View Full Version : Becoming authentic
Chicken lady
5-1-18, 5:59am
I survive the work thing. Heart daughter thanked me for coming. She also apologized for stranding me when she had to leave early and the other person I am comfortable with didn’t show up at all due to a child in the hospital. I think my own exit at the end was less graceful. I have a tendency just to leave when things are done, and realized halfway out the door that people were doing that fake social thing and I had no idea what to say. Then after I got into my car away from people I thought of some things. (Like I should have thanked someone for including me - even though I never wanted to be included)
anyway, heart daughter wanted me to know it was a real emergency and not an escape, but everything was ok. It was only 15 minutes, but she would have gotten me out the door.
i took time for myself at the pottery studio afterwards. It was the first time in a long time I have worked in clay until I actually got tired of it and wanted to stop for a while. (My hands are sore) (unfortunately?) I got home in time to spend 40 minutes with my brother in law. I actually like him, but I like him on his turf. He is loud and opinionated. He had many opinions on my lifestyle and my choices.
Sample conversation:
him: “is that homemade ice cream?”
me “yes.”
Dh (dealing with the fact that a normal person would have offered bil some) “it’s goat milk.”
bil “gross.”
dh “actually it’s pretty good.”
bil “well i’m Not eating it. Maybe it’s not as bad a goat cheese. Goat cheese is disgusting. It smells like dog sh**.”
me (i’m Eating) “I am perfectly happy with you not eating my ice cream.”
bil continues to expound on the grossness of goat cheese.
also he informed me that I “need to just get a dumpster and throw all that stuff out.” I just said “no. I don’t.” Then I was able to listen to his story of how his family has radically downsized since the fire that left them homeless for six months with compassion and appreciation for his enjoyment of his new life. Without making it about me at all. Which I think frustrated him because it was intended as a lesson for me. But i’m Good.
He did really like our new room, although he can’t figure out how we can stand not having real floors in yet, but he felt a need to compliment it by contrasting it with the rest of our house, which “sucks”.
Teacher Terry
5-1-18, 7:10pm
Your BIL is beyond rude. I don't go to anyone's house and tell them what they should do. Now if someone asks on an internet forum I will say what I think:)) He is the one with low social skills. You handled it well.
I'd love to stay in your house, with or without new floors, and I'd try your goat ice cream, and I'd just love to be around you. It seems to me that you are not "becoming" authentic--you already are.
Chicken lady
5-2-18, 5:48am
You guys are very kind. I think I am “better” online than in person, because I can think about what I want to say for as long as I like, and I can edit my words. Lack of tone is difficult sometimes, but I struggle with affect in real life, and online it is more appropriate to come out and ask about it.
my bil really is not a jerk. He can be coarse, but a lot of that is cultural. He has a lot of good traits, we just disagree on many things and he never pulls punches with me. I often appreciate that in people. It’s just that having known me since he was 14, he feels he can address subjects that most people would not. And he was on a roll Monday night.
He holds his positions strongly. For years he hassled me about my vegetarianism. (And I often enjoyed debating him) When he went vegetarian for health reasons, he became my loud and stubborn ally at family meals.
i actually felt good about some of the interactions, because I felt like I could defend my position just because it was my position. Yes, I have a lot of “crap” in my basement. Right now, it’s staying there. Because this is my life and this is how I am living it. I didn’t feel a need to start justifying or explaining my choices, because I am comfortable with them.
This is a big step, and a lot of what I mean about being authentic. I am moving away from “should”s. I am becoming realistic about the facts of my life - things are a certain way. My choices about how I spend my time can (sometimes) affect wether they remain the same or change. I am trying to make those decisions based on my priorities and having done that, I must accept the results. Things do not have “needs”. The floor does not “need” to be swept. The floor is dirty. If it is more important to me to coach a kid or plant a tree or sleep, then the floor will remain dirty until sweeping becomes the most important use of the moment or someone else chooses to sweep it. I will not apologize for that.
if you come over and my house is a mess, it is a mess. I *could clean it - but clearly I am choosing to spend this moment with you instead. If you think a clean house is more important, you have choices. Maybe I will let you clean while I do something else. Maybe if you go away, I will clean it. But probably, I will do something else I think is more important.
