Wednesday 17 August 2011

Guilty carers....

We slipped a bit on the Okaasan care.
Went to meet a friend on the last night of the Sapporo Beer Garden - only planned to go for an hour - but then of course at 6.30 pm the attractions of Dinner with Okaasan vs. More Fun in the Beer Garden loomed.
And the Beer Garden won.


Yujiro called Okaasan at 6.30 pm to suggest looking in the fridge for food or going out.
She had just come back after a walk, so she wasn't happy.


When we got home at 9.30 pm she was waiting with complaints: you should tell me sooner! I went to the kaiten sushi place but the wait time was 90 mins. - so I didn't eat anything! There is nothing to eat in the kitchen! etc etc etc.


I snuck away upstairs so the full negative feeling could go all over him.
Next morning I chirpily took Okaasan's newspaper in to her...and we were home for lunch and dinner with her....so all seemed ok...


But....it just illustrates again...Okaasan isn't really able to cope in the kitchen alone.
The fridge WAS full of food actually - a block of tofu, eggs, vegetables, fish in seaweed packs etc - but Okaasan wasn't able to take any of that and make herself something to eat.
Usually at lunchtime when we are out we leave a box of frozen or pre-cooked rice out on the kitchen table with her chopsticks; instant soup packs or homemade soup in a pan to be reheated, and soy sauce fish/seaweed/pickles on the table or in the fridge - with a big sign "Help yourself to anything in the fridge".
Okaasan recently seems to manage rice, soup and a boiled egg..maybe some soy sauce fish bits. Often the rice and the egg is all cooked up together in the same pan. She doesn't use the microwave.


If we mention cooking she has the excuse that her cooking books are left in the house in Saitama - so I don't remember how to cook - which is a whopper of a white lie because she was a Super Housewife for years and I am sure didn't need a cook book for general family cooking.


So sad really, something she was good at, something I guess she enjoyed doing - and now unable to do any more than reheating and cooking a boiled egg or a piece of fish.


Ho hum....back to work today. 

No comments:

Post a Comment