Bacon, mixed veg and new potatoes
The short version: we have heat again. The engineer turned up at the stroke of 8am, installed the new part, apologised that it had taken so long, and departed, leaving us with warm radiators and hot water.
The longer version is that my brain decided to wake me up at 6.30am, leaving me fighting exhaustion by lunchtime.
The arrival of a strange person in the house early in the morning, coupled with me being obviously out of order, has left both Suki and mum feeling clearly confused and distressed.
Suki demonstrated this by walking around the house meowing, jumping on and off my bed, begging for food then refusing to eat it… Being a typical cat, really.
Mum has demonstrated this by repeatedly misplacing things so I have to get up and locate them, crying because I couldn’t promise to fix her current lichen sclerosus flare by bedtime, forgetting how to use the remote control and getting annoyed that the tv channel didn’t change when she pointed the remote control at me while I was sitting in a different room… Being more dementia-y than usual, really.
I am struggling with the carer paradox that I both feel deeply sorry for mum, who is obviously very uncomfortable and not really capable of understanding why, and wish overwhelmingly for her to just stop complaining for five damn minutes.
For dinner I cooked bacon. Mum looked at the pack and said “I know you like it, but I’m not keen”.
Don’t you like bacon?
“Of course I do.”
There was no real response to that other than “oh, good”, and putting the rashers in the pan.
So, not much longer, then, but there we go. Now to an evening listening to distant fireworks (tonight being Bonfire Night in the UK, where people celebrate a failed attempt to murder a king and his parliament by burning big piles of wood (and always a few unlucky hedgehogs – check your wood piles before introducing flames, please, people!), shooting pretty-coloured chemicals into the sky, and eating crappy food from vans which have probably passed a food safety inspection at some point, maybe) and nearby rain, while trying to explain to mum that she doesn’t need to illustrate her need for me to order her more vests by trying to put one of her old ones on over her t-shirt.
And with that ridiculously over-long sentence, goodnight.
