NO CHEF

 

Once, long ago, when shopping in a cavernous new grocery store on the other side of town, I had an infant and a toddler corralled (barely) within a full cart of groceries. The baby was "hangry", so he was wailing away in his carseat plunked in the cart. The toddler was in the child seat thing in the cart, reaching for and grabbing everything he could from the shelves, sending me scrambling to pick up after him or pry some random "treasure" (like a bar of soap or whatever) from his clenched little fist, resulting in a screaming tantrum.  

Grocery shopping on a good day is one of my least favorite activities.  On that day, I'd had enough.  Two-thirds of the way through the store (and my list) I parked the cart of groceries in the middle of the aisle, grabbed the carseat, took the hand of the red-faced toddler, and exited the store.  I couldn't take it one more minute.  This past Monday was sort of like that.  Only it was just me, no kids, but I was still in a state of "I hate this!" mommy-frustration confusion.  

Hub has been working for years with groups addressing climate change.  He is an integral part of one group that meets 1-4 hours weekly on Zoom, organizes and presents at forums and educational events, lobbies for prioritizing climate-related content to their organization's curriculum, co-facilitates several 9-week courses on adaptation and resilience in the face of climate collapse (with strategies for making it all less awful.)  This all takes a great deal of his time and energy and untold hours at the computer.

On top of that, of course, there is life at home:  me (I can be a handful), maintenance of our home and our gardens/property, occasionally seeing friends/family...you know, life stuff.  He is great at keeping all the balls in the air, but he pays a price and eventually feels the stress of it all.  In September he was particularly busy and the stress was boiling over.  I asked what I could do to be supportive.

He has been our family shopper and executive chef for a long time.  I've been his sous chef.  I'm a pretty good chopper and prepper; I am not a great cook.  I don't like it. When those squalling kids were young I did all the shopping and cooking, but over the years I phased myself out and Hub took over, especially once the kids were out and he was retired.  I thought he liked to shop but he recently told me he really doesn't like it, but neither does he dread it, which is an improvement over my feelings about the chore, but still. He does enjoy cooking but the every day grind of it gets old.  (I know.)  So, to be more helpful, I offered to take on the shopping and cooking indefinitely.  Yikes!

I have a list of every dinner since my start date on September 23rd.  I keep this list as an "attagirl" I give myself every time I look at it.  I feel a sense of accomplishment.  Maybe even a bit of pride.  I've not made anything fancy -- I'm not foodie gourmet.  But I've hauled out some old cookbooks and done Google searches for various things.  I've made entirely edible, even tasty dishes that we've both enjoyed.  I have not hated it.  But there is that daily grind.

On Monday I didn't have time to create my menus for the coming week, but I had to get some things from the store, so I went with a list of a few staples, and a few speciality items for two cookbook recipes. Unfortunately, I hadn't done a good inventory and didn't have a meal planned for every day.  I am a grab and go shopper, and I am NOT an intuitive cook, so I found myself without a recipe to buy for and with no desire/ability to create meals based on what I found at the store, so I found myself frustrated, going up and down aisles with no clue what I needed or wanted, and ended up with a cart of random items that seemed paltry but also ended up costing nearly $100 somehow.  

I went to the self-check. (I know I'm supposed to boycott that, but if the other line is forever long, I don't boycott it because I just want to get out of the damn store!)  I fumbled around with looking up produce items, weighing them, scanning the unscannable bar codes, putting up with the machine yelling at me to put my items in the bag when they were already in the damn bag, and then got reprimanded for trying to buy non-alcohol beer for Hub (it's store policy) with an expired license, that wasn't really expired but the DMV had punched a hole in it when I went in to renew it, making it void.  I was supposed to have brought some print out of a temporary license with me.  Duh.  By the time I got out of there I was near tears.  But I pulled up my big girl panties and headed to Costco for the items I needed there.  I survived, barely.

When I got home, Hub was sympathetic and appreciative.  Maybe 8 weeks is my limit; maybe it's about as "indefinitely" as I get when it comes to shopping and cooking.  We discussed a plan to share the burden. It might even be fun, we thought, to shop and cook together!  (Cooking maybe; shopping definitely not.  We have extremely different shopping styles.  As noted, I'm grab and go for just what I need in the moment.  Hub is the complete opposite -- he's price and compare, distracted by impulse buys, and likes to "stock up".)