I have a different take on the house cleaning conundrum. I don't see it as an either or thing--for me, the disorder in my house--and I am looking around and seeing it in every room, especially since I am in the middle of a declutter/dehoard/deal with stuff now instead of later project--reflects depression and an inability to make decisions and move on in life. So for me, it's not authentic to have my house in the state it is in now--it is inauthentic and disturbing, and I feel I can't be myself.
But people have different values. So if you like to live a certain way, and you see it as a time tradeoff to help others or help the earth or sleep vs. the house cleaning or decluttering, then that is your value, and you are being authentic to your value. I see it differently, as supporting myself and my need to live in beauty, and to be a "good steward"--again, we are both trying to be good stewards, just do it/see it differently.
And that is great! I guess what I am trying to say is that we all see the world through our own lens of being, and what makes us happy, and then we look at others through our personal lens and say things like, "goat ice cream, gross" which is kind of stupid. We all do it.
Back to my decluttering/cleaning/straightening project, as that is authentic movement in a direction I value.
This is such an interesting thread. Learning, deciding what I need to be comfortable, happy is an ongoing process. As CL experiences it, the "shoulds" can take you over until you have no idea what is important to yourself. So, bravo to everyone working on finding just what it is that works and finding a voice that helps you get and keep the knowledge.
Teacher Terry
5-2-18, 12:45pm
When I go to someone's house I could care less how neat or clean it is. I go to visit the person. When I was raising my kids my house was much messier then it is now because there were 5 of us and I was super busy with college and then work. My kids were my priority above the house. However, I find it now peaceful to keep things neat and clean so I do. Right now I am doing my usual spring cleaning which means all the curtains are getting washed and the windows. etc. I am motivated to do that when the weather starts to get warm. In 2 weeks we are having a big barbecue with lots of people. We do that every summer and I really enjoy it. Last summer I waited until June and it was way too hot to eat outside. Last summer was unusual but I am not taking any chances this year.
When I go to someone's house I could care less how neat or clean it is. I go to visit the person. When I was raising my kids my house was much messier then it is now because there were 5 of us and I was super busy with college and then work.
Terry, your comment sponsored some interesting thoughts in my head.
When we visit DD and DSiL, their (new, no-home-improvements-needed) house is always cluttered. Though that is not my preference it does not bother me as they have a 2-1/2-year-old and a not-even-a-year-old and both work jobs that continually try to suck up more than 40 hours a week from each of them (plus commute, but that was a decision they made). So there are toys all around, almost always a laundry basket of clean (unfolded) clothes well away from the laundry room, the day's dishes in the kitchen sink. So, yes, we're there to see them, not the house. When those same kids are at our house, it's a glorious mess and I don't mind cleaning up, though I am hopeful that someday the clutter tornado will wind down. But I don't have to live with it full-time (absolutely not my preference).
Many years ago, my first wife and I would visit her mom, who lived alone. I was appalled to see dishes in the kitchen sink from some time ago (whatever the dish contained had dried up) and piles of paper waiting to be taken out of the house (to the trash, back in those days) and the bathroom was filthy. That bothered me. It's not like MiL couldn't physically handle it -- she volunteered outside her home, as she put it, "driving the old ladies around to their appointments". But she didn't handle it. Maybe there was some latent depression or some other emotional issue going on that I never saw. But it did strike me how dirty the place was and I have to say I was not excited about visiting.
Not that I have a fully-formed opinion at this time on the matter of prioritizing a clean house. But your comment struck me in two very different ways. Now I'm working on figuring out why.
I think there's a difference between clean and tidy. Steve, your DD/SIL's home is merely untidy. Your former MIL's house was unclean. Big difference.
