Bored and lonely ..

I love my mum and we have fun from time to time and she can be very witty and we have a good old sing song, often prompted by the situation we find ourselves in - at the moment a favourite is 'Stand up, stand up for Jesus' (which is sung when I have dressed her in the morning and she needs to rise and hang on to her ZImmer so I can pull up her trousers and we can go downstairs), or 'Follow, follow, follow the merry, merry pipes of Pan' when I ask her to walk downstairs behind me - you get the gist.

I'm like a very bad mother who plonks her toddler in front of TV all day - that's what I do with mum. On the rare occasions I attempt an activity she loses interest very quickly, and I can't set her up to do anything on her own as she'd simply forget what it was she was supposed to be doing.

Sometimes she comments sensibly on TV programmes .. more often than not she doesn't. Increasingly she claims to have been in every programme that comes on (usually on a mattress on the floor), or will say (of the Antarctic for example) 'Oh - we had a holiday here once in the motor caravan' (for the record - we didn't).

Or she'll give me a completely bizarre précis of something that's been on, or (as just now) speak utter rubbish (saying her ring finger 'should have been there - doing that doings' ??)

I used to look for sense in this stuff - but frankly there isn't any. I get so tired of the endless, bonkers wittering.

She also has 'issues' with her bedroom - I have tried and tried to work out what - but it's all in her imagination so there's nothing I can do about it really.

I'm sure when she's gone (and I'll seriously miss her very much) I'll wonder why I haven't used this time better. I could be being creative, practising etc etc - instead I just flee from the house when my duties are done.

I feel wrung out and achingly lonely much of the time. I was never very sociable - but this is too much.

And reading this back I feel guilty. She's still my mum and amazes me by remembering mum-ish things - I had a bad back last week and now she is concerned every time I do something which might hurt me.

I'm glad I have foxes. Here's beautiful Auntie fox who was waiting in the morning gloom for some breakfast. She's looking rather chunky as she has her thick winter coat on - and just *may* be pregnant. :)