Peanut chicken prawn noodles
Mum isn’t feeling well, so I have an opportunity to work on my long-promised cookbook. I get out my laptop, then remember I need to order some more of a couple of my meds.
That done, I realise mum hasn’t had her meds, so I go and get those out of their packets and put them in a little bowl. I stick my head round mum’s bedroom door and see that she’s asleep, so I take the bowl back into my room and put it on the side for when she wakes up.
I turn on the laptop, open up the saved document, and… oh yes, the slopestyle is on and we have the chance of a medal. I’ll open my web browser and have that running while I work.
I had forgotten that these events have their own language, which I don’t really speak. A few words I recognise, others I can work out from context, but many remain a complete mystery. It’s good to watch, though.
Oof, that looks like it hurt.
Wow, how do they do that?!
Oh yeah, cookbook. Where was I?
[A minute or two of typing noises, with slopestyle commentary in the background.]
Mum’s awake and complaining, so I give her her meds, and she goes back to bed. Right, back to the flying people – and now it’s our athlete’s turn.
Looked good to me, but I’m hardly an expert judge.
Anyway, cookbook.
[More typing noises, with intermittent muttering of “forgot to put that in the ingredients list”, “what’s the proper name for that again?”, “what on earth does a fish have to do with skiing anyway?”1]
Whoa, that was a heck of a trick – how do they do that?!
Oof, that looks like it really hurt. Is she OK? Oh good, she seems to be.
Oh yeah, cookbook.
[Type, type, type…]
Mum’s awake and wants to tell me all about how unwell she is. I want to watch the final run of this final. Mum gets audibly frustrated that I’m not giving her 100% of attention 100% of the time.
The skiing finishes – 4th place for our athlete, so frustratingly close – and I get into the flow of writing. Except mum is now up and around, and determined to have my attention, so the cookbook goes back into the cloud.
At least I got a bit done.
Late this afternoon, just as I thought they weren’t going to call at all, the practice nurse from the GP surgery called. She was great: kind and thoughtful, patient with mum’s repetitions and wandering thoughts, and practical in going back to basics rather than relying on previous notes.
She even asked if I had any preference of doctor to do mum’s physical examination, meaning I could tell her that I’ll be happy with anyone except one particular man, who’s like a walking stereotype of the arrogant, casually misogynistic doctor. (He ignored all the many, many test results and expert opinions on my file and declared that my chronic pain was because I’m overweight. Idiot.)
The appointment isn’t for another couple of weeks, but I, at least, feel we might be getting somewhere. In the meantime, mum is to take painkillers four times a day, even if she doesn’t need them, and I have clearance to try mum on magnesium supplements, which I have been told might help both mum’s headaches and her lichen sclerosus.
Mum is now mostly feeling better headache-wise, which means she has the mental capacity to complain about that she’s sore, her teeth hurt, she’s got a mouth ulcer2, her skin’s itchy, her thumb hurts, when are ‘they’ going to sort all this out, and so on, and on, and on.
Dinner was meant to be chicken noodles, but when I got it out of the fridge it didn’t smell like anything a human should be eating. Luckily we had prawns in today’s grocery order, so I used those instead. (Mum said “we have prawns a lot, don’t we?” Then, correctly interpreting my strained silence, “but not for a while, and I do like them”.)
The recipe, from a Simply Cook box, is based on peanut butter, which is one of mum’s “urgh” foods, so I was very surprised when mum’s first bite was followed by “oh, this is nice”. She repeated the sentiment several more times, so I think that one’s a winner.
For dessert we had apple strudel: half for mum, and half for me. Only afterwards did I notice that the box said “serves 6”. đŦ
Now it’s back to snowboarding: different event (big air this time), same complete incomprehension of what the commentators are talking about, same enjoyment on my part. Mum is just mystified.
Is it pineapple sponge today? 