Rosemary and I have been having loads of rows lately, often about what day it is, or when we are doing what, and whether the other remembers. It started when I changed our dog-walk day from Saturday to Friday to accommodate Saturday dog-training classes, which made Fridays feel like Saturdays and the weekends went haywire, perhaps because we’ve been having our walkies on Saturdays for 25 years.
Then I forgot the new routine, double-booked Friday, enraged Rosemary and even worse, forgot her holiday dates. To Rosemary this implied that I didn’t give a stuff about whether she was around or not, but if I can’t remember what day it is when I’m in it, how can I remember what’s happening on the days I haven’t even reached? So I asked her about her holiday dates again, but she wouldn’t answer.
“I’ll write them on your birthday card,” she snapped, unreasonably I thought, but perhaps she is unusually crabby because she has heart failure. Sometimes, I forget her doctor’s/hospital appointments, probably because she has had heart failure for so long and the appointments are so far apart, and are often only appointments to see whether she needs a proper consultant’s appointment, and so hardly worth remembering.
Anyway, when she returned from her holiday, she couldn’t remember whether she had asked me to pick her up at the station, because she was returning to a different station, and didn’t dare ring and check, because she had been so rude about me forgetting her dates. But she needn’t have worried, because I hadn’t a clue that she was coming home on a Sunday, because I had forgotten to read the birthday card.
And on the Friday I had been sure it was Tuesday, because Cello Teacher came to stay, which he usually does on a Tuesday, which meant the weekend felt like the week and my grasp of dates was even more tenuous, although I do write things down on a wall calendar, but sometimes forget to remind myself to look.
At least I know that today is Sunday, because I’m writing this for tomorrow, which is Monday. Isn’t it?
