Don’t ever assume…A story of a cat and a dog

Posted on January 29, 2024 by thepogblog

I had hoped that Norman Cat (13 going on 14) and Percy (Working Cocker, 3) would one day be friends.

I had assumed any issues they had would probably be caused by Percy.

Three years later I totally concede that I was wrong on both counts.

Percy is desperate to be friends with Norman.  He approaches very, very slowly, snoofing his way, and stops a fair distance for Norman to get used to his presence.  If I could have taught him how to approach without causing stress, this would be what I’d have done.  Norman will then do one of his many ‘I-may-be-old-but-I-still-have-the-ninja-moves’  on him, jumping and hissing towards him and scratching whatever he can get his claws into.

Percy now tends to go to his den for safety if they cross paths downstairs.

But now, things have escalated.  Norman rarely gets the chance to inflict bodily harm now,  so instead, he’s developed some mental games.  They started last week and it took us a while to work out quite what was happening.  It tuned out what was happening was this:

Norman has his space on the landing – his bed(s), scratching post and his toys:

(He has more toys, but they are liberally scattered under beds upstairs where he has played hunt with them.  He may be 13, but apparently he’s of the ‘age is just a number’ camp.)

So Norman’s mind games?  He’s taken to pushing his toys through the gaps in the stair rails and…

…into Percys den below.

We’re not sure if the goal is to hit Percy with them, scare him or if it could be an olive branch and an offer to play.  We strongly suspect it’s not the latter as frankly, Norms is the grumpiest bugger that was ever covered in fur, and the only Human he doesn’t attack is me.  And I suspect that is only because if he did he would be banned from sleeping on my right shoulder. Every night.

So the moral of this story is don’t ever assume it’s the bigger creature that has the upper hand.  And never trust the Norman. 🙂

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Parental daftness Tuesday

Posted on January 25, 2024 by thepogblog

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. 🙂

Posted in Bumpkinsville, family, looking after Mum, memory, muddled life guide, stroke, Tuesday | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

The cold elbow solution

Posted on January 22, 2024 by thepogblog

Do you have a recurring dream or nightmare?

Mine have changed over the years.

  • First it was the owl pecking out the back window of a car I was being driven in through a forest. (I was really young then)
  • Then it was the sticks with weird voices that wouldn’t let me through.  (Nope, no idea)
  • Then I had the standard ‘going for an exam and forgot to revise…or actually attend a class in the last two years’.
  • And in the last few months I’ve swapped that out for the one where I am an old lady in a hospital bed, unable to communicate that I have really cold elbows.

It’s been waking me up.  It’s resulted in early morning and late night conversations with Mr R that should I ever be in a hospital bed unable to communicate, for the love of God, will he please make sure my elbows are covered?!

Because actually, this isn’t just a dream.  I do get really cold elbows in bed.  It actually wakes me up if they are not covered. And between that and the old lady nightmare, it’s been ruining my sleep.

But, lovely people, I am pleased to let you know I have solved the problem 😁. I located a cardigan that Percy attacked as a puppy but I kept just incase I ever had a use for…

…snipped off the arms, crocheted around the top so they were a bit grippy…

…And popped them over my nightshirt (Norman cat was not terribly impressed)

They are not a thing of beauty and I suspect the are as attractive as that pair of really comfy pants we all own that contain a few holes and most of the elastic has gone, but lordy, my sleep last night was not interrupted by visions of cold elbowed old ladies or actual cold elbows.  They are like leg warmers for elbows.  I have invented elbow warmers.  And I am proud 😁

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Muddled Life Practical Tip – Consent to talk to doctors

Posted on January 18, 2024 by thepogblog

Getting an appointment to see a doctor can be tricky for all of us, right?  But I had no idea that as people age they can be pushed ever so slightly to the side and then quietly ignored to the degree my parents seem to have been. At least, I assume that’s the reason.

It turns out Mum has not seen a GP since before her stroke in May 2021 (I only found that out while filling in a form for her at the end of last year).  Her oncology appointment to confirm she didn’t need more chemo was delayed by a YEAR – that happened a few weeks ago.  And Dad has COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) which is a progressive disease that causes breathing difficulties. He’s not seen a doctor since before Covid.

Problem:

I think it was prompted by my dawning realisation that the Power of Attorney (which I’ll talk about in another post) might take forever and a day to come through, and there could be a need to talk to the doctor about Mum or Dad before then.

(Note: I’d not found out at this point that neither of them had been seen for things they needed to be seen for – I just assumed that they didn’t tell us about GP appointments because they never had).

