The Reluctant Grownup

Saturday Morning Meal Planning

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Cinnamon muffins are baking, sausage is frying, I’m about to make scrambled eggs with green pepper and cheddar for the Prof and me (our children do NOT eat eggs, except Craig on occasion). A cold front moved through and it’s borderline chilly here – we have a window open and are snuggled under blankets. It is so delightful.

This past week I had an insanely productive and good work day on Monday and Thursday – I got up at 7 and started work immediately, and even though I had to stop here and there for kid assistance I made it through largely to 5 without interruption. On Tuesday and Wednesday, by contrast, I got absolutely nothing done beyond managing child emotions and distance learning. Craig in particular has had a hard week, bursting into tears with regularity, and has needed me to put everything else down and just talk him through it, whatever “it” happened to be then. So goes the see-saw of life right now. It is so unpredictable, what I can get done. I am trying to float along and deep breathe through it. I live in fear of dropping some ball, especially as I pile on more and more cases, but so far so good. I presume. Although I guess I wouldn’t know yet. *shudder

On Friday I had high hopes to get through more work stuff, but billed only ONE HOUR. Unlike Tues and Wed, it was a productive day otherwise – I just had no billing to show for it. I got up at the crack of dawn and gave our local WalMart a try, to see if they had more meat than our other grocery options, and boy did they. I bought tons of bulk meats and then came home and split it all up into 1 pound servings before freezing, and it took HOURS. I was Little House on the Prairie, laying in provisions, hanging the salt pork and burying the apples in the barn (except I was portioning out five chicken thighs wrapped in wax paper into Ziplock bags to put in my freezer – which felt only slightly less labor intensive). Friday afternoon I had to drive into the office and move my personal items into storage, as the firm is using the shut down period as a good opportunity to do some needed construction in there. After that, I had a firm happy hour at 4. And so there was THAT day gone. I drank G&Ts (heavy on the T, light on the G) and folded all the clothes that had been piling up while watching mystery shows, then played Candy Crush and decompressed. It was a good Friday night.

This week we also managed to squeeze in a Nerf battle at home. We have gone through various phases with these children over the years and right now we are in a Nerf/Fortnite/Minecraft phase, for sure. Jack received four more Nerf guns for his birthday, and bought yet another with his birthday money, so now he has approximately nine thousand dollars worth of Nerf guns in a pile on his floor. (The funny thing is he loves the giant, complicated, multi-shot ones but really the cheap tiny ones shoot the best, as I have learned through these repeated Nerf battles.) On Thursday – my productive day – they begged us all day to join them in a giant family Nerf fight. At 3pm we finally agreed that we would quit working at 4:45 and join if they’d let us work til then. So from 3:00 until 4:45, they hung around us both and asked us what time it was every three minutes or so, and also asked us to vote on teams and what we wanted for armor and which order we should play the various Nerf battle games in, and basically the only reason I was able to continue working through their constant chatter is because after 12 years of mothering I am a Master at tuning them out. It was cute, though – I know the days of Jack in particular begging us to play Nerf with him are dwindling.

4:45 finally came. Prof/Jack/Craig were a team, and Liam and I were a team. I put on a big puffy sweatshirt with front pockets (for bullets), and stuffed it with some of the air-filled plastic shipping things from all our amazon shipments. We played king of the mountain and also capture the flag, and I don’t know why but there’s something extremely satisfying about catching your spouse by surprise with a Nerf bullet to the chest and hearing him yelp, giggle, and turn tail and run. (He got in plenty of shots also – I think perhaps more marriages would survive if they made lots of opportunities to shoot each other with foam bullets). (The air bubble padding was helpful but man did I get hot in all that getup.)