My DIL is a clean nut/germophobe, but her home is constantly strewn with laundry that hasn't gotten around to getting folded, toys, and assorted other clutter. But the kitchen and bathrooms are clean enough to lick. Kind of a disconnect, because I always find that it's easier for me to clean when there is no clutter, but some busy families know how to prioritize "clean" at the expense of "clutter."
I find I'm much more sensitive to my own clutter when I come back from business travel, or, more recently, the house in VT, which is still very minimally furnished (and I hope to keep it that way!). Somehow, when I walk in the door, the clutter jumps out at me, but when I sit in it for a week or so, I just get de-sensitized and more tolerant.
Chicken lady
5-2-18, 8:40pm
Yes, many of you are getting the point exactly. It is about what matters to you and why and the effect that has on your life. It’s about WHY you are sweeping (or not sweeping) the floor. Paying attention to the “why” helps to clarify the “what”.
Chicken lady
5-3-18, 5:35am
Tybee, it is a trade off. Like “your money or your life” - we have a limited amount of time..
so if having your environment clean and neat and uncluttered is a need for you, hopefully you will prioritize it. And if that frees up your energy for other things, you will feel like you have “more” time because time won’t be wasted by the friction of dirt and mess and clutter. But there was still something else you didn’t do because of the cleaning up. If it was something less important, that is good. If it was something totally unimportant or undesirable, awesome!
this past week, as I have been focusing on getting work done for my class, I found myself saying out loud twice “I would rather do pottery than eat.” Dh has been busy, and I have skipped some dinners. And this morning, finally, after struggling for weeks with no results, the needle on the scale budged down. Just a pound, but it moved - with no effort at all on my part. My body doesn’t need meals. It just needs balanced nutrition - which I can accomplish with the bouquet of kale I ate from the school garden while talking to students, the bag of nuts I keep in the door of my car, the apple I eat walking out to my home studio, a glass of milk.... etc.
“dinner” is an experience. A pleasant experience, but one with a large time footprint. The struggle for me is that it is important to dh. He wants dinner every night. (Which amuses people when I complain about it. You “should” have dinner every night. That is “normal”) but dinner every night is actually bad for me. It creates frustration the way mess creates frustration for Tybee. It conflicts with other priorities and goals. (Example - weight loss goal - because I never grab a glass of wine or a few teaspoons of cooking oil or sugar to satisfy hunger or thirst - they are blended with my food to create a “dinner” experience. And I eat more when I am focused on enjoying the food.)
and yet, the experience is very important to dh, who is important to me, and I enjoy it and it is a part of spending time with dh - which is important to me. So I struggle with it. For now, my focus has been on trying to improve the healthy aspect, but also trying to reduce the time spent on prep and clean up - goals which often conflict as most ways to improve health aspects use time.
I think there's a difference between clean and tidy. Steve [snip]
My DIL is a clean nut/germophobe, but her home is constantly strewn with laundry that hasn't gotten around to getting folded, toys, and assorted other clutter. But the kitchen and bathrooms are clean enough to lick.
Sadly, not the case in that house. I've never, for example, pulled "science experiments" out of the fridge (though some leftovers have been there at least a week from when I was in the house last). The kitchen floor is -- well, let's say that choosing a dark wood floor for a kitchen was a rookie mistake. The granite countertop doesn't hide many sins either. They have two Swiffer-like cleaners and three vacuums so it's not like things can't be cleaned. The master bath? Please don't ask me to use their master bath.
After thinking about it more yesterday, though, I've concluded that I give DD/DSiL a pass because they have more going on daily than XMIL did -- and maybe I like them more than I liked XMIL (it was mutual).
Chicken lady,
I have the same "must have dinner" routine going on in my household too. Since my SO moved in a year ago, I gained 5 lbs. I realized the same thing as you: I don't have the metabolism or desire for 3 meals/day, or a full dinner every evening. He's used to this and has not gained an ounce.
My solution is to eat minimally when he's gone. He has to leave periodically for about a week at a time for family reasons so that's my time to ignore the typical mealtimes and even fast for a bit. So far the 5 lbs. is coming off.