Action:

I contacted the surgery and was told they had a form that needed to be filled out and taken to the surgery.  It turned out that I wasn’t needed for the form; it’s for the patient to fill out, give details of who can contact the surgery on their behalf and sign. Dad did this for him and Mum and returned them as requested. I never expected him to agree to this quite yet, but it’s a good thing he did as…

Problem 2:

…I then discovered that due to their surgeries ‘care navigation’ my parents were only ever offered telephone appointments.  In theory that works, but my concern at this point was Dads breathing; it was at the stage where strangers were suggesting ambulances when he went out, so he ‘d clearly deteriorated a fair bit. On a telephone appointment he can breathe normally because he has been sitting and resting – an in person appointment would have demonstrated that a walk from the car outside could cause him significant problems….but he never got that far as a telephone appointment usually resulted in some sort of ‘solution’.

Essentially, it seems that when you get older, you get fobbed off.  But I had my form, so on the day Dad was really struggling and had been given a telephone appointment for TWO WEEKS time, I contacted the surgery and luckily enough got through to what turned out to be a lovely receptionist. Lovely receptionist confirmed that 1) Dad had to have a telephone appointment for the GP to assess whether he needed to be seen in person and 2) that they had lost the form dad had filled in so nobody could talk to me anyway.

Action 2:

To cut a long story short, being lovely, she moved the telephone appointment to later that day and I asked her to make a note for the GP that she needed to see Dad in person, and that I would be following up.  I followed up with bells on – again, a story for another day.  Dad got his in person appointment and he took down another signed form to authorise me talking to the doctor.

Now, the irony here is that I’ve not actually spoken to a doctor about either parent – yet.  But my follow up consisted of a very detailed email requesting specific actions, referencing various parts of the NHS website to back up my requests.  I could be wrong, but I suspect that might not have been actioned had the possibility not have existed that I would request an appointment to talk to the GP (which with the form now on record I do now have the authority to do).  As I understand it, without this form a GP can choose to listen to you but not comment on a patient’s health.

Muddled Life Tip:

So, my muddled life tip here is that if you have an older parent who you can see there might be a need to advocate for, or become involved in the care of in the near future, these are the steps to take:

  • Have a conversation with your parents (or parents, have a conversation with your adult children)
  • Contact their surgery and ask for their version of the consent form that allows you to discuss their care with a doctor to be emailed to you or your parents
  • Complete the form and take it back
  • Check a week or so later that it is actually on their record

And that you do this before you need to – you don’t need to use it until you need to use it 🙂

Resources:

NHS:  Can I speak to a GP about someone else’s health?

Posted in Muddled Life Tip | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Wooden Spoon Tuesday

Posted on January 16, 2024 by thepogblog

It’s Tuesday.  And my car didn’t even turn over when I tried to leave for Mum and Dads this morning when it was -5.  Mr R did magic with jump leads though and luckily (for this set of circumstances) it’s 50 miles to Mum and Dads so there was time for the battery to recharge. I still made Mum pray for the car to start when we left their house for Tesco, and when we left Tesco to go back though. (she did, and she praised the car for succeeding too. It was very cute.)

A while back when I was really struggling when I visited Mum because we just seemed to rub each other up the wrong way, Sister 1 told me to treat Mum like a child.  I couldn’t bring myself to – she is my Mum and is a grown woman.  But my sister was right; an awful lot of the time her brain isn’t that of a grown woman, and treating her as if it is has the same effect of treating a young child like a grown up – she just doesn’t get it.  So that’s what I started consciously doing.

And I think that must be why for the third week running we had a really good day.  We walked around Tesco for waaay longer than we needed to again, with Mum proudly pushing the trolley (And I did the chicken impression again to attempt to get mum to remember ‘eggs’. – still doesn’t work, but it did make her – and a few other shoppers – giggle). I smiled and agreed that of course we could go to a different cashier when Mum announced a lot too loudly that she ‘didn’t want to go to the man to pay as he didn’t look very good and she just didn’t like the look of him…’  His Tesco’s colleague and the other shoppers nearby who heard this pronouncement all seemed to find the humour in it, luckily, as we found a lady cashier who was more to Mums liking…. 😬

Back at her home, todays dish was lasagne.  A word that mum could not retain at all.  We popped on Abba (the anchor I mentioned last week seems to be working still) and started singing as we got out the ingredients.

