The ‘she’s a horse!’ Tuesday

Posted on March 13, 2025 by thepogblog

This Tuesday, other than an initial (and now weekly) disagreement over the number of pants one Mummy W needs to wear at one time, Mum was surprisingly agreeable to everything.  She even agreed to take – and use – her walker at the garden center we visited to look around and get a coffee and cake (coffee and cake is at this point a non negotiable part of every outing).  She did nearly take a lady out by ramming into her legs, but the lady was very lovely about it…

The excitement clearly took it out of Mum though, so when we got back and after a coffee and a cake (yes; that’s an additional one of both as the garden center one had been ‘ages ago’) we opted to sit on the sofa and look at old photos.  And by old photos, I mean ones where – if Mum was in them – she was very young.

The slight issue with this is that other than Mum, my Aunt, Nanny and Grandad, I can’t prompt on who anyone is (although Dad could help out with some).  Also, Mum wont wear her glasses anymore, and I’m not sure she can see much without them.  In fact, it tuned out that in some cases, she could see very little without them…

😁

If I don’t do any cooking for Mum and Dad on Tuesdays, I usually take a Marks and Spencer ‘treat meal’.  By coincidence the meal I bought them this week was corned beef hash.  Dad reminded me that when Mum was in labour with me a nurse sent him home for some sleep (!) and when he got in at around midnight he made a variation of corned beef hash for dinner.  As he finished the hospital called to say Mum was actually going to have a caesarean and he needed to get back as soon as possible.  He did, was presented with me and…felt a bit sick (I reminded him of his hastily eaten dinner before a slightly hair raising 20 minutes in his Mini).  The coincidence is that night was 49 years ago -5 days.  We explained to Mum that it is my 49th birthday shortly and she told me I was very old.  I pointed out that she is 30 years older than me so…

‘I’m not.  I’m younger than you’ she said with utter conviction.

And as is widely understood, it’s best not to correct in these situations, so I will shortly be 49 and and 79, I guess.  Sometimes though, that feels entirely accurate.  Especially on a Tuesday 😉

 

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Babs for Babs Tuesday

Posted on March 6, 2025 by thepogblog

The best bit about this Tuesday was giving mum her birthday present.  It’s a Babs the Chicken nightlight (the joke being Mums name is Barbara and she always hated being called ‘Babs’.  I think she’d forgotten that, but it made me smile).

On a more serious note, it is touch sensitive and has no wires, so I thought it would be easier to use at night when she wake up than a torch with a fiddly button (although Dad says she usually forgets the torch so I imagine she’ll forget Babs too, but hey ho).  She seemed quite taken with it:

Her birthday was actually Monday.  I called her an hour or so after she got back from an afternoon tea with Sister 1 and Sister 2 to celebrate. I sang happy birthday to her.  ‘I don’t think it’s my birthday’ she told me.  ‘Nobody has mentioned it to me.’

On Tuesday though, when I told her to put on her shoes as we were meeting one of her friends for lunch (we’ve worked out that giving her any more notice of planned happenings results in lots of worrying about what she wants to remember but has forgotten the who and when of), she said that she hoped they were bringing her a present as it had been her birthday and it would be rude of them not to.  🤦🏼‍♀️

Sometimes things stick.  Most of the time they slip….🙂

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Basic Human-ing

Posted on March 3, 2025 by thepogblog

Full time step-mumming continues.  And I think that three and a half months in it’s going better than expected.

In an attempt to make it work, I started to introduce ‘basic human-ing’ quite early on, one item at a time.  This Pog-made approach goes something like this:

Every so often I identify one thing that makes me want to scream and teach Stepson 2 how to do it in a ‘basic human’ way.  If this is adhered to over a sufficient (but crucially unspecified) time, a reward is provided in the form of a packet of chocolate fingers, a steak pie or the purchase of additional marshmallow to top the homework / football (depending on the day) hot chocolate.  If basic human-ing is not maintained, no reward is provided.

