Okaasan service....

Just running around doing my job...getting frustrated with her....come here to whinge.
You can move right along to the next blog on your list if  whinge isn't what you fancy.

She tried another cooking this morning - at 11 am - a time when she is usually by the Tv and not thinking food at all.
Luckily I'd started preppping her food before going out to lunch with a friend, so it was all there in the pan and around the kitchen counter.
Okaasan was sort of heating up the tofu and onions, had failed completly to understand the frozen box of pre-cooked rice and what a microwave might do to it....and had other things out of their packets strewn around.
I really think the whole New Year memories of long ago cooking for 20 people from her husband's office have over-stimulated her to be IN the kitchen and cooking, at the moment. So I've removed the New Year decorations and hidden the New Year cards from the daycare centers.
New Year is finished. I don't think Okaasan needs the stress of the memories of that hugely responsible, busy time.
Well, I don't need her to remember it and keep trying to cook!
I want her comatose by the Tv until called to the table again.

She was wanting to go out again today - so I promised that I would get home by about 2.30 and take her to the station.
Had one of those afternoons - lunch (very relaxing chat with a friend) - then Okaasan to the station (WHERE IS MY BLACK MUFFLER????????!!!) - and then to my classroom to check water pipes in these freezing temperatures - then out for two hours shopping with Friend and Cute Baby...then home again by 5.30 pm to start monitoring Okaasan on the GPS.
And monitoring...and monitoring. And I called her 3 times and suggested that she might like to come home. Once she was just saying Goodbye to the coffee shop friend - I could hear the woman's farewells (she actually exists :-))),,,and I expected/hoped Okaasan would come home then....5.45 pm.
Nope.
Bugger.
I kept checking the GPS and saw her go off to another coffee shop.
Then the department store.
I was prepping dinner - checking on the computer for Okaasan - and hanging up her latest round of laundry.

By 7 pm I cooked my own dinner.
At 7.20 pm I checked yet again...and there she was at the local station.
Drove down to get her.
Found her with station staff looking for a public telephone to call home.....because she does know that she has the home numbers and address on a card in her handbag.
Seems to have forgotten that the cell phone IS a phone and that Button 1 is Dear Son and Button 2 is Dear Oyomesan.

Aghhh.....brought her home, heated up the dinner bits again.
Left her to it.
Of course, she is sweetly apologetic - saying that she met her friend after a long time and got chatting- which is great. But THAT ended at 5.45. There was then another hour of wandering around and another coffee shop.....the sense of time gone gone gone.

Bugger!!!!

Being taxi driver for Okaasan this winter holidays is kind...and very, very frustrating.
I MUST get a cell phone with the GPS tracker on it so I can track her without having to use the house computer. Today I cut short time with Friend and Cute Baby because I thought I should be home by 5.30 pm to get ready for incoming Okaasan.
No way. Rolled in here finally at 7.30 pm....

Ho hum.........aghhhhhhh...

Spending quiet time on my winter hols. Lunches with friends. Walks in the brilliant sunshine with daytime temperatures of minus 6. Soooo cold. Watching movies on TV. Eating chocolate.

And being the best Oyomesan in the world.

There. Whinge is over. I feel slightly better now.

But you know...I realised today - I am now not actually counting the days of Alone with Okaasan. Used to blog Day 1, Day 2, Day 3 etc....counting down...now I just live it.
Is that progress?