I was under the impression that things that you have done or known for years are ones you retain, but – for example –  while Mum knew what she had to do with a grater she couldn’t work out how to do it.  And frankly she is dangerous with a ladle and hot mince.  But we laughed through it all and when she got things wrong or totally forgot what we were doing she just waved kitchen implements at me in a slightly maniacal way (the sharp knife was a little too scary though and I had to take that away…)

“You need to add some seasoning Mum.  Any ideas what you could use?” eventually, with clues got the response ‘salt’ and then….’vicar’.  So we added salt and vicar to the mince. 😬

‘Wooden spoon’ has totally disappeared from her mind so I popped one in my back pocket and tested her on what it was every few minutes.  I think she might have got it after an hour or so.

“What do you do with a wooden spoon, Mum?”

“Cook”

“Yes, you do, but I meant what sort of action?” (miming ‘stirring’)

“Shake! No, stroke”

I stroked Mum with the wooden spoon and she had to rush off to the toilet because “you are making me laugh too much and I am going to wet myself, Pog!”

When I left today I had to take a few loads to the car. As I came back in the house, Mum jumped out of a doorway and shouted “Boo!”.  It made me and Dad laugh, as that isn’t really Mum.  Maybe it’s Little girl Mum though.  And she can be very cute.

A while back a client talked about her Mum disappearing from her due to dementia and called it ‘the long goodbye’.  It’s such a good description of this weirdness.  Mum as we knew her went with her stroke and now it feels like we are travelling back in time with her.  Our family choose to view as much in life as we can with humour – it’s how we are in the good times and the bad.  And telling these sorts of stories – with love, rather than for a cheap laugh – keeps that humour going.  But I said I’d keep this honest, so yes, there are moments that are sad.  So sad.  The whole situation is.  I have friends with parents the same age as mine and they are well and living a good life the way mine should be.  And that makes me sad for my Mum and Dad, and for me and my sisters.

But it is what it is.  And this week we had fun and we made four lasagnes.  And Dad is probably still panicking about whether they will all fit in the freezer, or if they should just eat lasagne for the rest of the week… (Sorry, Dad!)

It was another good Tuesday. 🙂

Posted in Cooking, family, looking after Mum, memory, muddled life guide, stroke, Tuesday | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Introducing A Muddled Life Guide

Posted on January 11, 2024 by thepogblog

When you have a baby there are about eighty billion books to choose from to help you through it. I mean I get that.  You have a small human to keep alive and who doesn’t need some sort of manual on that?!

You get the books that talk you through what will happen, then what is happening (size of a pea, size of a melon) and then you get them on how to feed, how to parent, how to do all the stuff until they are practically adulting.  And I know a book doesn’t cover everything, but it’s a bit of a guide, right?

The other end of the market though…that doesn’t seem to be covered.

***This is a long post.  You night want to grab a cuppa and settle somewhere comfortable***

I have two elderly parents (sorry Mum and Dad). Two and a bit years ago they didn’t seem old at all.  They were active, self sufficient and did their own thing quite happily.

Then Mum had a stroke and things started to change.  Slowly at first, and then the last six months or so have been some kind of baptism of fire.  Not just any baptism of fire; of course not.  It was more of a baptism of fire with blindfolds.  And nobody to shout directions.  I think we all have the blisters to prove it.

So a guide, or a resource on what the bloody hell we are supposed to do at a practical level would be really useful at this point.  But it turns out almost nobody has written a guide on how to do this part of life, not even how to muddle through it.

I say ‘almost nobody’ because there are guides on specific things, but what I’ve discovered is you need to already know a lot of these things in order to find out the information and sometimes it is so blimin’ complicated that it reduces you to tears of frustration (a good day) and red hot rage (the not so good days).

To cut a long post slightly shorter, in addition to the slightly daft posts about life and crochet and dog plods and crotchety old cats, and some step mumming stories (because honest ones of those are hard to find too), I’m going to change the direction of this blog a bit.

I still want to bring you smiles, but alongside them, I want to give you an honest insight into the slight chaos we all eventually drift into as our parents get older, finding the humour where I can as I think that might be the only way to get through the muddles.  And more importantly, the bit I wished I’d had a year ago: access to the stuff that I have already found out and the stuff that I am going to continue finding out as, along with my sisters, we support our Mum and Dad. (I’ve talked this through with Dad – he’s totally in favour of it.  Mum….well, honestly, mum doesn’t understand.  But I’m confident she would be behind it if she did).  This might not be relevant to you now, and if that is the case I hope the smiles are enough to keep you here.