So far we have  created habits around:

  1. Stripping his bed on Monday morning before school and putting the clean bedding back on after school.
  2. Wiping down the worktops after making food (this is easy to check as it’s demonstrated by work surfaces that look like they have had water poured over them, but baby steps and all that).
  3. Drying up after dinner without any sudden urgent ‘just need to go and do something’.
  4. Addressing the significant numbers of wrappers, receipts, bus tickets and fingernails (?!) left in the bedroom through the purchase of a small bedroom bin.  If the bin it not used, bedroom cleaning will be handed over to Stepson Two (I battled with whether this should be his to do anyway, but I figured if I do it at least it’s properly clean and may smell less like dead badger.)
  5. Picking the bathmat up after each shower so it can dry on the towel rail rather than fester on the floor.
  6. Our next significant step when the kitchen is done and dusted (literally), is to learn one proper dinner recipe (meat and veggie versions) that I can request stepson makes on occasion.

And he’s done brilliantly. However, 5) is a new one to all of us, brought in because Stepson Two has two showers most days what with gym visits and football, and I can only assume stands and drip dries on the bathmat, leaving is as drenched as those worktops.  So we’re all trying to remember to do that, because all the rules have to be lead by example, obviously.  But the other evening, after my circuits class shower, Stepson Two gleefully called me to the bathroom door and pointed:

‘Pog:  You failed at basic human-ing!’

I had.

Dammit. 🙂

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The ‘it was Harrods!’ Tuesday

Posted on February 27, 2025 by thepogblog

This Tuesday was slightly more chaotic than usual; unpacking after Tescos I discovered that Mum and Dads freezer had at some point started to defrost, then refrozen.  It took a while, two knives and a bucket to get the excess ice off to get the drawers out…then back in.

Getting mum washed and dressed resulted in more heated discussions on the appropriate number of pants to wear (Me: not three, Mum: definitely three).

Mum and I cooked kedgeree for their tea; a dish Mum used to make, but insisted she’d never had it before.  She seemed to approve of the end product though.

Then it turned out that at the weekend when we’d all gathered for a tea party for Sister 1 and 2’s birthday, and I’d forgotten that I’d put camembert and part baked bread in the oven:

…for over an hour.

Even though I thought I’d cleaned it, it wasn’t enough, and the fumes the next day had nearly finished Dad off, so I cleaned the oven properly…with oven cleaner and everything (creating more fumes and banning Dad from the kitchen until about August).

And the moss on their driveway was becoming a slip hazard so Dad asked me to buy bleach at Tesco to kill it. That didn’t seem like a good idea on any level though, so instead I took some garden tools and a bit of elbow grease to get rid of that.

And then we went to the hospital to see one of Mum’s many doctors, who basically said ‘it is what it is’.  So that was time well spent 🤷‍♀️.  We did see a man in handcuffs being brought in by two police officers with what looked like a stab wound in his neck though, which added a certain something to the day.  I’m not sure what the something was, but I thought it worth a mention.

What was interesting was talking to Mum about the past.  I asked if her Mum had made her birthday cakes for her as a child.  She said no – her Dad had done all the baking.  This is very likely as Grandad was a chef in the army in India in WW2, and then later in the local hospital. I wonder how many other men baked cakes in that era…?

And as the past was obviously a more welcoming place than the present on this particular day, I asked a random question:  I’d recalled a fuzzy memory a while back from the 80’s. The memory was Mum sitting at her sewing machine in the evenings sewing covers for coat hangers.  They were all padded and silky on the outside, and she used to get very, very frustrated making them.  I had a vague idea that she made them for Harrods, but that couldn’t have been right, could it?  Mum did remember sewing the covers and how cross she used to get doing them and which of her friends had got her involved and even where that person had lived. But couldn’t remember who they were for.  Dad remembered though, and I was right.  Mum used to spend evenings getting very cross with coat hangers (‘because they had to be perfect’) to ultimately supply Harrods!

From kedgeree to cakes, ice to moss, doctors to prison inmates and all the way to Harrods….all in one Tuesday 🙂

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Forgetfulness – my turn

Posted on February 21, 2025 by thepogblog

Could it be dementia by association? (Peri?) Menopause brain fog? or just plain old general daftness?

I have an autoimmune thingy called pernicious anaemia.  It’s not terribly exciting.  It was at the start before it was diagnosed – it affects your nervous system and symptoms (for me) included my sight changing to ‘fly view’  – a bit like this…

…for a short while every so often, and the other interesting one where it feels like there is one giant magnet in your head and another on the floor and they are pulling towards each other and there is nothing you can do about it.  That one is quite awkward as you stay conscious so have the embarrassment of watching people watching you as you slowly fall over sideways.

