The pondering Tuesday

Tuesday stats:

Tesco: The biggest shop we ever did together. Too much to do a trolley check which made mum happy. She said I was allowed to drop the blue tokens on the donation bin at the end as a special treat, but then couldn’t quite bear to give up that bit of excitement 😉
Celebratory ‘we did the shopping’ cake choice: Cinnamon bun. Edging into first place in the ‘possible favourite’ stakes
Cooked: Pog’s Pasta (with chicken, not actual Pogs)– x3 again because it turns out I have no clue how to cook for two people with tiny appetites
Music choice: We tried The Moody Blues but Mum couldn’t remember their songs and I couldn’t sing along as I only know Nights in White Satin so we went back to Abba 🙂
Afternoon home cooked treat: Mince pies (Mum and Dad cook sweet things together quite often, with varying levels or frustration / irritation from what I understand. Mince pies are a favourite)
Tuesday blanket squares completed since last week: eight.
Tuesday blanket square grand total: 29

Mum’s stroke affected the right side of her body. My sisters both know a fair bit about this sort of thing as they have worked with people who have had strokes and other brain injuries and Sister 1’s husband has had surgery for a brain tumour that resulted in a brain injury. So they both knew when Mum had her stroke that she would favour the less affected side in all ways…but also in where she looked. I had no clue that – for example – if Mum had a beaker of tea on the table in front of her, she simply wouldn’t look to the right to find it – it was like a blind spot. In rehab she even had a special sleeve for her right arm to remind her it was there 😁

It improved over time though, and I didn’t think about it really. Only this week I realised that whatever is on the right hand side of the pan when we cook never gets brown. And if I tell Mum she always tells me that the pan is faulty / the cooker is faulty / I must stop interfering because she CAN DO IT! I wonder if it’s the same thing…? Or if it’s part of the dementia. Or if it even matters….

Just wondering aloud here.

In other news: She picked out the wooden spoon without hesitation again! Hooray! She couldn’t remember my name again, or the agreement to call me her ‘favourite daughter’ 😁, but baby steps and all that.

The Tuesday Blanket is growing:

I was even allowed to sew some more blocks together which was very exciting. We’re trying to learn the colours of the wool again. When my nephew was little and learning his colours, everything was ‘blue!’. Mum seems to have lost blue though…and yellow and grey for the moment, but hey, if we can relearn ‘wooden spoon’ we can do anything….right? 🙂