To give you a bit of an idea of the sorts of things I’ll be covering soon, in the last six months I’ve learned about / applied for / been interviewed on / filled out forms on / done a one handed handstand and counted backwards from 100*:

  • Blue badges
  • Discovering that older people are (in this case) not listened to by their surgery
  • What’s required to get a GP to talk to you / listen to you about parents
  • Identifying and pushing for tests required for acceptance to their local hospice
  • Talking to the family about how the hospice isn’t just about dying and how it can help
  • DNRs
  • Hospice appointments
  • Power of attorney (I completed these myself and made mistakes and now know it takes an average of 33 minutes to get through to a human on the helpline)
  • Attendance allowance (including an interview with man from the fraud department with very sweaty palms which seemed a bit topsy turvy to me…)

*I didn’t.  It just felt like it.

And my aunt died last year, so I got and am getting some insight into the probate side of things from and entirely non-legal perspective.

In addition to this, I volunteer for my local hospice – in that role I’ve been matched with a hospice client who is lonely as a result of his illness and essentially, I’ve become his friend, visiting every week or so. That gives me a different angle too.

Oh, and I am a therapist,  And there are some cross overs there too.

And that’s just where we are now.  There will be more; I know there will be more.

 

I’d love you to come along on this journey with me because, well…we have each other and there are a few amazing people who venture over sometimes, but sometimes our little family feels a bit like an isolated island and it would be nice to have people waving at us, just so we know you are there.  And if that is how you feel too, drop a note in the comments and I’ll wave right back whenever I see you 👋🏻

And I promise to always be honest, try to be helpful and do my best to retain (or at least find) the humour in situations that can be a bit tricky.  My version of a Muddled Life Guide for the other end of the market :o) 🙂

Posted in family, Pog Life | Tagged , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Freezin’

Posted on January 10, 2024 by thepogblog

This morning when I took Percy our for our morning plod it was -3.5.

I am part toad.  (Mum told me this.  And it was years ago – nothing to do with my animal impressions this time).

So between us, we wore this:

Percy:  Jacket, harness, light up collar, collar with tracker.

Me: jacket, three long sleeved tops, one verst top, leggings, buff (neck and face), hat, harness, spi-belt, head torch and trainers.

It was freezin’.

But it was also beautiful:

And even when it is freezin’, time with your best mate is time well spent :o)

Posted in dogs, exercise, running | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Tuesday and my super trouper, dancing queen

Posted on January 9, 2024 by thepogblog

Today’s Tuesday started with a trip to Tesco.  For those who have ventured here with Mum before it can be a rocky experience and few leave unscathed…

…However, it turns out giving Mum full control of the trolley and giving up all idea of finishing rapidly did – on this occasion – result in a relatively smooth expedition.

(Top tip to others in this scenario:  If your person announces they are going to get the milk and start go down entirely the wrong aisle, telling them this is a bad idea.  Telling them might result in ‘the look’ and a fair bit of tutting and small amount of sneering.  You will of course be wrong in your assertion that this is the wrong direction as of course the milk is down here.  It’s just that ‘milk’ is the new name for ‘orange juice’….)

So we did the shop in a magical mystery tour sort of way.  Mum still couldn’t remember that we were making ham and egg pie, so as promised I snorted until she remembered ‘pig’ and pretended to be a chicken, loudly laying an egg next to the eggs as promised, until mum shouted ‘goat!’ at me between laughing and we got a few stares…

We didn’t make pig and goat pie.  We made bacon and egg pie and Mum was blimin’ amazing.  Numbers didn’t exist at all for her today so weighing out was even more entertaining than last week, but she made the pastry alone, worked out how to turn on the oven and the hob and rediscovered how to crack eggs and use a pepper grinder.  We even made tarts with the left over pastry.

There were a few challenges.  Mum couldn’t work out what might be wrong with her rolling:

(That’s the pastry bottom right of the board and the cutter being rolled)

And there was the incident where I told her to put her hand in the flour so she could flour the board and got her hand stuck but couldn’t work out why it wouldn’t come out.  We ended up having to stop laughing and free her hand all very fast when gasped that she might wet herself from all the laughing… :o)

So today Mum got to push the trolley at Tesco, remembered the names of some of the things we were buying and made pie and tarts…from scratch.  And she was so proud that before we put the pie in the oven she took it to show Dad (who we had banished from the kitchen so he could have a rest and maybe so he also couldn’t interfere…)

And here’s another cool bit:

Muddle Tip:

I took a portable speaker with me and put on the same Abba songs we listened to last week as we cooked and had a good time doing it.  This time Mum remembered more songs, remembered details about them and at one point she even did some dancing.  This isn’t a coincidence:  it’s called an ‘anchor’ in the world of therapy where I spend the rest of my week.