Teacher Terry
5-4-18, 5:00pm
When I cook I make sure that I make enough that we can eat them another day and that day I don't have to cook. Steve, if someone's home was truly filthy versus untidy I probably would not go over and I would not eat there. Growing up my Uncle had 8 kids and we had so much fun going to their house. However, it was filthy. Their refrigerator was disgusting inside. The rest of the entire family was clean freaks. So I would never spend the night because it was too disgusting for me even as a kid. I did a lot of pushing my food around the plate instead of eating much. Not sure what my super fussy mom, grandma and aunt did. It didn't keep any of the men from eating:~)
Chicken lady
5-16-18, 7:49pm
So, here is another insight from my dh and retirement thread. I do not like change.
i know this, but I lose sight of it.
this week I have been unsettled, lazy, uninterested in doing things that I want to do (I think it, but I don’t feel it) letting time slip by with videos and reading and not making progress. Feeling “tired” all the time again. Beginning to feel bad about myself and start into negative self talk...
in the last last twelve days:
My Dd2 graduated and moved back home
i had to spend time with my inlaws
My parents stayed for a visit
my dd1 visited with her dh
my class ended
i got a big project at work
my heart daughter has split with her partner
one of my favorite students was hospitalized (chronic, but currently “ok” and back yesterday)
my dh brought up retirement
in the next twelve days:
the school year will end and I will lose students to graduation and transfers to other schools
i will have to clean out my classroom
i will travel to Wisconsin.
I begin to see why I am not interested in cleaning or ordering the house or studio, planting the garden, advertising the goats for sale, fixing the wall...
change and disruption. And I have enough. I am unsettled, off kilter. Simply adapting to all of the changes is hard work for me. The unpredictable schedule of the evenings is making me grumpy and I am not communicating my needs to the people who live here. Instead I am slipping into “bad choices” - behavior that provides a short term escape but is maladaptive in the long term.
Sending you hugs, CL and a wish for a peaceful 10 minute or longer escape to just breathe.
SteveinMN
5-17-18, 10:01am
"They" say the first step in addressing a problem is acknowledging the problem exists. You knew this, but you needed to be reminded. Now to act on the information... Wishing you some respite in the days ahead.
Chicken lady
5-19-18, 7:25pm
Well, today I attended graduation. Moments of laughter, moments of tears. A lot of joy at their growth a successes, but a lot of regrets too - the ones I didn’t get to know, the ones I wonder if I had more to offer, the ones I wasn’t finished with yet....
our graduation is a bit odd. The kids design it themselves every year. They plan the program, decide what to wear, music, who will speak. One speaker graduated two years ago. He told them “people are going to keep telling you stuff like ‘have the courage to follow your dreams.’ Very inspirational. What does that look like? Here’s my advice. If there is something you really want to do, think of the worst possible thing that could happen. If you think you can survive those results, do it.” I need to take that approach more often.
one graduate talked about his experience coming coming to us from a regular school. He said he was having a hard time accepting that his time with us was really over “every year I have this horrible feeling ‘oh no! It’s over, everything is ending.’ And then it happens again!” I am lucky. I teach. And then it happens again.....
Chicken lady
6-2-18, 7:44am
The last two weeks have been full. They included an unanticipated conflict/discussion with my boss that I think will be very positive for me long term.
also, the trip to Wisconsin was delightful. The place where my son works is amazing. We toured the campus and it made me want to redo my entire environment. I rode a bike for the first time in decades. I weeded a flower bed that could be finished in 20 minutes. I identified plants that were easy to identify (daylily, peony) and I made a rhubarb pie which i could probably do in my sleep, and both “talents” were appreciated and enjoyed. I walked 5 miles.
i was not tired in Wisconsin. It was astonishing what it felt like to not be tired.
dh says it’s because I have too many irons in the fire here. I think it’s because I am surrounded by emotional time bombs and responsible for food. Last night he called me at 5:30 to ask if there was a dinner plan, and I said no. The night before, I made something Dd and I liked and he didn’t, so we had leftovers. He said he would pick something up, but then he came home and scavenged in the fridge and complained that we are out of wine. I told him he knew that we were out of wine and did not buy any. So I didn’t actually buy or make any food, but the food still wore me down.
