Today, I got angry.
I was making dinner and my husband came in the room.
“I don’t know what I’m going to make for dinner,” I said.
“What do you mean? What’s that for?” he asked, gesturing toward the Quick Cooker.
“Cheesecake,” I responded.
“Oh, okay,” he said. I could sense he was rolling his eyes. However, I had been sitting in front of a computer for hours and I had been planning to make this cheesecake for 5 days…it was going to happen.
He asked what we had on hand, because we just bought a ton of groceries.
“We have ground beef in the fridge we need to use. I was going to make the Quick Cooker hamburger helper thing, but we don’t have cream of mushroom soup. I was going to make chili, but we don’t have tomatoes,” I said, obviously frustrated.
He suggested making mac and cheese and just putting the ground beef in it. So, I opened the fridge and started pulling out the cheese to make Quick Cooker mac and cheese.
He said, “You don’t have to do anything fancy. Just make a box of mac and cheese and put the ground beef in it.”
My back was to him. I rolled my eyes. I slammed around the kitchen a few more minutes.
“What’s wrong,” he asked.
“I’m just mad,” I replied.
“Mad about what?” he asked. I broke loose.
- I’m mad at myself for not planning out meals better. I’ve been busy and when he said the Kroger cart was full could I review it, I just assumed he had thought about all the components that went into a meal. Instead, he purchased things that were shelf-stable and affordable. I really needed to put more effort into the review of the list.
- I’m mad I can’t have a bunch of fresh food right now. I like fresh fish and meat, not frozen stuff. I like fresh veggies. I liked fruit. Eating out of a box and with pasta every night feels incredibly wrong. I just knocked 30 points off my cholesterol and I don’t want to be back there again.
- I’m mad that work is taking up so much time. Juggling two jobs from home hasn’t been easy. One job is relatively under control, but the other requires so much of my time and I haven’t really drawn good boundaries. I’m getting burned out and I’m feeling like I’m not valuing my own time because I’m spending so much of it working.
- I feel like my work never ends. This was a big part of the reason why I got another job. While that makes no sense, I promise you it does and someday soon, I’ll post the blog I’ve written about it.
- I feel like I’m not getting any exercise. I’m not. I didn’t get in a workout today and it was on my task list. I need to make this a priority.
It really seems like my issue is priorities.
After dinner, I felt a bit better. Maybe I was hangry. My husband and I were hanging out in the living room. He was relaxing, I was annoying the dog. (Seriously, I do this a lot. He hate it.) I saw on Instagram that Brad Paisley was live taking requests. I turned it on and moved to the kitchen to wash dishes. To get better sound, I paired it with my Echo Show. My husband and I were in the kitchen, just listening to this impromptu concert from Brad Paisley on a random Thursday night.
Dang. I need to look at this differently.
- I’m working. Despite the economy and the layoff and the uncertainty, both of my jobs are busy right now. My husband’s job is much less busy right now and that’s concerning, but for now, it’s fine.
- We had dinner. We have food. The pantry is full.
- He’s here. He works out of town and could have easily been sent back there this week or been stuck there. But he’s not. He’s here to help me get through this.
- My kids’ schoolwork may be taking a lot of time, but they are doing it. We are doing it all online. While the public schools have to keep everything equal, we have a smaller school. We provided Chromebooks to the kids who needed them. We made sure that we could all make this work. Then the teachers set to work. Yes, it’s hard to sit down to help them with their work after a day of my work, but we’d be doing that anyway.
- We moved in October. This seems silly, but we moved from a very small house to a much larger one. Had we not moved, we would definitely have killed each other by now. There was no room to spread out or whatever. We were right on top of each other and I’m so grateful for all the extra space we have.
Tomorrow, I’ll probably wake up feeling better, but I’m not going to lie–today was R-O-U-G-H. It’s time to set boundaries. It’s time to prioritize. It’s time to enjoy this downtime while we have it, because in a few weeks, on a random Thursday, I’ll be solo parenting and running back and forth to the dance studio while making dinner and helping with homework–not enjoying an Instagram impromptu concert with my entire family safe under one roof.
