Thai red vegetable curry with rice

My day today started with mum calling through my day to tell me that Suki was asking for breakfast. Even in my half asleep stateI knew that was a lie, because Suki was, at that very moment, purring quite contentedly at my side.

Nevertheless I got up, put some food in Suki’s bowl, then went to the bathroom. Mid pee, mum called through the bathroom door that I needed to hurry up as she had an urgent question for me. The crisis turned out to be that… mum had misplaced her belt. That was all.

Half an hour or so later, after breakfast and coffee and meds, I went into mum’s room, opened the top drawer of mum’s bedside table, and there was the belt. Mum thanked me for finding it, then put it back exactly where I found it, “for safekeeping”.

Most of the rest of today has been about mum exercising her control tactics over me: any time I demonstrated even the smallest hint of freedom of intent or contentment, it was ruthlessly quashed.

I got my laptop out to order mum a new belt and pair of jeans. Mum picked out what she wanted, then said “have you finished now? I want to watch what’s on tv”, as if she was doing me a favour in helping me buy her new clothes. The moment I started looking for something for myself, she gave me a snarky “that must be interesting” and told me that I needed to give Suki her lunch.

Suki came into my room for a snuggle session, and mum came “to check on her” so often that Suki ran off to hide. (Poor Suki-puss. 😥)

Mum sat in the living room, shouting questions and observations to me. When I failed to respond appropriately – not that I know what the appropriate response was – she said she was going to go to bed. I said “OK”, and mum threw a major sulk that I didn’t care enough to stop her. I was, and remain, lost for an appropriate response to that, too.

I tried to play a game on my phone, and mum came into my room to talk and talk and talk, then to ask me to interpret the tv listings magazine (while reading out the description of the programme on television) then, when that didn’t drag me into her orbit sufficiently, called me to her side to let me know that the garage needs clearing. I was a little less than patient in letting mum know that that isn’t at the top of my list of priorities atm.

I had an interesting chat with my therapist yesterday about what mum gets out of her constant commentary on everything I do (which is the Alzheimer’s update of a lifelong refusal to accept my privacy and boundaries), and the therapist suggested it could be along the lines of “I see everything you do, you can’t escape my attention, you cannot leave without me noticing, and you will pay for your attempt to escape”.

With the benefit of 30 years of hindsight, I can understand why my sister left home at 17 to live in a derelict building with her then boyfriend who was three times her age. A life of gathering water from the river and burning broken furniture for warmth was apparently more appealing than a life under constant surveillance.

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To console myself for a stressful day, I decided to cook a Thai red curry (using a Simply Cook kit rather than making it from scratch). I only used half of the spice paste, and half of the coconut-chilli sprinkle to keep it mild.

Mum took one small mouthful and declared it “too spicy”. By the time I had carried my serving into the living room, she had decided it was “actually fine”, and she finished her portion with a satisfied “yum”.

This blog post has taken well over an hour to write, punctuated by a desperate search for the name of a programme mum could describe in only the vaguest terms: a man and a women, he’s always moaning and writing things down, she’s lovely, there’s water behind them.

After much frustration, mum found the answer in the very listings magazine she has been insisting all day she is incapable of understanding. Which pretty much sums up my day, tbh.

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[Did you get it? I didn’t: it was Springwatch. 🐣🦡🌿]