Six weeks in and Prozac rises to the challenge!

Picture the scene.. Thursday afternoon and it occurs to me to check for messages on the works phone (difficult to remember since they changed the phone for one that doesn't light up when there's a missed call)... 5 new messages... work, work, work, little old lady asking if I'm there, same little old lady with same enquiry. Oh drat, when did she call? Phone mum. Phone rings and rings. Oh dear, not good, she doesn't leave the house. Phone again, she answers, phew. I find I am so far back in the doghouse there's also room for an obese rottweiler. It transpires that on Wednesday afternoon she put the electric kettle on the lit gas hob, went into the living room and didn't return to the kitchen until flames were leaping up the sides of the melting kettle. She tells me accusingly that she phoned work and I wasn't there (I was, until 8pm, just unlucky to be out of the office both times) and she phoned home and I wasn't there either.

It would not occur to mum to phone the emergency services in such a situation; kitchen on fire -phone fire service? Nope. Lose all feeling in your leg and fall to the floor - call an ambulance? Nope, Electricity goes off - call an electrician? Nope. You get the picture, whatever the problem, phone daughter half an hour away. Apparently since I'm not permanently attached to a phone 24/7, she is in imminent danger of collapsing and lying undetected for days, ie she "should not be living alone" (should be living with me).

Pre-Prozac this little scenario would have flooded me with anxiety, left me unable to respond satisfactorily to mum's needs and sent me home feeling totally stressed out and apprehensive about the next time I had to go round.

Dear reader, I was magnificent. I went round Thursday night and listened sympathetically, I commiserated over the blackened, misshapen mess that used to be the kettle, I marvelled at how clean mum had got the oven after the kettle had melted all over it. I did not let myself be drawn into the living arrangements issue but addressed other things that were bugging her, ie dead-headed the roses and took the cuttings home for disposal, hoovered the bedroom, hall and bathroom, cooked the tea and washed the pots afterwards and made sure she took her medication. I did not press the point, well not too much, when she refused to admit that this was the second kettle she'd incinerated (a few years ago she fell asleep while the aluminium kettle boiled dry and the bottom fell out); I remained cheerful throughout, even when she started on the "I only married your dad to get away from my domineering father" speech (I loved my dad and she made him miserable, what I'd really like to say is what goes around comes around).

She was in quite a good mood when I left. I love Prozac!