Retirement Miseries
 |
The eldest left us on Friday afternoon, taking a hacking cough with him. After almost three weeks together, the hole left by his absence has felt rather strange. Whilst the thought of having our adult children move home to live with us is scary, it doesn't stop us missing them when they are gone.
Saturday was, therefore, meant to be the day that normality was restored, just Mister E and I enjoying our daily rhythm with maybe a glass of wine together in the evening.
Fate was against us and there was no genuine prospect of a return to our regular pattern as Mister E, dragged down by sinusitis, a ghostly white and clutching prescribed medication, could do little other than pass to and fro between bed and armchair.
Sadly I don't talk like a nurse; I don't walk like a nurse. Let's be totally honest, I am no nurse. So, whilst he slept, I applied myself to our bathroom project, seriously in need of attention with a deadline date for installation of the new flooring looming.
I concentrated on filling the superficial holes and cracks on the walls ready for painting. (Zzzz... the snoring resonated from the bedroom next door whilst I worked.) It wasn't the tidiest handiwork and I may have been overly generous with the polyfilla but there again, I am no plasterer and a little bit of sanding should make it meet the necessary grade.
Job finished, I headed off to town with a shopping list of items for the patient. They ranged from cough syrup to carrot cake. It is not, of course, my purpose to pass judgement or comment on the whims of the sick. In fact I confess that I even threw a box of chocolate fudge into the basket too, just in case he might fancy that along with the cranberry and raspberry cordial, probiotic yoghurt and oranges that I thought might tempt his taste buds and help nurture him back to health. I may not be a nurse but I can be an imaginative and impulsive shopper.
Whilst out, I called at my mum's home where once again I was forced to face my inadequacies. Seriously, where is Florence Nightingale when you need her? Mum had craved a day out and decided to walk to the station to catch a train, as you do when you are 85. Except she had fallen badly on the way, as you also do when you are 85, (coincidentally very close to the place where I took a tumble some three years ago, proving that you don't have to be in your eighties to lose your balance). Fortunately, although grazed and bruised, nothing was broken and I doubt if using polyfilla in the bathroom would have loaned me any credibility for applying Plaster of Paris had it been so.
Returning home, the house seemed strangely deserted with the doors wide open. The patient was at large. I tracked him down; he was wild eyed and manic, carrying a pile of towels.
Disaster had struck. The bathroom was flooded and water dripping down into the room below had tripped the electricity. Was I the one responsible? It appeared not and instead the new hot water feed for the shower (installed by a plumber Not Mister E, I hasten to add) had blown raising the patient from his delirium.
"Da, da, da, daa:" where's Superman when you need him? Standing in front of me, turning stopcocks, tightenting valves and resetting trip switches. It was then I remembered that "it's not about where you were born or the powers you have or what you wear on your chest; it's about what you do.."
Finally I found something I was good at too: mopping up and afterwards, drinking that large glass of wine I deserved.
Sadly, and despite saving the day, Mister E didn't feel well enough for chocolate fudge or carrot cake and slipped back to his slumbers.
Comments