joy of cooking – Shrinking Horizons

I really should change the title of my blog to Shrunken Horizons because if I stood still long enough I would go in reverse. Looking after an AP requires a mindset that accepts that no matter what you try to do it will be forever at the pace of the oldest member of the household. This, of course, in our case is living life in the slow lane with a one hundred year old woman who is soon to be one hundred and one years of age.

I have discovered that I am not good at slowing down so much. It means I become almost dormant, struggling to just deal with the simplest of household tasks. Suddenly even changing a bed is something I will put off until tomorrow. I have called this my ‘mañana syndrome’ and am finding it encompassing our whole existence because existence it is.

I still spend a great deal of time cooking and because of the RMR diet it is an essential to make meals from scratch and fortunately the pleasure is still there once I get started. It is motivating myself in this rarified and stagnant zone that is so exhausting but do it I must. I get enormous pleasure at just seeing the colours of peppers, chillies, onions and celery sautéing in a pan, smelling the addition of the herbs and spices that add such depth of flavour. I still avidly peruse recipes like others read magazines or books, that is when I manage to drag myself away from Gin Rummy or WordScape on my phone. That’s another issue that has come from combatting boredom, I spend too much time on these games. I do have my knitting but it isn’t easy to do it with two Jack Russell Terriers sitting on me so I have to choose my time carefully.

Our lives in the slow lane are a continual mental challenge and we are constantly fighting to find ways to not let life slip by unnoticed or unfulfilled. The LSO does his printmaking, although he too finds it hard at times to be self-motivated and he does love his pike fishing but this season it has been very sporadic due in part to the weather conditions.

At least there are signs that Spring is around the corner. It really is a time to feel renewed and invigorated and that is something the LSO and myself definitely need in our lives. We do need a break from the AP and hopefully that will still happen too with her having a month in the wilds of Scotland with my cousin and his wife but we are not sure just when.

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Once again some time has elapsed since my last blog but I have not been idle. Since starting ‘Banting’ I have lost eight and a half pounds and that is quite an achievement because the first week is eating normally and I am now one third of the way through the six week period of restoration discovering a whole new way of thinking about food in general.

My blood pressure is slowly reducing and I have yet to check my blood glucose but I feel that must be improving too. One of the biggest plus points is the fact I feel so much better and much more like my normal self; I no longer am oppressed or depressed by the AP and indeed will take no nonsense from her. That doesn’t mean I am cruel or uncaring, just determined not to be bullied in any way.

The last four years have knocked holes in the LSO and myself but now the AP cannot push us around anymore, we have finally got the measure of her and in truth of ourselves too. But it took a rather terrifying situation to make us both realise how serious it had all become and how at the end of all this we need to be fit and well in order to enjoy what time is left to us. We cannot dwell on what has passed but we are now improving what is in the present and hopefully the future too.

Another result of this new found way of life is that my pleasure in cooking has also returned. I had begun to wonder as I sank further and further into illness, depression and despondency if this was going to be how our lives were going to play out, bored, boring and disinterested in just about everything.

Thank goodness for our hugely supportive medical practice and the intelligent and ultimately workable advice and support from our children, in particular our daughter whose in-depth dietary knowledge has been a godsend.

I can in all honesty say this time that there truly is a light at the end of the tunnel.

Tag: joy of cooking

Life in the slow lane.

Dealing with the situation.