Tuesdays can go either way.

Tuesdays are the day I go and see my parents and how they go depends a lot on Mums frame of mind.  And Mums frame of mind can change in a matter of minutes

Dad is Mums carer after she had a stroke a couple of years ago.  And Dad has COPD making breathing pretty tricky for him sometimes.  So my sisters and I take it in turns to help out.  Tuesday is my day and the usual schedule is to take mum on an outing to give them a rest from each other, have a cup of coffee (usually M&S but not up the escalator after an incident at the end of last year where Mums’ arms started the journey to the next floor, but her feet stayed on the ground….and she stretched like a cartoon character…  I may have laughed *way* more than I should.)

Anyway, todays – admittedly not terribly exciting – outing was to Tesco.  Only mum wasn’t feeling too well when I arrived, so I went alone, with a very detailed list and a map that Dad had drawn for me so I could find exactly where everything was…

‘There’s no fruit on the list’

‘We don’t like fruit anymore…’

So I also bought apples so Mum and I could make a crumble because I thought at least that way I’d get a bit of fruit into them both.

…Which was possibly the funniest thing I have done with Mum in a long time.  Mum looses words a lot.  And her memory is sometimes good, sometimes terrible. So ‘we need three oz of sugar’ today didn’t stick for the time it took her to weigh out three ounces of sugar.  It’s a good thing we only had a few ingredients to weigh out.

While we were cooking I put on Abba on my phone.  My sisters and I know all the words to all Abba songs that have ever been written thanks to the fact that Mum and Dad brought us up on their music.  When I first put it on Mum was sure she’s never heard of it.  Two songs in and she not only remembered but told me it was ‘lovely’.

So we hummed and weighed and weighed and checked and weighed and I wanted to capture the moment, so took a selfie.  Mum didn’t like it because she said she didn’t like her face in it.  I pointed out that we look quite similar and she looked like me.  And she said we didn’t – my face was ‘neat and tidy’ and hers is ‘messy’. I think it might be the best compliment ever – I have a neat and tidy face :o)

But it was ok – we got the giggles and I took anther photo and she thought she looked a bit more neat and tidy:

And the end result of two apple and mincemeat crumbles was pretty neat and tidy too – Mum was very proud:

Next week we’re planning on going to Tesco together and as well as the weeks shopping, we’ll buy the ingredients for a ham and egg pie that we will then make together.  Only Mum couldn’t retain ‘ham’, ‘egg’ or ‘pie’ for more than a few moments so I took to acting out the pig and a chicken laying an egg, which made Mum laugh like a little girl.  I’ve told her that if she forgets what we are getting in Tesco next week I will act it out for her there until she remembers.  I’ll let you know how it goes :o)

Today was a good Tuesday :o)