Is it pineapple sponge today?

Sausage and roasted apple salad / rhubarb pie and ice cream

Today started with mum waking up, complaining that she was cold, refusing to put on warmer clothes or turn off the fan, and going back to bed.

I sat on my bed with Suki, watching birds on the feeder, to which Suki was only marginally interested. Then along came a flock of emperor dragonflies, each nearly the size of my hand, zipping around the garden as if gravity is an optional extra. I stood outside, surrounded by green and blue blurs, and it was peaceful and beautiful and really quite wonderful.

Then mum woke up and the rest of the day was the usual never-ending flow of complaints. I just get so fed up with her blaming me for not helping while actively refusing my help, and getting aggressive and accusative if I don’t offer the same thing over and over again because it’s proof I “don’t care”. It feels like she’s constantly testing me, wanting me to fail so she can feel superior. (And she probably is, as that’s how she’s always been.)

I did manage to find mum’s missing phone, buried under a pile of the clean underwear mum insists she doesn’t have, and tentatively arranged a dentist appointment for mum. This seemed to be clearly needed as mum had been crying about how much her teeth hurt but, when I told her about the appointment, she looked at me as if I was made because “there’s nothing wrong with my teeth”.

I do feel like I’m going mad at times, with mum doing things like that!

This afternoon I called the GP surgery during the one hour of the day when they give out test results, and found out that mum’s urine test showed no sign of an infection. I immediately called and asked to speak to someone about finding the cause of mum’s symptoms if it’s not a UTI, and am still waiting now. I guess it will be tomorrow now, which means managing another evening of mum being increasingly confused and agitated: she’s just told me that she didn’t think we would sleep tonight because… well, who knows what’s going on in her mind?

She did decide earlier that she was too unwell to do the washing up, and I would have to do it, only to stand over me and tell me I wasn’t doing it well enough, and was splashing too much water in the process. I offered to let her do it, but of course “I can’t!” 🙄

I have been doing a lot of eye-rolling today, thanks to little things like putting away the groceries, doing the washing up, liaising with doctors and dentists, and consoling and reassuring mum on repeat, only for mum to pipe up “could you help me some time, if it’s not too much trouble?”

Thanks to a private eye-roll, I was able to sweetly reply “of course, mum”.

Dinner was simply roasted red onions and chunks of apple with honey-mustard cocktail sausages, served on salad, followed by rhubarb pie and ice cream. Mum ate it all and didn’t complain – or at least she didn’t complain about the food, which I’ll take as a win on a day that has had precious few of them.