Mediocrity

It has been a pretty mediocre day today. It did start badly when Pete decided to make beans on toast for his breakfast and it didn't really go as planned. He hit a couple of problems and got quite upset - probably because he thought it would be fairly straight forward and he could manage it on his own. I reassured him that it will all become easier with practice but I think he just gets so down at not being able to do something so simple that he never even had to think about before. He did manage to get his own lunch without any trouble - only a pasty, but it involved getting it from the freezer, defrosting it in the microwave, putting it on a piece of baking paper and into the oven and removing when hot. Sounds simple, and it is, but it is another task mastered which involves quite a few steps which we never actually think about, we just do it automatically but Pete has to think every step and how to do it and plan it.
After lunch we did a few exercises, not as much as we should have as, again, he didn't get on so well. This is because we haven't done any since Monday, which is too long, we have to do them every day if we can. I have no excuse for not doing them with him, purely couldn't be bothered - bad, bad, bad. I won't make that mistake again as it is purely repetition that gets everything going again. We read a bit of 'the book' which had a couple of funny incidents which made us laugh. One was when she left him alone for about a minute and he managed to fall out of a pretty shoddy wheelchair but she wasn't going to admit to the staff that it had happened!! But he had other ideas and tried to tell them it was her fault - but, as she said, the aphasia was useful in this incident as they didn't understand him!!
Then, whilst waiting for Martin, we tried a few sounds for about 5/10 minutes. Not much progress but then went on to gesturing thumbs up for yes and saying yes and thumbs down for no and trying to say no, I was doing it as well as we were going quite fast in the hope the word no would pop out automatically - and I'm sure it did, only once, and I may be imagining it but it definitely sounded like it. We need to get gestures going as a means of giving clues, we have got the thumbs up and thumbs down and the ok gesture, but that is all at the moment and Pete doesn't always use them appropriately, also trying to get pointing mastered as against just generally waving his hand about.
Pete's leg , from the knee down, and his foot are again getting very cold, not just cold but icy, icy cold. Funnily enough I don't mind him putting them on me when in bed to warm them up, before the stroke woe betide him if he came anywhere near me with cold feet!! In bed is the only time at the moment when they are warm.
And that is it for today, how can I write so much about a mediocre day?!?