Jacket potatoes with tuna and cherry tomatoes

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Today really has been one of those days when everything has seemed to have a life of its own, and that life was devoted to making mine more difficult.

The bottle of one of my meds was empty, so I needed a new one. But it’s a glass bottle, that’s sent through the post, so it was thoroughly wrapped in bubble plastic and tape. My attempts at opening it went nowhere, so I had to get a knife to cut it open.

Eventually I got in, but at the cost of a broken nail. My nail file turned out to be missing, but I found another one and sorted out my nail, then got the newly unwrapped bottle. Which had a security seal on it, which I also couldn’t get through.

So back to the knife, remove the seal, and… the lid won’t come off. Of course.

(I did get into it eventually, with help from a jar opening sleeve-thingy, thank goodness.)

Then I asked mum, who was sitting two open doors away, if she had fed Suki.

“Pardon?”

“Have you fed Suki?”

“Sorry?”

“HAVE YOU FED SUKI?”

“Mmm.” (By which she of course meant “I can’t hear you, and I cba to get up and find out what you’re saying”.)

My patience snapped (as it’s doing far too often atm, I admit). I got up, took the four steps to the door of the living room, and said “I SAID: HAVE. YOU. FED. SUKI? Please will you reconsider wearing your hearing aids?”

To which the responses, in turn, were: “yes” and “there’s nothing wrong with my hearing”. Not my finest moment, I know, but I do wish mum would accept that having the tv on at full volume and still asking me every few minutes “what did they say?” is a pretty clear hint that there actually is something wrong with her hearing.

This afternoon I accompanied mum to the dentist, depositing her at the front desk before running back outside to wait for mum’s friend to arrive to accompany her in the dentist’s room. I spent the time she was in there chatting with our driver for the day, a quiet man who became positively loquacious when he discovered we both had a keen interest in architecture and the history of buildings.

I don’t know many people who would be happy to debate whether the upper part of a building being in a different material (brick, when the rest of the building is local stone) indicated a late rethink on the fashionable roof-line or a rebuilding after a disastrous fire, but I’m very pleased to now know at least one.

Then mum and her friend came out, and the friend told me mum had insisted that she didn’t need anyone to come with her so she (the friend) had stayed in the waiting room. Of course, mum promptly forgot everything the dentist had told her, and all the friend could tell me was that mum had been encouraged to buy an electric toothbrush. That blatant attempt at gouging out additional profit was stymied only by the fact that they didn’t have any in stock: thankfully, as mum already has one.

I called to ask for some more details, as mum still has pain in one tooth, but there was no answer and no response to the message I left on their answerphone, by which I assume they’re closed on a Thursday afternoon.

For dinner I did jacket potatoes, as they’re quick and easy. Mum had hers the proper way, with loads of butter and cheese, while I had to have mine with a tiny amount of butter (I just couldn’t make myself go without it altogether) and a mix of tinned tuna with cottage cheese, fat-free yoghurt, and seasoning. It was quite nice, but I would much rather have had cheese. 😢

Now it’s “there’s nothing to watch” (and, to be fair, she’s not wrong: I would watch the football, but there’s definitely nothing that will interest mum), Suki being a pest (she wants food, but not either of the lots of food she already has), and, for me, cleaning Suki’s litter tray, because mum miraculously becomes incapable of managing when there’s a stinky tray to be dealt with.

I really hope the world decides to be more cooperative tomorrow.