Still whining .. .. .. ..

Napoleon asked for coffee but nobody heard and nobody offered him a cup. So he decided to get up, go down to the kitchen and make himself a cup of tea instead. By the time he sat at the kitchen table enjoying it, Beloved was still playing with the idea of being Napoleon.

“Don’t be silly”, he said to me when I stared at him, hard, to find out if he had been hallucinating again, “it was just a dream, a real dream”.  Hm, I’m not so sure. Who, in their right mind, would dream themselves into being Napoleon in need of a cup of coffee? ‘In their right mind’ being the phrase that sticks out the most.

If I don’t get back to some blogging I’ll never restart. I can see how people simply drop the habit. If you haven’t posted for a while, the ‘not-posting’ becomes the habit, and if, like me, you have little to say because life is just too boring and dreary and confined to your own four walls, then posting about nothing much becomes embarrassing. I know that lots of bloggers keep going with pictures, or quotes, or the minutiae of the daily round, and that these bloggers remain popular and find plenty of commenters, but that’s not for me. Each to their own. The enjoyment of writing a post I would want to read myself matters to me.

Beloved’s mind is almost back to normal, I’d say a good 85% of what he says makes perfect sense. His sense of humour is back too. Physically he is less good. The consensus is that medication was indeed the cause of this mental and physical collapse and that it will take at least 2 to 3 months for him to recover. We’ve ‘done’ 5 weeks now. Every Friday is ticked off on the calendar as ‘another week gone’. Keeping him mentally stimulated is getting increasingly difficult. I’m running out of ideas. I’d asked some friends and acquaintances to pop in for an occasional chat but, with the exception of just one or two, nobody seems willing. Perhaps they are afraid that it might be hard work? Who knows.

I did take him to a couple of live performances, Shakespeare’s 'Comedy of Errors' and the medieval morality play ‘Everyman'. He thought the former play too silly for words and Everyman too much of a raised forefinger kind of preachy play. Quite. At least I tried. He’s threatened to come to Stratford next Wednesday for a performance of Ben Jonson's ‘Volpone’. Wonder what he’ll have to say about that. As it’s a comedy about a sly old man playing off wannabe heirs against each other it might make him think a bit.

I do what I always used to do during times when life was fraught with difficulties: I read. Every spare moment you’ll find me escaping into invented lives in a book. Even gardening is losing its appeal. I walk along the untidy paths, see the hugely overgrown beds, the rampant weeds and sigh. If only I could kick myself into some healthy activity. From your comments I know that many of you have experienced the not only exhausting, but also deadly dull routine of a carer. In spite of my whining, I realise that I am lucky, at least there will be an end to my labours, Beloved will recover. I cannot imagine what it’s like to take care of a loved one for whom the outlook is bleak.

However, not all the news is bad: Millie’s had a bath and a thorough grooming session and whichever one of us she honours with her close proximity no longer sniffs the air and asks: “what IS that smell?”