Anyway, once you’re diagnosed, the solution is simple:  A B12  injection every 10-12 weeks depending on how fast your symptoms come back.  It usually starts with the tiredness before the fly eyes and the head magnet.  I didn’t mention that.  It’s a tiredness like your body s full of sand and you’re wading upstream through a river of treacle.

I have injections every 10 weeks and I never, ever forget because..well, see above.

I have never ever forgotten in over ten years.  Until this time.  And I forgot so much that it wasn’t until I was sitting in Brighton Pavilion Music Room listening to a string quartet play by candle light (amazing, but those Regency period folks clearly didn’t feel the cold.  We stayed in jackets, hats and gloves for the duration), that I noticed the organ pipes started moving in quite a fly vision kind of way…

I’ve had the injection now.  And soon I’ll be full of beans rather than sand and my head will stay upright and all will be good with the world.  And I’ll put a reminder in my calendar and an alarm on my phone for next time to beat the Dementia by association /(Peri?) Menopause brain fog / General daftness.

And I’ll thank my lucky stars that I only have to have an injection every 10 weeks (if I remember).  Until the 1950s, for those that survived pernicious anaemia (because it used to be a killer) were told to eat a pound of raw liver every day.  Which it turned out did absolutely nothing to help the situation.  And I imagine would be utterly impossible to forget too. 🙂

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The many Mummy W’s Tuesday

Posted on February 19, 2025 by thepogblog

Over the next four weeks it is Sister 1 and Sister 2’s birthdays (they’re twins), Mums and mine.

This Tuesday Mum and I cooked up a storm.  First last nights dinner (theirs, mine, Mr Rs and Stepson 2’s as I am still mid kitchen chaos and dust fest), and then some cheese straws, sausage rolls and brownies for Sister 1 & 2’s family party that we are having at Mum and Dads on Sunday.

We don’t tend to tell Mum about upcoming plans anymore as initially she becomes obsessive about when they are happening (and has lost all sense of days and times so can’t track the answers anyway) and then she gets so stressed by whatever it is that she is ‘sick’  and has to cancel.

But despite this, for some reason I told her we were cooking for the twins party and told her it’s nearly her birthday 🤦🏼‍♀️. I’m hoping that because it’s just family it wont be too big a worry for her.  It got us talking about age though.  And I’m always a bit intrigued about how mum views that these days.  She was really articulate in this conversation about it:

Most other conversations were a lot less articulate, and after getting rather overtired with the cooking (it turns out Mum is an expert mushroom peeler and cheese straw egg painter – we’ll gloss over the cheese grating which seemed to be based on ‘grate a handful, eat a handful), she needed a rest on the sofa. After a short while she came back into the kitchen where I was chatting to Dad to tell us, rather grumpily that ‘I don’t want to talk to anyone’, and then stood looking at us, presumably waiting for a response. 🤷‍♀️

Later that evening, dad reported back casserole we cooked was rather good, although Mum had insisted that she needed a cigarette afterwards as ‘I always have one after dinner’.  Which was true for a lot of her life but she gave up around 10 years ago. Apparently it did not go down well to be told that…

So we had many different Mummy W’s yesterday.  I guess it make Tuesdays interesting though 😁

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A touch of dust

Posted on February 15, 2025 by thepogblog

About three years ago our conservatory roof started leaking.  First a little, then the sort that required a bucket.  We were assured that the old style plastic roof that had been fitted around 10 years before we moved in 7 years ago had lasted far longer than it was designed to.  And if one of those giant Beachville seagulls took it upon themselves to drop a pebble on the roof it was so brittle we’d have more than a bucket sized leak. So we figured we should probably do something about that.

And the kitchen appliances that we’d also inherited started to get a bit grumpy so we knew we’d have to replace them at some point.  So obviously it made sense to rip out the whole kitchen and start again.  And take down a wall while we were at it.  Oh, and the floor too….right through to the lounge.

(And when I say ‘we’, we actually had nothing to do with it.  We left for a week in Cornwall three weeks ago and the most amazing team of builders entered).

We have gone from this:

(these were taken as we were emptying it.  It was usually marginally tidier)

To…(three weeks in)…this:


We have a couple more weeks left. And I wont lie – I wont miss trying to make three  dinners a night for a two veggies and one meat eater using my teeny tiny kitchen of two rings, a microwave and an air fryer, but actually, my temporary kitchen is about the same size as the one I had at Pog Towers.

And I wont miss washing up in the teeny tiny sink in the utility room.

