Lamb steaks with rendang sauce, stirfried veg, and coconut rice

I woke up this morning to find mum sitting in the living room, dressed, with a cup of tea, watching tv. This always used to be her morning routine, but it hasn’t happened in several weeks, so seemed to me to be a really good sign.

It didn’t take long for her headache to reappear, but it was a promising start to the day.

Then there was a bit of disappointment, with a phone call from one of the cat rescue charities to let me know that the big grey cat I had expressed interest in was a keen hunter and therefore not suitable for a wildlife-loving household. (And had someone else who was very interested in adopting him, so 🤞 he goes to a nice new home soon.)

We have, however, been invited to visit on Thursday to see if any of the other cats currently in their care might be a match for us. They also happily accepted my offer of the prescription cat food I bought at great expense for my late, much-missed Isis-cat. (Sob.)

This afternoon I went out to meet my social prescriber friend. (I told him about her ‘boyfriend’ comment and he found it very amusing.)

For the past couple of days I have been struggling with anhedonia: that ‘bleh’ feeling when nothing is interesting or entertaining. For much of today I felt distant from the world, like walking through a particularly dull dream. It is, unsurprisingly, a common symptom of burnout.

Sitting in the café, chatting with the social prescriber, I felt the world coming back into focus. While chatting about some of mum’s more idiosyncratic quirks, a man in the queue beside our table heard what I was saying and joined in our conversation with “that sounds so like my late mother”. We exchanged stories for a few minutes, until he reached the front of the queue and had to turn his attention to the more pressing topic of ordering tea and cake.

Then I came home and gave mum the slice of coffee cake I bought her as a peace offering for ‘abandoning’ her for an entire hour. She responded with such joy and gratitude that I almost felt bad for feeling bad around her sometimes. Almost.

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For dinner I made a deconstructed lamb rendang: ‘deconstructed’ because I thought it might be too spicy for mum, even with only half of the curry paste, so kept the sauce separate. Mum did have a little bit of the sauce, and ate all of her lamb steak despite it being cooked rather more pink than she prefers. (Which was totally intentional and not me being really bad at judging the done-ness of red meat. I must get myself a cooking thermometer one of these days.)

Another portion of sauce went in a small plastic box in the freezer, for me to enjoy at some future date.

Then I had some dates, in the form of a date crumble slice that I brought home as my counterpart to mum’s coffee cake. Served warm with clotted cream ice cream, in what is one of my favourite combinations ever.

And now it’s tv, a mug of decaf coffee, then to sleep in nice clean bedding thanks to the lovely Lil, who didn’t mind at all being company to mum while I was out, and changed my bed as well. (Thank you, Lil!)