The weather has made things more complicated than they should be this week. That and the fact that I hadn't realised how popular the online shopping deliveries were over the Christmas period, so I missed being able to book a delivery slot for Mum's supermarket shop this week. I looked at the end of last week to find no slots available for this week at all, on all four supermarket sites that I checked. I REALLY didn't want to have to brave the supermarkets, but as time was running out before Christmas I knew I would have to face it. Surprise, surprise it was snowing when I was planning to go yesterday, but I kept ringing Mum and she said it was better where she was, so I decided to go for it. Tesco was like hell on earth. Some things had completely sold out. Others I realised I hadn't got by the time I got in the queue, but you could hardly get round the aisles, so I decided that the Christmas crackers were going to have to be missing this year.
I waited such a long time in the queue and eventually got to Mum's two hours after I started off shopping. It's not an experience I want to duplicate in a hurry. As a consequence I have blocked off a delivery slot of next Wednesday already and have reserved it with two bottles of milk. I'm sure this will be filled up with the things that Mum has run out off in the next few days, so I can add to it as and when.
The snow has also meant that I haven't been able to get over to Mum's when I thought I would this past week, so I have been very grateful that the carers are going to see her. Sadly Mum has asked that they only go in twice a day, as she has dropped the teatime visit. This was something that the MacMillan Nurse sorted out for her, as Mum had obviously complained about the number of visits. Of course this now means that Social Services want to do another full assessment after Christmas, something Mum is quite unhappy about, even though she has brought it on herself. It also means that Mum has no-one going in between about midday and the following morning, which seems a very long time to be on her own if she isn't feeling well one day. I have left a message to speak to the MacMillan Nurse about how quickly the care can be reinstated when the time arises. It seems a whole lot of faffing about for something which could have stayed in place. Interestingly Mum did all this without my knowledge. I expect she knew that I would have objected to her decreasing the number of visits again, so sorted it out without me knowing about it, until she casually dropped the fact that there was no teatime visit into the conversation...
At least the snow isn't as bad as it was in February. It has lasted for a very long time, as the temperature has stayed around freezing even during the day, but the amount that's fallen isn't as bad as it was earlier in the year. I took the above photo on my way to visit Dad in Weston Park when he was an inpatient in February. I had to walk there in the snow as all the buses had stopped. He'd been admitted as an emergency with an infection, so I was picking up the basics like a toothbrush and comb on the way to the hospital because he'd had nothing with him when he went in. Taking photographs on the way seemed to brighten the day, even though Dad was very poorly when I got there and didn't feel much like chatting. At least I made the effort to go. I really miss him.
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