Dinnertime

It's not the eating that gets me down, it's the CLEAN-UP and it's the RITUAL of eating.

My best friend (we'll call her BFF) recently told me that when her youngest kid goes off to college next year she's never, EVER cooking dinner again. She's divorced with a long-term, long-distance relationship so when he's not around it'll just be her and when he is around they tend to go out to eat anyway.

Her youngest kid (the one going off to college next year) is much like my husband. They seem to feel this burning need for not just food, not just general sustenance…nope they want DINNERTIME.

They want a MEAL and to sit down and eat that meal.

Us? We want to just make sure we're not hungry when we hit the sack at night.

BFF claims that she'll have tea and toast for dinner every night while standing at the kitchen counter surfing the 'net. I believe her. That's one of her favorite things to do.

Me? I'm a bit fancier (sometimes); I'll actually make an omelet or even a grilled cheese sandwich but whatever it is, I can manage to cobble something together, snarf it down quickly, clean up and be done. That's all I really ask is to make things simple.

I don't mind the occasional dinner with the prep and all that but the EXPECTATION of said dinner by hubby is just BRUTAL (he IS willing to pitch in but THE CLEAN-UP…).

On the other hand, hubby never wants to go out to eat. He won't go on a weekend because it (MIGHT) be crowded and heaven forbid we have to deal with CROWDS. He won't go on a weekday if he worked because he feels icky from having been at work and doesn't want to have to shower and get dressed to go out (he's not exactly a ditchdigger for a living and he wouldn't need to be daisy-fresh for most of the places we'd go anyway) so that pretty much eliminates the entire week. No weekends, no working weekdays. Where does that leave us? Yup, back in the kitchen again.

It occurred to me this past weekend that we haven't set foot in a restaurant since the calendar flipped to a whole new year. Seriously. That sucks.

I get to enjoy dinners out with my girlfriends quite a bit but due to personal scheduling conflicts that hasn't even happened lately.

Taking all this into consideration, BFF and I went out to dinner together on Saturday night at a local place (hubby was working). It was bliss. I could pick whatever I wanted off of a menu, I didn't have to eat the same thing as my dinner companion, I was at a restaurant with a whole MENU to choose from. The best part? No dishes for me to do later on, no stove and counters to wipe down, no dishwasher to fill, run and empty. It was great.

But that was Saturday and Sunday came rolling into view the very next day and with that came the need to make SUNDAY DINNER!

UGH!

I took chicken out to defrost and decided to use up some veggies in the fridge that needed to be eaten or tossed out. As the day wore on I felt less and less like cooking but I knew there were few ways out of it so I had to just soldier on with the dinner thing.

Hubby came home from doing errands and I mentioned that I wasn't really into making anything hoping against hope that he would suggest going out to eat. Nope. The closest we got was the option of ordering something that I would go pick up (really? Why me? I don't wanna even fucking EAT DINNER). I resigned myself to cooking. Let's just get this over with.

Now my first problem is that we have a small work area in our kitchen and hubby wanted to chat while I cooked. That's nice. It's nice to talk to each other in a relationship and we did have a lot to talk about, I wanted to chat as well; but I wanted to chat like normal people meaning he needed to be a safe distance from me and the large knife I was wielding. I was hoping he'd pick up on this fairly obvious thought process and move his ass from standing directly in the way of the stove and refrigerator and go sit at the kitchen butcher block instead, safely out of the way but a convenient chatting distance. Nope. Captain Obvious he ain't.

Now hubby can (at times) be a bit of a delicate little flower so the option of screaming "MOVE YOUR FUCKING ASS OUT OF MY WAY" was not a viable one. I have to speak softly, lovingly and respectfully at all times so as not to end up with a bruised hubby. Of course what I really wanted to do was SCREAM, "MOVE YOUR FUCKING ASS OUT OF MY WAY" because that would've given me much more satisfaction but I squelched that urge and instead said, very politely, "it would be great if you sat at the kitchen table while I make dinner, this way we could chat but you wouldn't be in my way while I cook, okay?" Yeah, not so much. He went upstairs. I swear I was super sweet when I made this little suggestion. Honest I was.

I had to go upstairs and ask him to rejoin me in the kitchen while resisting the urge to say, "look, my interest in cooking this meal is only slightly higher than my interest in ice hockey so if you want to eat any of it tonight you'll get your loving little self back down to the kitchen, plop your ass in a seat and chat away", that would've been rude.

Instead I went this route, "awww honey, I really do want to chat, I just figured it was annoying for YOU to have me reaching around you all the time to get in the fridge and get to the stove". Yup that little leap o' logic seemed to work and he followed me back down the stairs.

Really this whole thing can boggle my mind sometimes.

The remainder was uneventful, we chatted, we laughed, we toasted each other while I cooked and then while we sat side-by-side eating our SUNDAY DINNER.

Once it was over and I was cleaning up (the WORST part of every meal) it occurred to me what I wanted for Valentine's Day, I wanted to go the fuck out to dinner. I even had a specific place in mind; it's a very nice place, old-school ritzy but not overly crazy dresscode or anything; hell when it comes down to it the prices aren't even all that bad (especially if you never go out to eat). Now you may be shaking your head at this point and wanting to point out to me that if hubby won't go out to eat on a weekend due to the random potential of a crowded restaurant then why in the world would I expect him to set foot anywhere near a restaurant (especially a NICE one) for Valentine's Day? Yeah, I decoded that one myself but thanks. My plan was to tell him that we could go any time during the month of February but we had to GO during the month of February. No big deal, no whining just a nice night out.

I looked up from loading the dishwasher and sprung it on him.

"Know what I want for Valentine's Day honey?"

A look of terror crossed his furrowed brow…Valentine's Day was always tough turf.

"ummm, what's that?"

"I'd like to go to <fancy restaurant> SOME TIME in the month of February…NOT on Valentine's Day but some time during the month. I want to be human and go to a restaurant. That's it."

"okay. I'd like to go there again, too, yeah, we can do that."

Now let's see if this actually HAPPENS.

I'm hedging my bets on this one but hope springs eternal from my weathered old soul.