  • Prof calls me “Grimace” when I wear this
  • Stay puft
  • The rounds
  • DO U FEEL LUCKY, PUNK? DO YA?
  • Eat Nerf, kid

We also set up a tent at some point. What day? Don’t ask me. They never slept in it bc they wouldn’t sleep in there without me and I just couldn’t do it, guys. Mostly bc of crime anxiety – I mean we live in a city that regularly has the most gun deaths in the country, and I would never walk outside at 2am so I felt weird about sleeping outside at 2am. But they sat in there and did work in there and it was something to do – putting it up. Taking it down. Setting up their Nerf bunkers around it. At one point during the tent construction, I took a break in a chair we keep in the corner of the fence, and through the gaps in the boards saw a tiny neon green lizard, sitting on a fern. He was the size of my pinky finger. The pictures below don’t do justice to how charming and magical that little view was – a perfect little jewel box of greens, still and hidden.

The boys also created a “coliseum” for Rex, our bearded dragon. They dropped mealworms through the chute, and let Rex “battle” them like gladiators. I didn’t even know they knew what a coliseum and gladiators were. They are so creative, and their creativity pretty much always involves battles and weapons. Yesterday they were having “fights” with my spatulas and using my yoga ball as a shield. Last night while I was trying to decompress with Candy Crush, Jack kept asking me what armor I wanted him to make for me out of cardboard – helmet or a chest plate? I was like – armor? What for? Why do I need – oh forget it, who knows, just make me a chest plate.

Anyway, life continues. We have lovely moments and low moments, like always. We won’t be opening up the state for a few more weeks yet, but we’re all nervous about what that will look like. It’s pretty certain that the boys will be going to zero summer camps this summer, which will save us unfathomable amounts of $$$ but will also be interesting to manage. But, manage we must and manage we shall.

They love being close to me, and I love not being touched in my sleep, so it’s a challenge.

Anyway, onto the meal planning portion of this! Last week we enjoyed some delicious meals – I continue to find new stuff all the time and usually still like making it (some days, though . . . some days all I can think about is how Henry David Thoreau went to that remote cabin on Walden Pond and wrote brilliant things while his female family members brought him meals and did his laundry for him.)

  • Sunday: Leftover lasagna and salad made from the last of our lettuce. Alas, it has bolted, and I’m told that’s sort of it for the lettuce harvest. Today I’ll pull out the plants and have the boys put in some wildflower seeds.
  • Monday: Instant pot pork shoulder steaks. These pork shoulder steaks were $1 apiece, huge, and came out DELICIOUS. I tried to make the potatoes in with the pork like the recipe calls for – I had some frozen already-peeled-and-sliced potatoes and I let them defrost a little, then threw them in. They came out STILL FROZEN somehow, so I quickly sauteed them in a frying pan and then threw them under a broiler with some cheese and a little cream. They came out fine but I was sweating it for a sec there.
  • Tuesday:Beef enchiladas, beans and rice, and astonishingly good homemade margaritas thank you husband. I actually tried to support local restaurants and order out for Cinco de Mayo, but I guess everyone in New Orleans had the same idea so even though I called at 3:30, all the lines were busy and all online ordering was locked out. After briefly pouting, I sent the Prof out to get triple sec to make me a “real” margarita (none of that margarita mix nonsense), and put together some beef enchiladas and really turned it around, if I say so myself.
  • Wednesday: Vegetable barley soup and crusty bread. This needs more seasoning – next time I make it I’ll put something else in there, but it was good and the barley was yum.
  • Thursday: BBQ chicken thighs and green beans. TBH I could have eaten this even without the BBQ sauce, that spice mix was just perfect.
  • Friday: Frozen pizzas
  • Enchiladas
  • Happy Cinco de Mayo!
  • Hand for scale – it was a normal sized glass I promise!

This coming week, I’ve got more new stuff to try. Our fridge and freezer really are stuffed after my WalMart trip, and I have lots of ideas for how to eat it all up! I’m trying to expand our grains and reduce our meat usage, in conformity with my food-supply-chain anxiety, so there are a couple of vegetarian meals this week. We may not have these in the order listed – we’ll break up the veggie and chicken meals – but I’ve fiddled around with this enough today. Now I’m off to go try on my cardboard chest plate armor, and likely get roped into another Nerf battle. Have a lovely Saturday, folks!