DEMENTIA CARE: SOUP ROUTINE.

Often I find myself saying that the microwave is your friend. In the world of the one-cup kettle that heats your water within half a minute for your instant soup out of a powdery packet, the microwave is a little slow.
   But generally, speaking as a carer, the microwave is definitely your friend. More substantial soup easily microwaves in three minutes. A hefty microwave meal is ready in ten minutes. Even a weighty curry is ready in five. Add three minutes for a steamed vegetable bag that is unceremoniously dumped into the curry. I microwave the steam bag first.
   Twenty minutes in a gas oven and the pizza is done. Soup as a meal is ready in three. I don’t microwave pizza. Microwaved pizza is not your friend. It is no one’s friend. The microwaved pizza is an enemy of the people, of plants, of style, taste, and decency. Most of all, it is an enemy of taste, and this is worth repeating.
   If you must put pineapple on your pizza, microwave the fucker. It makes no difference, then.
   Microwaving soup sounds antiseptic. Or maybe that’s just an anti-soup-tic. But I have a soup routine that is far more sterile than the microwave one. And that’s the packet soup nonsense.

I was using the fast kettle and devouring all sorts of “flavours” of instant soup thirty seconds later. Convenient. Then winter came. Mild winter. Wet winter. Yet winter, just the same. And I like a hefty soup when the days are short and the raindrops fall ice-cold and iron-hard.
   So I switched back to cans of soup. These artillery shells of flavour are handy. I microwave. Not the actual cans. Yes, I am a carer. The microwave is my friend. When I have the time, bouncing around the kitchen, making things happen, I set the microwave soup factory in motion.
   There’s the spoon that fits into the ring-pull on the soup can. It’s a lever, this ladle. Sometimes the ring is pressed too close to the can for fingers to get at. The can considers the ring most precious.
   I dump the hefty soup into the bowl. Lentil soup keeps the shape of the can and slurps its way into the world. I pat that lentil hill down, so that the mound of soup won’t smear itself all over the plastic shield.
   Bowl into microwave, on the plate. Plastic shield on top of bowl. Lights. Camera. No action. I wash the spoon clear of all the soup debris from scooping out chunks of lentil and whatnot. The soup is ready to go. But I have to watch my time. And this is not the time for soup. No action. The nuclear power plant on the kitchen counter stays off.
   There are pills to dish out, and dietary supplements. A carer will call at the drop of a hat. But will call. Masked, begowned, and gloved. Sometimes I’ll eat soup before the carer arrives. Mostly, I’ll eat as the carer leaves.
   Some daily carers sit in their cars doing paperwork, taking calls, making calls, and checking where they’ve been, where they are, and where they’ll go next, long after they’ve left officially.
   Many of them go home next, and have food.
   Rarely, I’ll tackle the soup while the carer is in. Hair washed today? Shampoo leads to an extended scene. I’ll tidy laundry as the microwave beams a meal to me.
   The ritual involves gingerly removing the bowl, on its plate, from the nuclear power station. I hear the microwave beep far too often. The old microwave lasted a long time. I grew used to its stately regularity. Beep, beep, beep.
   Now, if I am standing right there next to the new microwave as it finishes, I tend to pop the door open after that third beep and before beeps four and five. I’m a three-beep person, it seems. There’s no need to wait for beeps four and five. The meal is done, after all. I cut the machine short.
   As the bowl is super-hot, I am super-careful. The first task is to stir the soup. This reduces the chance of explosion. Sure enough, as I stir the calm soup...all the fire in its belly rises to the surface and, suddenly, the soup boils.
   This is the strangest sight. Calm soup froths and sputters, almost as if hail is falling into it. Next, I grind pepper into the soup. Salt is something I don’t bother with, for an obvious reason. I then shake whole peppercorns into the soup for a bit more texture. Then I add a circle of crisps. Salt and vinegar. No point adding salt to that mix. Obvious reason.
   A drink, in case the soup is too warm, and I am ready for the meal. Fruit juice does the trick. At the moment, my taste runs to apple. I tired of orange. Then Covid stole orange supplies from me, so I made an easy switch to apple.

