We’re having a bad day.
The stress of everything is wearing us down… we’re making mistakes and starting to crack around the edges. We’re hoping that things will calm down after the end of this week, but it’s likely that we have another 2-3 weeks of this.
We’re working hard to keep up the house momentum. It’s so close to drywall… just a few more big pushes and we’re there. We got a tub (it’s sitting in the middle of the front room) which comes along with a wonderful story. The day we got the tub (Friday) was a wonderful, bright, sunny, and life-affirming day… and it must’ve used up all our karma, ’cause we’re in a rough spot now.
I took the kids out of town all weekend (through Monday night) so that Paul was free to turn off the household water supply and work on the plumbing. He estimates that he spent at least 20 hours under the house over those days… in a space too high to lay on your back to work and too low to be on your knees. Working with a blowtorch. And sewer lines. And electricity. Still, he figures that he made off better. Watching the kids at my parents’ house is a challenge and then coming home to a house with no food or provisions is awful.
The weekend is when I work my third (or is it fourth? or maybe fifth?) job: that of housewife. It’s a role I pretty much hate; it’s under-appreciated, I have to work nights and weekends almost exclusively, and it’s much more of a challenge in a house with no washer and dryer (have I mentioned we have had no laundry for almost 2 months?) On the weekends, I try to stock up the fridge for lunches and make ahead meals for the week to minimize how much housewife stuff interferes with my professional work. I care about doing the best for my family, but I’m not a robot… I have to think and plan meals ahead, on the weekends, when I can think about it. Experience has shown us that when this does not happen, we eat crap all week. Which is exactly what is playing out for us now. And probably why we are all cranky. The tofu dish I tried to make last week bombed majorly and I can’t get back into a cooking grove. Moreover, I can’t think enough to decide what to make, what to buy to make, or how to be creative with what we have (that last category can be described as “milk, 1/2 celery stalk, and a few cans of beans”). Paul usually helps me balance these home-maintenance tasks, but is pretty much either working on the house or working his jobs. (If you think he sleeps or eats between these working hours, he doesn’t.)
I’m not exactly sure where we are going to break here, but we will break.
jenny | 03-Apr-08 at 3:07 am | Permalink
“milk, 1/2 celery stalk, and a few cans of beans”
you’ve got the starter for beans and rice. get a can or two of diced tomatoes, some carrots, and an onion. chop the celery, carrot, and onion, sautee until the onion is translucent (a few minutes). dump in the cans of beans & the diced tomatoes. simmer for awhile, until you like the flavor. serve with rice.
(it’s my bastardized meatless quick-cook feijoada.)
Cold Spaghetti | 03-Apr-08 at 6:28 am | Permalink
Kudos for catching on that when stripped to our barest kitchen essentials, we’ve still got beans and rice. Not sure if that shows our vegetarian, Latin American, or New Orleanian influences… maybe just that we have a good foundation.
‘course, last night, I couldn’t have figured out how to cook rice, slice an onion, or open a can. We made homemade pizza with a strange assortment of ‘everything-from-the-fridge-but-the-celery’ on top. I could use your input and energy around here!
Head Lima Bean | 03-Apr-08 at 9:10 am | Permalink
hugs! and more hugs!
Poists | 03-Apr-08 at 9:48 am | Permalink
I totally relate to what to cook with nothing in the fridge.
I would say buy a case of canned diced tomatoes, always buy the big bag (2lb) of short grain brown rice and have a garlic on hand. You can make almost anything out of those three items with anything else in the house.
The other recommendation is to pick up Clean Living Magazine. It has a day by day monthly plan for meal (not bs kraft junk either) WITH shopping lists! The key thing is it’s not buying 8 gazillion things for five meals but buying five to 10 things for a gazillion meals. (okay I’m exaggerating) We tried this for a week and it was amazing how well the food tasted, how much less we spent at the grocery, AND how much Wylie liked everything!
Good Luck and HUGS!!!!
Leigh C. | 03-Apr-08 at 10:57 pm | Permalink
I’m ALWAYS up for the slacker mom thing. Really. It should not comPLETEly be a de facto crime to be laissez-faire in some aspects of parenting.
Don’t break. Bend a little.
laloca | 04-Apr-08 at 6:03 am | Permalink
holly – well, it’s the same around here. when all else fails, i reach for the beans & rice. or i go a little crazy and bake challah. 🙂 but i sympathize with your intense dislike of housewifery – i can only do it in small doses, and we don’t even have kids! (thank goodness for the new washer & dryer – g does laundry now. sometimes.) hang in there – it will all be worthwhile, especially the knowledge you guys did it yourselves!
@poists – 2 lbs of rice? heh. i buy it in 20 lb increments. legacy of an asian/latina upbringing, i think. other kitchen staples:
food-service sized jar of pre-chopped garlic
dried onion
diced tomatoes (no salt added)
several cans of beans, as well as a few pounds of dried black beans
a few cartons of stock (chicken, beef and veggie – although sometimes i make the veggie stock myself and freeze it)
a few bags frozen veggies
a bag of flash-frozen chicken breasts
a gallon jug of soy sauce (we make korean-style short ribs twice a month or so)
olive oil (not by the gallon – it tends to get rank)
i couldn’t live without my rice cooker – definitely a worthwhile investment.
GentillyGirl | 05-Apr-08 at 4:07 pm | Permalink
Hang in there Darlin’!
Our house has taken a long time to fix, and it’s almost ready for us to move back in. The guys will finish the outside stuff then.
For the food aspect, make some big vats of gumbo or red beans. Freeze ’em. That’s how we survive in this dump with no stove or storage areas.