I grew up in a single income family with a SAHM. (that’s a “stay-at-home-mom” for those that might not know). Money was always tight. Enough to pay the bills and cover everything we needed, but not a lot for luxuries like those Calvin Klein jeans all my friends were wearing, or an extra car, or even eating out much. It was always a treat when McDonald’s ran their 29 cent hamburger specials twice a year because that meant that on Sunday, on our way home from church, which was on the same side of town as McDonald’s, we’d get to go through the drive-thru and Daddy would order a dozen of those glorious morsels of yumminess and take them home for our dinner to have with a bag of chips and kool-aid. #memories

As a SAHM, my mother learned to be great at planning things out. We had a chore list for each day of the week, we knew which days were laundry days and if we needed something washed in between times we had to learn to do it ourselves, and we knew what we’d be having for supper every night because there was a menu of sorts on the fridge (next to the chore list), and we better not eat anything out of the fridge or cabinets that would need to be used in the cooking of any of those meals! Mom and Daddy went to the grocery store once a week, usually on Friday night I seem to recall (#datenight) without us kids, and there was no going back during the week to get anything else. So planning a weekly menu was a must.

Yes, I’m the daughter of an organizer. Traits that I’ve tried to mimic and model to my own offspring. Keyword there being TRY! When I was married the first time, it worked out pretty well. I’d plan out a weekly menu, shop for those things…and most times it worked. We might change our minds, decide to grab a fast meal from a drive-thru or go out with friends sometimes, but for the most part, it worked.

Then I was a single mom of 3 kids. I HAD to plan. Luckily, the kids only ate about 3 things so we stayed stocked up on fish sticks, hot dogs, and macaroni and cheese, and it still was not that hard.
There would be the occasional happy meal sharing program.. 2 meals split 4 ways.. or a 20 piece nugget meal with a large fry split among the 3 kids when we’d be on the road… but we made allowance. It still worked pretty good.

And then.. then I married the hubs. When we met, he told me he knew how to fix 3 things for supper for himself and his son… hamburger helper, bacon sandwiches, and pizza from Pizza Hut.
And that was a pretty accurate statement.
I quickly found out that he is not a planner. He is more of a “I don’t know what I’ll be hungry for tonight, much less 3 days from now.”
Many are the days I find myself running to the store at 6pm on the way home from work to get ingredients for whatever sounds good for supper that night.
Oh.. I try to plan.. I go shopping and fill the freezer with chicken and pork chops and roasts and fish.... I make a list of possible meal plans for each night, especially now that we are also cooking for his mother and taking it to her every night. But then there are left overs to take into account, and whose kids are gonna be here when, and “I really don’t feel like eating ‘that’ tonight..why don’t we do this instead.” So plans go by the wayside sometimes.

And after 10 years of being with this man (5 of them married), I’m finally at a place where I do not have a brain aneurism every time he suggests we just “go grab a burger” or “call an order into Juan’s” rather than eat the meal I’ve planned on making and have marinating in the fridge.
Don’t get me wrong.. I still make mental plans, sometimes putting them on paper even.. but scrapping them to go with the flow has become a pretty regular way of life now. And I’m pretty much ok with that now.
Not that it would matter, mind you…
Or.. more likely, I have this great meal planned out in my mind, I start to get things out to prepare it.. and find that I’m missing one (or more) of the ingredients because either someone has eaten it without telling me, used the last of it and not let me know to put it on the list, or as more the norm.. I’ve just forgotten to get it.
And…
With teens, meals are not as easy as when they are little and you can tell them “that’s all we have”.
No.. now it’s, “MOM! What’s for dinner?… oh yuck! Why that?” and they go fix a bowl of ramen noodles or (my favorite) just slam the door and sulk that “nobody cares if I starve cuz all you want to feed me is gross stuff.”
Luckily, she’ll be able to drive soon, and Sonic, McD’s, and Taco Bell are just a couple miles away…

usethatbabysittingmoney

letitgo #recoveringcontrolfreak #moreimportantthings

Last updated July 12, 2015