Also last night (on the emotional time bomb front) he and Dd had a conflict involving yelling and tears. Apparently the conflict was somehow my fault.
i have a thought. If grown woman A offers grown woman B tools to do something for herself, and grown woman B thinks she can do it. 1) you don’t need to get into it. 2) nobody is going to be grateful that you stopped grown woman B from doing the thing. 3) the reason you aren’t going to get any gratitude is because neither woman believes that you saved grown woman B from failure 4) if she had failed, so what? And 5) don’t be angry that you had to get involved, because nobody wanted you involved in the first place! I won’t tell him any of this because he is sure he is right and there will just be more yelling.
today we are good, although there is no plan for dinner.
i am thinking about telling him I will cook a dinner, with leftovers, one night a week, and I will let him know when I am going to the grocery store. I will continue making breakfast and lunches - which are easy. I will do dinner twice a week if the second one can be pasta. The other nights I am opting out of dinner. I will accept invitations to eat if I am not busy and the food is appropriate, but I will be responsible for feeding myself and he and Dd can figure out the rest on their own.
as for the irons in the fire, this morning I sent an e-mail to someone letting her know I am not available to do a thing again that she guilted me into doing last year. She knew she guilted me into doing it, she had a whole year to find someone else, and she didn’t - because I did a good job and she figured she could just guilt me into it again and that was the easiest path.
now I need to buckle down and work on my evaluations so that they are not hanging over my head.
dh says it’s because I have too many irons in the fire here. I think it’s because I am surrounded by emotional time bombs and responsible for food. Last night he called me at 5:30 to ask if there was a dinner plan, and I said no. The night before, I made something Dd and I liked and he didn’t, so we had leftovers. He said he would pick something up, but then he came home and scavenged in the fridge and complained that we are out of wine. I told him he knew that we were out of wine and did not buy any. So I didn’t actually buy or make any food, but the food still wore me down.
i am thinking about telling him I will cook a dinner, with leftovers, one night a week, and I will let him know when I am going to the grocery store. I will continue making breakfast and lunches - which are easy. I will do dinner twice a week if the second one can be pasta. The other nights I am opting out of dinner. I will accept invitations to eat if I am not busy and the food is appropriate, but I will be responsible for feeding myself and he and Dd can figure out the rest on their own.
It is most definitely past time to negotiate this relationship issue. He's an adult. He's talking retirement. It sounds like he has far more "free time" than you do. You will continue to bring home income. Negotiate meals and his part of the workload.
I'm a firm believer that "we teach people how to treat us".
Cl, Good for you for not doing the guilted job! NO is great word when followed by actually not doing the thing you said NO to. Good luck on the dinner negotiations. Since husband said you had too many irons in the fire, seems like dinner making is a major iron that can be reduced but because it affects him I'm betting he wasn't thinking that was an iron you should remove! good luck. Getting rid of the programming of our lives is hard.
It’s not the females responsibility to see that the males have food. Everyone is grown up. Cooking should be a choice. The one who has time to ask if there’s a plan for dinner, should simply make the plans for dinner.
Chicken lady
6-2-18, 10:26am
The conflicts I see on this are:
Reasons I should be in charge of dinner:
- food is one of dh love languages
- He works more hours and makes more money than I do, so equity involves me contributing more in other areas
- and in the summer I do not work away from the farm. So, I have more time “available”
reasons I should not be in charge of dinner:
- I hate it and it exhausts me and stresses me out out of proportion to the actual task.
- I am not a good cook and dh doesn’t like many of the things I make
- I am a vegetarian and have difficulty planning and preparing meals that are not (ties back to the first two)
- most of the time I don’t care if I even have dinner, it is an interruption more than a need to me.
i am sure this is not an iron dh thinks I should remove, and yet, it is probably the one that would have the largest impact for me.