Today, the pepper grinder seemed light. I refilled it from the pot of peppercorns. The well replenished, and overflowed, so I patted the peppercorns down inside the grinder and let the excess peppers fall into the soup.
   I eat standing up. If the carer arrives, I abandon the soup for a few minutes. And if the carer arrives before I eat the soup…well, I have that choice to make. Shampoo forces my hand. Hair is being washed. I’ll eat the soup while I am waiting.
   And I eat standing up, in case the carer suddenly calls for assistance. Not all carers know the routine, so someone new will shout downstairs and ask about the hairbrush. You’ll find that in the small bucket that holds the hairdryer.
   Would I call that organisation?
   If the carer is in and out and I haven’t eaten, then I must still see to a few things. Clearing up. I can clear up in three minutes, as the microwave beams a meal to me. Soup routine is easy enough to change around…
   But the real routine is having the soup in the first place. I am a soup person. Like a good soup. And I am prepared to savour a soup on a cold wintry afternoon as I stare into the grey mess that calls itself daylight.
   Routine is ritual is reward. Refreshing. Restorative. Something to look forward to. No, it isn’t a ski trip to Switzerland with the best chocolate in the world waiting for me. It is soup. And it is something to look forward to.
   Find a thing. Small. Boring. Mundane. To the casual or non-casual observer, it is still pretty much a nothing thing. Find it and look forward to it. I look forward to soup. The grinding of pepper. A swirl of crisps into the bowl. Some crisps are on top of others and stay dry. I rescue a crisp from the soup and taste the salt and vinegar intact.
   Other crisps mush up in the lentil sea, and I fish those out with my harpoon of a spoon. Or at least, my imagination does that for me. Soup routine is handy. Versatile. Never a meal I just have to get through and no more. Soup is an adventure.
   These aren’t great sayings. Not wonderful advice for carers.
   Soup is an adventure.
   The microwave is your friend.
   Plan and unplan.
   Have your shopping delivered.
   Expect to be phoned at an awkward moment.
   For fuck’s sake, have a bit of chocolate.
   Caring is tiring. Have defences behind defences.
   Those defences behind defences are all coffee cups.
   There may be biscuits.
   No. There will be biscuits.
   Boring and uneventful days are awesome. Treasure those. Over the past twelve months, I’ve had an awesome birthday, stupendous Christmas, and fantastic Hogmanay/New Year. Nothing much happened on those days. Caring came easy to me. Birthday cake, Christmas dinner, and Ne’erday fare was all brilliant.
   Not every day is a special occasion. But I can make almost every afternoon meal of soup into a special occasion. This is just as true of a meal taken after a difficult morning as it is of a meal taken when all was plain sailing.
   What would I do without soup? Well, I’d have a fucking coffee earlier, for starters. I used to pack the cared-for off to daycare for a few hours and I would hop, skip, and jump out of the rain back indoors to my coffee and giant biscuit. My treat. A few peaceful moments. And a drink. Chocolate.
   The same, only more so, with respite breaks. I’d walk back into the house for a few days off and I would grab a coffee and a slice of chocolate cake and feel like a millionaire. Whatever a millionaire feels like. At least three of the fuckers must be happy.
   In the world of Covid, no daycare. And no respite. Calls from daycare to ask how we are doing, yes, I receive those weekly. Poor bastards at daycare have run out of small-talk over the phone. It must be tedious as hell to phone around asking if everyone is okay and being told the same thing, call after call.
   I think I’ll spice it up one week by announcing an alien invasion. Flying saucers are zapping the hell out of the landscape as I speak. Something tells me, after living in the strange world of the pandemic for so long, that I’d receive that’s guid, glad tae hear ye’re a’ keepin’ okay as a reply over the phone, before a polite goodbye returned me to the land of soup. Alien invasion is rarely, if ever, a feature of my soup routine. There was that one time, but nothing much came of it.