Tempura chicken tenders, chopped Asian-style salad, vegetable gyoza
This morning I was sitting on the bed with Suki, trying to decide whether to go and have a shower and risk mum needing the loo mid-wash, or whether to wait an unknown amount of time to see if she would wake up any time soon, when there was a knock at the door. It was someone come to read the meter, and his presence woke mum and sent her into a spiral of complaining and panicking.
I left her in bed and went for a shower (once the meter reader had gone, obviously), then as usual spent the rest of the morning trying to coax mum out of bed. I told her the groceries were coming and I would need her help, and she whimpered “I don’t think I can, it hurts, can’t I just stay here?”
She did get up, and gave me minimal help with the groceries, mostly just watching me while I struggled. I long for a day when I don’t have to play Tetris in a tiny fridge just to find a home for everything, and when I might have a carer so that task doesn’t leave me so exhausted that the rest of the day is spent lying on the bed trying not to fall asleep.
This evening I collated several new groceries into a meal: tempura-battered chicken tenders, Itsu “vegetable dinner dumplings”, and a kit for Asian-style chopped salad. Much to my surprise, mum’s favourite part was the salad: she declared the combination of crispy veg, miso-ginger dressing, salted roasted edamame, and crispy fried onions to be “delicious!”
(And, just BTW, does anyone else think my bit of chicken looks like an anteater, or maybe a dinosaur? I may have arranged the plate to give it a vegetable floor and gyoza boulders to enhance the resemblance. 🤭)
Now mum is eating her way through multiple sweet options, and I am trying to convince myself that staying here until the end of The Repair Shop at 9pm is entirely doable. Tomorrow we have a visit from the social worker, which will involve mum if she decides to get up without all the usual drama.
Unlikely, but possible, I suppose.