If the person feeding me was a lousy cook and I didn't like most of the meals they served up, I wouldn't be feeling the love much. Perhaps you could renegotiate, explaining how much you really loathe the task.
Maybe you could learn to make extravagant weekly desserts for him?
Also, considering the benefits of even partial fasting, I wouldn't be eating if I weren't hungry.
Yeah, your list of reasons to/not to cook are why DH and I often fend for ourselves. I used to be a terrible cook, but thanks to my becoming vegetarian years ago and then reading Michael Pollan, I am now an "accidental cook." I can tell what recipes should yield a good result and I'm good at following directions.
I love soups and stews because as long as you throw in a few nutritious, fresh ingredients and the right seasonings, you have a lot of bang for your buck and it usually tastes much better than the packaged versions. But I admit, the whole cooking thing exhausts me to think about, too, and if I'm working a busy week, frankly, I don't eat, or I graze. A handful of nuts here, a slice of cheese there. DH will nuke a hot dog.
But that doesn't change the fact that DH is a foodie and I am not; he "lives to eat" and I "eat to live"; he can't get through the day without at least one hot dog and a half a pound of cold cuts; like a little kid, he HATES his veggies. And while he really is an excellent cook in general, when it comes to fresh vegetables he has no idea how to cook them.
I really think you should somehow come up with a strategy that breaks the link between the two of you cooking for each other.
Teacher Terry
6-2-18, 2:53pm
A friend of mine bought a book called a months cooking in one day. Basically it revolves around just a few types of meat that you turn into a bunch of different dishes and then put in the freezer. Then you could just heat up and feed to him. It has cut down their eating out after work because she is tired. Yes and why does it always fall to the female to cook?
A friend of mine bought a book called a months cooking in one day. Basically it revolves around just a few types of meat that you turn into a bunch of different dishes and then put in the freezer. Then you could just heat up and feed to him. It has cut down their eating out after work because she is tired. Yes and why does it always fall to the female to cook?
It doesn't always, I'm the primary cook at our house, probably 6 nights each week.
ApatheticNoMore
6-2-18, 3:27pm
It has cut down their eating out after work because she is tired. Yes and why does it always fall to the female to cook?
because otherwise the only choice seems to be eating out, that's why I try to cook, but it's exhausting.
Chicken lady
6-2-18, 3:31pm
My son and son-il both cook. In our family it seems to fall to the person who is home before 7:00.
My DH does all the cooking.
why does it always fall to the female to cook?It doesn't always, I'm the primary cook at our house, probably 6 nights each week.
Same here. Plus I'm the grocery-getter and the one who cleans up afterward. Everyone here is happier for this. :)
Teacher Terry
6-3-18, 1:20pm
Great to see that some men are cooking :)
Great to see that some men are cooking :)
Hubby can and will cook. He requires direction to get stuff right. Our house rule is 1 cooks the other cleans. He prefers dishes and I'm good with that. No matter the mess I make he does not complain.
He'll be cooking and cleaning for the next few weeks as I'll not be allowed to stand in the kitchen for any length of time. He's up for it! Guy's a keeper:D
Chicken lady
6-3-18, 8:46pm
It turns out I like having dd2 living with us. She keeps confirming that all the things I think dh is doing, that he says he isn’t doing - he is actually doing. I am not crazy.
good to have validationCL
Ultralight
6-25-19, 5:50pm
I have tried and tried and tried. But I just want to be honest with myself. I don't like cooking.
Teacher Terry
6-25-19, 5:53pm
I don’t like it either UL.
Ultralight
6-25-19, 5:58pm
I don’t like it either UL.
I just can't lie to myself about. And I am done trying to like it.
So I have thought of a new approach to no cooking but also not going out to restaurants all the time.
I dont like it either so keep it extremely simple. Excellent ingredients kept simple makes life easy. I joke with my husband that I am the queen of the 10 minute meal. There is a whole lot I can do with a Costco already cooked chicken. Almost everything is simply cooked at 400 degrees without a lot of extra sauces or things.
