The title of this post sounds like it will be about football, huh? While I’m really looking forward to Sunday’s games, I’m not ready to blog about them just yet. Instead, I’ve been thinking a lot about how much of an adjustment there is when one goes from living on one’s own to living with another person. There are the everyday adjustments of sharing one’s space, determining who gets to take the first shower in the morning and who gets to take the second and, therefore, much colder shower. Those adjustments are ones that have been, surprisingly, easy for me to do, probably because they are a part of my life every single day. They have been since Jason moved into the house. It was a case of adapt or don’t. Adapting is easier than bucking the system for a rule-follower like me.
Now that we are past the hectic holiday season, my busiest few weeks at work are soon behind me and I have time to breathe, now comes the other adjustments – the ones I stress out over. We’re trying to get bills in order. In my somewhat annoying way, I want to make spreadsheets and logs and overcomplicate things. I think he’d rather just hand over some cash and let me take care of it. I’m fine with that, but I want to be fair about it. In the back of my head, the past few days, I’ve been having an irritating discussion between myself and my brain self.
“This bill is due the 26th, this one not until the 30th. This bill changes monthly but this one is static.”
It’s not rocket science. I know this. I’m just a freak about it, and it doesn’t help that my pay periods changed and the amounts changed, as well. I’m not good at adjusting to those kinds of things. Men’s deoderant in the bathroom? Yes. Changing payroll amounts? No. I installed spreadsheet software on the laptop, last night, and I hope to sit my geeky self down and figure it all out this weekend. Then, I’ll figure out why I keep forgetting to pay the gas bill and my phone bill. I’d hate to be cold with no way to call my favorite get-warm 900 number!
The other big adjustment for me I’ve noticed, so far, is that other thing I’m constantly thinking about: food. I’ve been wanting to be more organized about my own dinners and lunches for a long time, it’s just something that gets lost in the shuffle of daily life. NO MORE, I say! I’m feeling out different plans. That means, I’ve got a plan, but I have to try five different formats before I think it’s pretty enough, I think it’s functional enough, and darn it! I like it enough.
This week, we made our first weekly menu. I ran to the store on Saturday, like an idiot, before the menu was planned. Jason forgot the list while he was running a ton of errands on his day off on Monday. We’ve made do with what we have and were able to stick to the menu the first two days of the week. We had a healthy salad for dinner, last night, so I count that as a victory.
A friend got me reading a blog that has a feature called Menu Plan Monday. Since I work 40 miles from home during the week, Mondays aren’t a good day to decide and shop for meals for the week. So, I’m instituting Supper Planning Saturdays (or Sundays). I think we need Dish-Washing Wednesdays, too, because it seems that we amass an alarming amount of dirty dishes and cookware that no one seems up to washing during the week. Jason basic idea is to choose dinners that are one of the following:
a) quick and easy, like Tuesday night’s Different Chicken Tacos that only took about 2 minutes to prep and 35 minutes to cook,
b) can be made ahead (like on a marathon cooking Sunday) and portioned individually or dually for freezer/refrigerator storage with the FoodSaver, or
c) can be stuck in the slow cooker the morning of and enjoyed when we get home.
I’m a huge proponent of taking my lunch to work. I’m not a fan of the extra work it makes for me to get them ready, ideally, the night before, but I think it’s worth it. I save money by not running to Subway, every day. The leftovers get eaten (I’m the only one that will eat leftovers). I also can control better what goes in my mouth and, thus, attaches itself to my hips. I’m prone to the allure of suggestive advertising and the call of Dairy Queen’s mushroom swiss burger. If I have a salad or bowl of soup or tin of tuna in the refrigerator at work, I’m much less likely to give in to that sort of Siren song. Jason’s not a huge believer in brown bagging it, but I’ve found that he hardly ever eats during the day(which is a whole other problem, I think, that I’m not ready to tackle). That’s okay. More food for me!
These are the thoughts that have been occupying my time, this week. They aren’t huge problems, or anything, just stuff I’m trying to figure out for myself and get used to. If these are my biggest problems, I’m pretty well off, I’d say. At the risk of being a mushy girl with a heart, I like having problems like this.
