Braised chipolatas and green beans with roast parsnips and herb rolls
Today started with waking up late, with mum whining through my door repeatedly until I saw what the time was and moved. She greeted me at my bedroom door with “are you trying to push me around?” Then she sulkily announced she was going back to bed because I asked her to give me a few minutes because I had only just woken up. Then she accused me of talking to someone, when I was sitting in my room in silence.
Late as I was, the carer was even later, but Little Ms Lazy was fractionally less lazy than usual and engaged mum in conversation while I sneaked off to make some phone calls – to LEAP, and to the Continence Service, and to a taxi company to arrange my trip out yesterday.
I am still waiting for a call back from the first two, but did sort out the taxi. Mum ‘overheard’ (i.e. deliberately eavesdropped) and that triggered an immediate panic: where am I going, why am I going, can’t she come with me, why am I leaving her, what is she supposed to do without me?!
I would suggest using the time to look for her glasses, which have vanished into thin air as only an item owned by someone with dementia can. She has a spare pair but they’re not the right pair, and I have spent a lot of today dealing with repeats of an indignant “what am I meant to do with these?”
For dinner I defrosted some pork and honey chipolatas and braised them with chopped onions, green beans, and chicken gravy. As the pan started sizzling, mum called from the living room to ask what I was doing. Cooking dinner, mum, I responded.
“I know that,” she responded, in her patented ‘my child is an idiot’ tone.
For dessert I intended to serve chunks of chocolate cake, warmed through and served with chocolate sauce and ice cream. (All other approaches having failed, I thought maybe feeding mum into submission might stop the complaint train.)
But mum couldn’t wait for me to finish my dinner to get some dessert, and headed for the fridge to get the last of the chocolate brownie sundaes. With no apparent sense of irony, she noted while inhaling it that “we had a load of these, but they all seem to have vanished somewhere”.
It’s a total mystery what happened to them, it really is.
Tomorrow I’m heading over to St Helens to look at a flat. My Island geography failed me when arranging this viewing, and I discovered today that St Helens is much further east than I thought, almost in Bembridge, which is as far east as you can get on the Island without going for a swim. It’s therefore rather further away from mum than I would like.
I am therefore inclined to think the flat will be a no, so I decided to have lunch out and turn it into a proper trip out. If asked, I will claim that I am doing it for the sake of content for this blog. It is merely a happy side effect that I get to eat chips at the seaside, alone.
Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?