So I'm not sure how the new plan will go.  I do know that it won't really be implemented for awhile, because Hub still has a lot on his plate. (HAHA  Good one!)  Maybe it will be a New Year intention.  Until then I'll keep my dinner list going to motivate me and I'll try super hard not to freak out in the grocery store.  I'd hate to start throwing canned goods.

At least, that's the view from here...©

Photo Credit:  somewhere on the internet..sorry, don't know; don't sue me. 🙏🏽

HAPPIER UPDATE

I can't leave February with that last post.  I'll leave it up, since it's true fact of my life sometimes.  But to update -- The Twin Demons have retreated back into their dark hide-y hole.  It took awhile, but I feel pretty much completely "normal" today.  Relief.

I can tell I'm doing better because I just made my third trip to Costco in three days and I didn't even hate it.  Much.

I'm not the Costco shopper in my family -- Hub is.  He loves it there.  He goes every week.  You might wonder how two people can do the majority of our grocery shopping at Costco, but it works for us.  We go through a lot of vegetables and soups and cheese and eggs -- and he shops for long shelf life, frozen stuff,  and "staples" that we pretty much eat all the time.  I guess we are not adventurous cooks.  We have the handful of "regulars" we cook and we are content.  If we over buy or over cook, we share with our family.  And we have LOTS of storage space in our garage 'fridge and on garage pantry and storage shelves for those twin packs of this or that and enormous quantities of paper products that will eventually get used.

Anyway, it works for us to do most of our shopping there.  On the rare occasion I tag along with him, I stand by the cart scrolling my Facebook feed while he darts this way and that, getting what's on his list, what catches his eye, and stopping at every sample station in the store.  I find this frenetic and annoying.  When I go alone, I have a list from which I rarely deviate.  I grab and go.  I don't shop.

But on Saturday I had to buy some supplies for our new cleaning service people (YAY!  Housecleaners!).  Turns out I got the wrong "rags" -- how did I know there was a difference in "rags" but my cleaning guy is very particular, so I went back on Monday to exchange those for the preferred brand.  While there, just inside the door, was a large display of Lucky Brand T-shirts that were super cute and perfect for yoga.  Costco has no 'try on' area, so it's always a crap shoot buying clothing there, but I took a chance and came home with two size large shirts.  That usually works.

Nope.  They were too big.  Just slightly, but even after I tried to talk myself into them, I knew I wouldn't wear them.  They looked baggy and frumpy.  So today I went back to exchange them before they were all gone.  Those special displays disappear seemingly overnight, never to return.  I brought home two mediums, which of course are a bit snug.  So I made two trips to buy two sizes of shirt, neither of which fit.  Oh well....motivation to lose the ten pounds I've been wanting to shed.

On the way home, even on a cloudy, cool day, I was feeling pretty happy and carefree.  I marveled at this turn-around.  When the Demons retreat it all seems like a bad dream, but in the thick of it it feels like it will always be that way.  Mysteries of the troubled mind.

Anyway, I had such a great time car-dancing as I drove home with my weird purchases -- a jug of maple syrup, a two-pound container of cottage cheese, and two shirts that are too small.  My regular FM radio station (I'm so old school -- no Spotify or Pandora or Sirius) played some of my favorites in the 20 minutes it took to get from Costco to my garage:   Bruno Mars "That's What I Like", Ed Sheehan "Shape of You", Maroon 5 "Moves Like Jagger", Fritz and the Tantrums "Hand Clap", Elle King "X's  & O's".  There was another song I didn't recognize and my Shazam app was offline, so I didn't get it, but maybe next time.   Simple pleasures.

When I got home, I discovered my good friend and musician had emailed me.  He's been working on a new CD (or album? or what?  I don't even know what a collection of music is called in these download/streaming days) and a few of the songs on it are ones for which I've written the lyrics (and tweaked in collaboration with him).  He told me he's decided to name the CD for one of the songs that I wrote lyrics for -- Downhill Dancing.  I'm pretty delighted!

So all in all life is good.  Yep, I'm about 85% back...and that feels great!

At least, that's the view from here...©

Photo Credit:  Copyright: <a href='https://www.123rf.com/profile_adamgregor'>adamgregor / 123RF Stock Photo</a>