Chicken lady
6-25-19, 6:57pm
So, ultralight, what is your new approach?
i eat ingredients.
Ultralight
6-25-19, 10:22pm
It turns out I like having dd2 living with us. She keeps confirming that all the things I think dh is doing, that he says he isn’t doing - he is actually doing. I am not crazy.
What?!?!!?
Ultralight
6-25-19, 10:23pm
I dont like it either so keep it extremely simple. Excellent ingredients kept simple makes life easy. I joke with my husband that I am the queen of the 10 minute meal. There is a whole lot I can do with a Costco already cooked chicken. Almost everything is simply cooked at 400 degrees without a lot of extra sauces or things.
I am absolutely sincere when I say I would love to hear more about this school of thought of yours.
Ultralight
6-25-19, 10:29pm
So, ultralight, what is your new approach?
i eat ingredients.
What do you mean?
There is one food that I actually don't mind cooking at all -- proper white basmati rice.
So this got me thinking... the grocery store has lots of what I call "half-prepared" meals. And many of these are jars of Indian sauces -- korma, jalfrezi, etc. So I could make rice (easy for me) and then partly cook some veggies, throw them in with the sauce to simmer, and then the meal is ready.
No cooking from scratch. No restaurant. A fairly tasty meal without much to-do, at home.
So I am going to think of this as a philosophy and see if I can do other types of meals this way. Sure, there is no skill in it. But as a born-again bachelor, it could be a suitable methodology.
Chicken lady
6-25-19, 10:37pm
Tonight dh was not home for dinner. I ate pineapple spears and carrots (peeled but not cut) and almonds - ingredients.
the dh thing is too long to fully explain, but he would do things mindlessly and then swear he didn’t do them - like eating the last cookie or leaving the mail in the bathroom. Also he talks out loud when he is thinking, so he would swear he never said things I heard and acted on.
iris lilies
6-25-19, 11:55pm
Tonight dh was not home for dinner. I ate pineapple spears and carrots (peeled but not cut) and almonds - ingredients.
the dh thing is too long to fully explain, but he would do things mindlessly and then swear he didn’t do them - like eating the last cookie or leaving the mail in the bathroom. Also he talks out loud when he is thinking, so he would swear he never said things I heard and acted on.
I have said many times that someone needs to invent a little device that I would call the marriage recorder. It would be implanted into us. It would record everything that we ever say or do and it would have a very easy play back function. So many times so so so many times I need to prove to DH that he either said something or he didn’t say something. Ha ha Ha ha ha. Ha ha
Teacher Terry
6-26-19, 12:23am
It’s only getting worse with age:))
UL, veggies cooked in microwave with a little salt and pepper or steamable frozen bags of veggies if no fresh in the fridge. Potatoes in microwave. Those little ones are delicious. Jars of Indian sauces are fabulous. Slow cooker with a jar of BBQ sauce can be used for meat and eaten over several meals.
Never cook for just one meal. We do love leftovers. We try very hard to avoid most processed or cheap food.
I sometimes make a no knead bread that I swear takes more time to get out the simple ingredients than it does to cook. I like ciabatta rolls for sandwiches toasted a little with either a hot or cold filling. Very little bread now in our diet.
Chopped salads are worth the price (so long as they are not just iceburg lettuce which we avoid). Saves having to buy and prepare small amounts of various veggies. Husband has started eating them for breakfast and lunch with maybe a hardboiled egg (which he cooks once a week).
Note: We do not eat any four legged animal meat so the protein in our diet is pretty simple. Not yet into a lot of grains but eat them if simple to prepare. Prepared ravioli is simple to boil for a few minutes and the package can be split to make a freshoasta meal for a one person. I just heat up a little nice expensive spaghetti sauce or use some real Parmesan cheese. It is using the highest quality ingredients which makes all the difference. Bdr
Breakfast: yoghurt with homemade granola or salad
Lunch: salad or something like Lean Cuisine
Dinner: simple protein, veggies, potatoes, pasta, etc.
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