And I wont miss having all the windows open when I cook so the house doesn’t stink of onions and spices.

And I wont miss eating in the office on a teeny tiny table.

And I wont miss spending all day in the office working and all evening reading or watching tv on a laptop because the tv is in the freezing, dust lounge (obviously we took the radiators out too). I really wont miss sleeping in the office the few nights I did because Mr R had some kind of lurgy and was a sweaty, sick mess.

But most of all I wont miss the dust. Because who the hell knew you could wipe and hoover and spray and dust and EVERYTHING only to find an hour later that the bloody dust is back again, over everything, even the bedrooms that have had their doors shut all the blimin’ time?!

But I know it is absolutely going to be worth it.  Three more weeks and I’ll be about to spend the weekend cooking up a storm with a stunning view, space to move, a conservatory room I can watch the stars through and an oven that actually wants to cook.  (There is the small issue that every new appliance is touch operated and my hands are so cold that I can rarely get my phone to do anything, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.. 😉)

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A Quite Lovely Tuesday

Posted on February 12, 2025 by thepogblog

This Tuesday included 30mph on the M23, Tesco, prescriptions, road closures, spaghetti bolognese cooking, and steam cleaning of floors.

(It also contained a bit of sulking, shouting and crying and  – possibly surprisingly – I wasn’t responsible for any of them).

But best of all, it also included a visit from two of Mum and Dads oldest friends, who many years ago, I adopted as my friends too.

Dad can’t do much chatting anymore because it makes him too breathless at the time and for a fair while afterwards and Mum sometimes gets a bit panicky when she has to talk to people now because of losing words, so I got to do lots of chatting with these very lovely people who I’d not seen in over a year.  It was very lovely indeed.

When Mum and Dad visit them, I’d been told they always get cake with their coffee.  My kitchen is currently non existent (that’s a blog post for another time) so, as I couldn’t bake, I bought a few treats in Tesco.  But it turned out I didn’t need to.  Dad had – for the first time in a very long time – baked a fruitcake for the occasion.  I was more than a little impressed.  And that was also very lovely indeed.

So for once, rather than Tuesday TV, here is Dad taking centre stage with the delicious cake:

Posted in Cooking, COPD, dementia, family, looking after Mum, memory, stroke, Tuesday | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Back after a break Tuesday

Posted on February 6, 2025 by thepogblog

I went away last week. I went to Cornwall.  It was…well, actually it was really, really windy and mostly very wet.  We even had two named storms while we were there.  But it was still stunning, as Cornwall is.

We went because Mr R was running a race.  Along the Cliff path.  For 50 miles.  Partly in the dark.  He won his age category, because he is a very fast weirdo.

We worked most of the rest of the time but we did also fit in the windiest walk I think I have ever been on.

And while we were there things got tricky with Mum and there was much messaging and collating of information and discussing and we’ve changed things up a bit.  Now Mum has one of me, Sister 1 and Sister 2 for a whole day every week. This includes outings and caring stuff and, well, a week in Mum seems to be having the time of her life.

Since my last post Mum also had her official diagnosis – Advanced mixed dementia (Alzheimers and vascular).  The doctor said the rest of her health issues make her too frail for any medication, and at this point it doesn’t make sense anyway.  I’m trying very hard not to be frustrated that had the assessment come though when I requested it (last July), we might have something more to show for it than a care plan that essentially says ‘it’s too late now’.  At least we can now understand why it’s progressed so fast – mixed dementia apparently moves faster than just one type.

So this week, after washing Mum and the now regular conversation of how many pants is the optimum number to wear at any one time, we picked out what else to wear.  I suggested the jumper she got for Christmas.  She said that was only for special occasions.  She didn’t realise it was Christmas at Christmas so saving it seemed more than a bit daft…so I pointed out that there was very little that is more special than having a Pog for a day and that seemed like the perfect reason to wear it.  And she agreed 😁

So correctly dressed we went on an outing, the highlight of which was wondering around a shoe shop when Mum shouted ‘Oh!’ then got the giggles.  She’d turned to face a mirror and told me she thought ‘there was a little old lady coming towards her’…then realised it was her reflection and couldn’t stop giggling.  Which got the shop assistants and other customers giggling too.  Between that and a few other incidents it was obviously all a bit much and when we got home she sat on the sofa and fell asleep, while I did the planned cooking and chatted to Dad.  We covered topics including the wingspan of buzzards and the bite of one of his Dads Boa Constrictors (because actually had three Boas and a selection of others too…). It’s like chatting to Google about nature, chatting to Dad.  Happily it was later reported that Mum and Dad thought the tomato, lime and coriander salsa was very fancy, but apparently Mum liked it a lot, and the chilli went down a treat with them both.

