Jam Rules

We brought this scented red rose with us when we moved from St Albans nearly 13 years ago - dug it up from the garden. It's name is lost to me now.  It only produces a few blooms but sometimes it flowers on and on into October - a tall scarlet flag against rusting autumn foliage -  a gift, always a surprise.

It's good to have lovely visitors for tea. It means I clean the loos and even the dusty loops of the heated towel rails, change the greasy cooker hood filter and cut the grass - probably for the last time this year. I  leave the flapjacks in the oven too long and burn the almonds on top. My husband's solution is to spread them with strawberry jam. But I won't let him do that when we have company and I serve the least blackened ones -  which they seem to like anyway.

Not sure why I'm so tense before we go to our six monthly appointment with the Consultant Neurologist. I think there have been quite significant changes since we last saw him. My husband says as well as losing 'the vocabularies', it's mostly his emotions which are triggered all the time. CN says he mentioned that last time. It's the frequency - and intensity - which are different now.

I talk about his extreme tiredness and sleeping  - especially after being with a fair number of people for more than a few hours. I wonder if it stresses him too much and if we shouldn't keep going to big events or parties or occasions with friends and family. He copes with it by going to the loo a lot. CN says,

You don't want to get isolated though, and there are no hard and fast rules about these things. 

I mention the alcohol and the jam (on/with all sorts of food). CN says, medically, half a bottle a night or 3 units is the limit. And one of the characteristics of this particular brain disease is to develop a sweet tooth. So you need to watch out for putting on weight.

My husband says the wine helps him to relax and he really likes jam....he never was one for hard and fast rules or limits.

Maybe I'm just obsessing about this because I can't face the bigger stuff -  under the layer of jam - 

and it's me putting on the weight....