Chapter 115 - A Barbie

She felt sidelined, not needed, on Saturday. We had decided to have our friends around for a Xmas BBQ, perhaps we should have gone to their place instead. Then she would not have felt so left out of the preparations. Not that there was much really. We had shopped a couple of days ago for packaged green salad, cheese, dips, fish, chicken and such. Before she rose,I had arranged our small table that sits beside her favourite chair into the gazebo (a barrier against fly hordes) on our back patio and cleaned the BBQ, then added bits of blue vein & chopped tomato to the salad, sliced some strawberries into a drop of port, really not much to it. Nuts, dips, savoury sticks. Yet she felt left out of things. These were matters for the hostess to organise, not the host, she did not say aloud. My cooking salmon & chicken on the barbie was men's business anyway. The friends came with other items so we dined well between the hours of 12 noon & 6pm. A few bottles here & there. Afterwards I jammed things into the dish washer. She wants, she needs, to be involved yet cannot. Later in the evening we watched "Shadowlands", the true story of the love late in the life of C. S. Lewis. In reaching for tissues, she said "I am glad I did not see this at the movies." I needed to leave the room at convenient moments.

Yesterday drowning rain kept the house dark enough for her to sleep longer. A delightful surprise at lunch time when a Xmas present for each of us arrived from Chug. Lunch time but we have decided to return to the ritual of a large meal at dinner time, not at lunch. I found that I was rushing at 11.30am to cook a main meal for lunch and when 6pm came round we felt hungry enough to have another "light" meal, thus we both have gained weight. I will have to have something ready about 5pm to avoid her meds at 7pm.

A friend visited her yesterday afternoon. I absented myself.

I checked on her asleep an hour or so ago, then tip-toed back to take a picture of her asleep with her right hand grasping her bed pole. I usually find her hand cold after holding the bed pole most of the night. Even though today is bright & clear, she still sleeps at 8:15 when I just checked on her again. No longer holding the pole, she has turned to face the wall.