So all in all it was a good Tuesday.

🙂

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We need badges!

Posted on January 20, 2025 by thepogblog

I’ve had an idea. We need badges!

And now I will take a couple of steps back and explain myself:

Some of the time I spend with Mum is funny and some is daft and some is enjoyable and some…well, some makes me feel that inserting pins into my eyeballs would be preferable.

Because Mum can be sweet and, funny and cute…and she can be obnoxious and mean and really, really difficult.  And I totally get that ‘it’s not her, it’s her illness’ (although actually some of it is her as she wasn’t all sweetness and light years back if we’re being honest here), but it still doesn’t negate the pin / eyeball thoughts.

So I already told you on Tuesday I got up at silly o’clock, left at 6am, drove 50 miles, did Mum and Dads shopping, washed mum, fought about the required number of pants for one person, took mum to a memory assessment, had the memory assessment cancelled, waited an hour (with Mum asking every few minutes why we were waiting and why we were there and did she know the doctor and why were we there and why were we still waiting), then drove 15 miles to have the assessment in another town, had quite a tricky time involving tears and anger, and drove 15 miles back. Next I (finally) set up internet banking for them after trying for a few weeks, then I then cooked with Mum to make dinner for her and Dad and a portion to bring home for Stepson 2 (he’s a meat eater, Mr R and I are not, so it saved cooking two meals when I got home), and then I popped Mum in the car again (I should have known she was tired at this point and left her at home, but I really wanted to give Dad a break) and we drove to their surgery to pick up their prescriptions that Dad had ordered a week ago.

Dad drinks Ensure drinks to keep his calorie intake up as when you have COPD it takes a lot of calories to do the whole breathing thing and he eats like a sparrow.  Only he’d been short of drinks for a while and had only been having one every other day so this prescription was important.  And when we got there, the drinks had not.

‘They’ll be in later – or at least the next few days’ the receptionist said.

Dad can’t leave the house at the moment because the cold air affects his breathing.  My sisters both work, the surgery shuts for the longest lunch break that anyone has had since the 90’s, so I thought I’d try to persuade them to drop the drinks off to Dad as someone on the staff their had to go in that direction to get home… I explained the situation. I thought I might be getting somewhere, and then Mum piped up:

‘Don’t be silly, I’ll come and get them tomorrow’ she said.

‘Oh great, that’s that sorted then’ said the receptionist.

‘Mum, Dad, can’t come out at the moment – it’s too cold for him.’ I said

‘I’ll come on my own then.’ said Mum brightly and coherently.

‘You can’t drive anymore’ I attempted

‘YES I CAN’ Mum hissed back.  ‘Anyway, I can walk’

‘It’s 5 miles Mum.  With a big heavy box of drinks that you can’t actually lift’

‘I. CAN. DO. THAT.’

The receptionist at this point had found some fascinating paperwork to busy herself with.

I suggested that Mum take a seat while the rest of the prescription was sorted out and as she walked away, I very unkindly did this:

(There were no pins to hand and I do value my sight)

And I watched the receptionist judge me so loudly I could almost hear it.  Because it had become clear  in the last part of the exchange that Mum was in a muddle and possibly couldn’t understand whether she could drive or not and she deserved all the sympathy and empathy that someone with dementia should get.

BUT Jesus Christ! The day had been long and I was frazzled. The previous week had been even longer with things that were not Mum shaped and so I had a moment.  Just one, but I imagined the receptionist thought I was probably a pretty rubbish daughter.

And THAT is why we need a badge.  Like the ‘Bump on board’ badge that gives people the opportunity to give up a seat in the train for the pregnant lady without worrying that they might just have had a big breakfast (yes, I’ve done that 🤦🏼‍♀️), Or the sunflower lanyard for people with all types of disability so that they can be given appropriate support.  We need a A ‘I’m a slightly frazzled carer’ badge that doesn’t entitle us to anything other than the understanding that we are doing our best, but there might be a bigger picture to consider than what is currently on show.

Give me a few weeks.  I’m going to make this a thing 😁

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