Green beans and bacon with honey glaze, chips

Today started with a startling beep. Beep. BEEP. BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEP…

Apparently when correcting the time on mum’s alarm clock yesterday I accidentally set the alarm to go off at 6am. It doesn’t mess about, either, and was pretty much screaming at me by the time I found my glasses and scrambled next door to mum’s room to turn it off.

I went back to bed and left mum to turn off her bedside light, but she couldn’t remember how until I got back up, found my glasses again, and coached her through the process of pushing a switch.

After that I dozed rather than going back to sleep, only to be woken at 8.20am by a phone call from the person I was supposed to be meeting later, letting me know his son was sick and he couldn’t meet me after all. I wasn’t entirely sorry, as I hadn’t managed to arrange a taxi and was going to have to catch the community bus, which would have made me late enough that he might well have given up and left by the time I got there anywhere.

After that I dozed again, Suki in my arms, until I could face the gauntlet of getting up and dealing with mum. Fortunately while I was running late, the daily carer was running early, and got here while mum was still wandering around vaguely. That allowed me to quietly ask the carer to get mum to take off the two vest tops she has been wearing night and day for a week and to give herself a proper wash.

Mum stubbornly refused to wash the bottom half of herself – I heard her say “no, I don’t want to” in the pathetic little voice she uses when she wants to really pull on the heart-strings, and knew that that was the end of that. She is at least 50% cleaner than she was, though, and after that I didn’t mind too much when the carer spent the last 25 minutes of her hour shift playing on her phone, which usually pees me right off.

15 minutes after the carer left, the cleaner came for his weekly slot. 10 minutes later, a rep from the agency arrived – pre-arranged – to do a spot check on him as he’s a new employee. I was very happy to recount his cupboard-cleaning exploits to illustrate why he’s excellent at his job. (For those who missed it: a couple of weeks ago he somehow spotted that our food cupboard was infested with flour mites. Unasked, he took everything out of the cupboard, threw away anything out of date, scrubbed the cupboard shelves, and put everything back in a far more organised fashion. I will always be grateful for that.)

Then I did a meal plan and associated grocery order, refilled the soap dispenser, got out a clean towel for the bathroom, and hung up the contents of the washing machine, including the vests that had been prised off mum. Then I sat on the bed with Suki, who sprawled out with her head in one of my hands, her back paws in my other hand, and a very large purr between the two.

The rest of the afternoon was spent reading, sometimes with Suki at my side, sometimes without. Mum wasn’t happy: she told me sadly that she “just wanted to talk to [me]”, but as I know that for her ‘talking’ is synonymous with ‘complaining’, I decided she could just be unhappy for a while.

(She is currently looping on complaints about the non-existent hole in her tooth, and how much it hurts. The dozenth time, she started with “have I told you…” Yes, mum, you have. So, so many times.)

Dinner was the usual pre-grocery delivery mash up: frozen green beans, smoked bacon, and what was meant to be a very mild ‘hot’ honey but turned out to just be honey. I served it with oven chips, and followed it with Nuii Nordic Berries ice cream sticks. I thought they were OK – good dark chocolate but minimal berry-ness, with no sign of the blueberry sauce that’s meant to be in there. Mum liked them enough that she ate two of the three in the box. It’s a good thing I wasn’t massively enthused by them, really!

For the rest of tonight it’s tv, including my favourite quiz, Only Connect. I have a vague thought that one day I might apply to go on the programme, either alone or with a team I would call The Clowder. (The collective name for a group of cats, if you didn’t know.) This would be both for me, because I am generally pretty good at it from the dubious comfort of my orthopedic chair – if I don’t get at least two per round I’m pretty annoyed with myself, or with mum if it’s because she has deliberately distracted me to stop me enjoying something – and for my dad, as it was one of his favourite programmes, too.

In his case it was more that he had a major crush on Victoria Coren Mitchell, a fact that I may or may not mention to her if I ever do get on the programme!

Tomorrow is another flat viewing and I will, as always, let you know how it goes. See y’all then!