found the cake uncooked and the oven cold, where either mum or I had absent-mindedly turned off the gas. 🤦‍♂️

Of course I didn’t let the later than scheduled arrival of cake stop me from eating some. Very nice it was too, even with tinned apples that would really have benefited from some nutmeg or other spice to give them a bit more flavour.

And so, on that note, to bed, where my weary legs deposited me with their usual frustrating sign of exhaustion, namely simply refusing to hold me up anymore. Ah well: standing up is over-rated anyway.