Veg gnocchi bake

Today poor mum has been suffering from an agonising, possibly fatal condition that has made her every moment a misery.

Or so she would have me believe: in fact she’s had a touch of constipation. Coupled with her lichen sclerosus, I am not at all surprised it’s very uncomfortable, but her groans and whimpers, paired with the question, at times repeated every few minutes at times, “are you sure there’s nothing you can do to help me?” gave the impression she was suffering unbearably.

I was of course doing everything I had been advised to do by doctors, and mum only informed me yesterday night that she was having problems, so all I could do was repeatedly advise her to have a bit of patience and wait for the medication to work. And try very hard (not entirely successfully) not to snap “we’ve literally just been through this!”

I think mum genuinely feels pain more strongly now, but I also think that complaining has become so habitual that she doesn’t know any other way to communicate.

Which brings me to my main point of this: I have realised that I’m complaining a lot. It must be contagious.

So here are a few things I’m grateful for.

This morning I had a shower, and this afternoon Lil changed my bedding, so I have a clean self in a clean bed.

Our little blackcap is still around, and has been sitting in the top of one of our trees, warbling away tunefully. It flies away every time I try to point it out to mum, so I think she thinks I’m making it up, but I know it’s there.

I woke up this morning to sunshine and, although it has rained several times in between, the sky is now clear and filled with “little points”, as mum calls stars.

Dinner was another Simply Cook recipe, and a particularly easy one. I thought it was delicious, mum thought it was “yeah, OK – not something I’d choose every time, but… yeah. OK.” Which is a positive review of a sort, I think?

Now The Repair Shop is on, and mum is actually watching it and not using every spare breath to complain. And that, I can tell you, I am very grateful for indeed.