Tuesday this week was a little different in that my parents seem to have taken over in the daftness stakes and these were things that needed to be addressed…

Mum and I went to Tesco. Mum had a panic that she was going to wee herself because I made her laugh too much and once again Mum didn’t like the look of any of the cashiers.  I told her not to say anything too loud about them this week so she told me in a stage whisper that the one she opted for was ‘ok, but she is a bit odd’.  I cannot guarantee that I was the only one to hear this…  Meanwhile, the cashier she does like came back from her break when we were loading up and offered Mum a Liquorice Allsort, so now I imagine we might have to plan our trips around this ladies breaks as she’s gone up even higher in Mums estimation…

Next, we had to go to the other side of Bumpkinstown to pick up Dad who’d had to take the car to the garage having discovered that squirrels had built two nests around the engine, liberally spreading it with nut shells…and another in the boot, where they’d bypassed nuts and snacked on the wires for the rear lights.

I mean, it has been marginally worse before – once they got their unhappy car to the garage for the mechanic to discover a live pheasant under the bonnet (Don’t believe me?  Take a look here for the photos!)

This week mum and dad had opted for us to make biscuits. This week Mum couldn’t do numbers or reading, but she nailed the rolling pin.

She also claimed she didn’t snack on the melted chocolate but photographic evidence would suggest otherwise…

And then we turned our hands to sewing.

Because it turns out that Mum and Dads solution to her not being able to do up the zip on her 3/4 length coat was to leave the last few inches done up permanently and to step in and out of it like a small child. And like a small child, Mum is a bit wobbly.  And Dad is not as strong as he was.  Apparently at a hospital appointment a few weeks back they had ‘quite a job’ to get mum out of her coat in the waiting room and then ‘an even worse one’ to get her back in….🤦🏼‍♀️

Luckily (kind of), Dad can’t go out in the cold because it affects his breathing so badly, and the squirrels had put an end to any more outings in the car so we were able to fix it before Mum got trapped in – or out – of her coat again.  And even though Mum was convinced the zip is faulty, it’s more of a ‘user issue’, so my solution has been to sew poppers in for the days that the zip is a bit much and to cross my fingers that these are a manageable alternative.

So this Tuesday was good and full of solutions and lots of giggles and a bit of dancing to Abba again.

And I came home and cried.  Because when we got to Tesco mum had struggled to get out the car as she always does.  And it was because she had forgotten to undo the seatbelt as she always does.  And we laughed that she was trapped like a fly in a spiders web like we always do.  So I reached over, unstrapped the seatbelt for her and helped her out.  And as we walked away from the car she reached out for my hand to cross the road, looked up at me in the lovliest way and said ‘I’m like your little girl, aren’t I?’

And I know I said last week that treating her like a child is turning out the best way to do this, and I am loving that more and more I get to spend time with this happy Mum who seems to enjoy my company (that’s new, believe me!) but there is a little bit that breaks inside me when I put all of the changes together and realise how fast Mum is moving away.

So Tuesday was a good day for us.  Maybe it was just a bad day for Mums head.  And maybe next Tuesday she will be able to recognise ‘eggs’ without me clucking like a chicken in Tesco, and be able to do up her coat and remember what a spoon is.  And maybe she wont. And as long as we have a giggle, I guess it really doesn’t matter at the moment. 🙂