You know that song you hear that transport you back to a specific time and place?  That’s an anchor.  You can create anchors intentionally and unintentionally and you can have positive and negative ones; at work I help clients create a positive anchor using hypnotherapy as a shortcut.

I know Mum already has an anchor to Abba’s music because I can remember her singing along, dancing in the kitchen when we played the records 30, 35 years ago (Lordy, how long?!).  By playing the same songs now, I am taking part of her mind back there where it reminds here ‘oooh, when this music plays, I’m always happy’, so she is happy in the present moment.  And by playing it when she is calm and happy in the kitchen I am adding to that positive anchor.  I’m going to do the same again next week and the week after so that soon as soon as she hears Abba playing  – whether we are cooking or not – she will be able to relax and feel happy.

(Note:  If  things get stressed or she is having a bad day, I’ll turn the music off as that will negate the positive and if extreme, could even start to create a negative anchor).

Maybe you’d like to have a go at doing the same thing?

This is something we can do for ourselves (a set of tracks to listen to when we exercise, or something to relax us), or for other people in the same way I’m doing for Mum. We know that older people who are a little confused often still make connections with music, so suddenly this thing I use so often at work has taken on a whole new significance in my life.

And it’s not just for adults – we’ve all seen small children visibly relax when something triggers their bedtime routine.  This works for all ages.

Feel free to leave any questions you might have in the comments.

Maybe because of the anchor, maybe not, today was a good Tuesday :o)

Posted in Cooking, looking after Mum, memory, stroke, Tuesday | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

A stepmum promotion

Posted on January 4, 2024 by thepogblog

The first few years of stepmum-ing were pretty awful.

There.  I said it.  I know you’re not supposed to, and yes, there were some good times, but mostly it was the absolute hardest thing I have done.  I get on with kids.  I ran kids holiday clubs in the canary islands. I used to be a nanny.  I am a therapist to children and teens but step mumming was one of the the steepest learning curves I may have ever been on.

Six years ago Mr R and I moved into this house  and I guess that’s when I became a stepmum.  I married himself a year and a half ago, so that’s when it because official, but it was six years ago that the boys and I started to spend time together in the same house on a regular basis.

I’m not sure exactly when it was that the Younger R (now 14) decided he would not call me ‘Pog’ as the Older R (now 18) did.  Younger R’s nickname for me was ‘Evil stepmum’.

It was partly a joke…I think.

But something amazing happened this Christmas.  To cut a very long story short, we were on our way back from staying with their grandparents and realised the boys might make it to a football match they thought they’d have to miss, if we dropped them off at the stadium on the way back.  And then we realised they wouldn’t miss too much and Himself could go too, if we drove home and swapped cars (I can’t drive Mr Rs without a bit of a practice worm up owing to it being like a tank) and I drove them all in the Pogmobile.  The challenge was on!

We got home, threw ourselves out of one car, popped Percy in his den and jumped in the Pogmobile (think Batman and Robin, Starsky and Hutch here….) and I drove like the clappers to the stadium *

About two thirds of the way there the Younger R announced it:

‘I’ve just given you a promotion:  You’re not evil stepmum anymore; you’re badass stepmum’.

I nearly burst with happiness.  Until the next day where I was gravely informed that relegation is always a possibility… But for now, I’m still on a high :o)

And the Older R?  It was never quite a delicate, but things have changed there too.  This year he chose their card to me:

And I could not stop laughing.  It’s my sense of humour completely and not many people get it, but he does.  We must be getting on ok for that to be the case, right?

So in amongst the blog there will be stepmum posts (I’ve asked both the R’s if this is ok and they said yes.  Actually the Younger R said he’d like me to make him famous through it, but I have reset expectations there a little…).  Because this feels like something else that should be part of a Middle Muddle Life Manual and I can’t blimin’ find what I’ve looked for, so if someone else gets something from this, then that is another win :o)

*’drove like the clappers’ is a little enthusiastic –  no speed limits were even approached as the Pogmiobile doesn’t like to transport more than one person and cocker spaniel unless it’s going downhill – it just felt like we were moving practically at the speed of light.

Posted in step mum | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Tuesdays

Posted on January 2, 2024 by thepogblog

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)

Posted in Cooking, looking after Mum, memory, stroke, Tuesday | Tagged , , , | 6 Comments