dinner

I Found It!!

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After twenty-seven years of marriage, I finally decided that being the ideal European wife (born in Canada) to my European counterpart husband (also born in Canada), was no longer a feasible option in my life. My role as the European stay at home wife / mother didn’t really apply since I HAVE A FULL TIME JOB. It was time for change and I was not backing down. Communication. Open and honest communication is what was needed. Right?

I will provide an instant replay of our conversation:

ME: I think you can start making dinner on days when you aren’t working. (We Europeans don’t call it supper).

HIM: Fine…fine…fine. I will quit my job and then I can make dinner every night.

ME: Uh…that’s not how it works. I have a full time job AND I make dinner every night.

HIM:

ME: You aren’t working tomorrow. I have a fantastic recipe here for beef ribs. They are slow cooked in the oven. Follow the recipe. Make a side of potatoes or rice or whatever else you feel like making.

HIM: Sure. No problem. I can do that. #snarky

ME: #doubtful

Fast forward to next day

(cell phone rings) It’s my husband. I look anxiously at my watch. I have my weekly group meeting at 10am and he is calling me at 9:52am? Do I have time to answer? #regret

ME: Hello?

HIM: Ok, I was going over the recipe you gave. I have to get these ribs in the oven by 10 o’clock a.m. so we have eight minutes.

ME: (loud and almost symphonic sound of “Carmina Burana”)

HIM: Hello?

ME: I have my meeting in 8 minutes. What’s up?

HIM: Ok, so the recipe says I need barbecue sauce.

ME: Ok.

HIM: Where is the barbecue sauce?

ME: It’s in the fridge. On the door. Right side. Round bottle. Black lid.

HIM: I don’t see it.

ME: It’s there. On the door. Bottom shelf or one shelf up.

HIM: I don’t see it. pause. Oh, wait. Nope, that says “pickles”.

ME: (hangs up. It is 9:54am. Makes FaceTime call.)

HIM: (answers FaceTime call) – Why did you hang up on me?

ME: I don’t have time for this! I have a meeting at 10am!

HIM: Don’t yell at me. I have to get these ribs…

ME: (Rudely interrupting him) Let me see the shelf!

HIM: What? (looking at me intently)

ME: Turn your phone around so I can see the fridge door!

HIM: How do I do that?

ME: Don’t worry about the flip part, just physically turn your phone around so I can see the fridge. Put your phone on speaker.

HIM: (put phone on speaker): Can you hear me?

ME: (time: 9:55) YES! Move the phone down.

HIM: (picks up a jar) – this has a black lid…

ME: Those are olives. It says olives!

HIM: Yeah. That’s not barbecue sauce.

ME: (eyes roll so loudly it sounds like bowling balls). MOVE YOUR PHONE DOWN!!

HIM: Don’t yell at me!

ME: THERE!!! Right there! That black lid!!!

HIM: That’s mayonnaise! (pointing to the super white squeeze bottle)

ME: NOOOOO! Right beside it!

HIM: (finally picks up the right bottle) That’s not barbecue sauce. It says Stubb’s….(pause). Oh…(more reading). Ah… there it is. Bar-B-Que sauce.

ME: deep breathing to restore calmness. Also observing my colleagues with fists in mouths and bent over laughing. Then I hear this whispered from the gang: “THIS SHOULD BE A TIK TOK VIDEO!” (Back to spouse): Ok, so you’re good?

HIM: Yes.

ME: (exhales)

HIM: No….wait. Recipe says we need smoked salt. We don’t have that.

ME: Yes we do. (#IDIOT! why did I tell the truth?). If you look in the pantry you will see a cylindrical container with a black lid. (oh noooooooooo…..black lid! Just like the barbecue sauce fiasco). It’s in the pantry that is to the left of the fridge. Second pull out drawer from the bottom or third one from the top. It’s stuck so don’t try to pull it out! There is an olive oil bottle and vegetable oil bottle in there and it should be behind those.

HIM: (Bends down [he is 6’4″ after all] and pulls out a cylindrical container with a black lid. (reading, slowly annunciating) Faaaaaaaaarm Boooooooy – Himaaaaaalaaaaayaaaaaan Piiiiiiink Salt.

ME: You’re close! It is the exact same container but the label will say “Smoked Salt”. (me looking at watch). It’s 9:58. I gotta go. Text me when you’ve found it. (disconnect)

Now that my phone conversation has dramatically ended, I can now focus on the raucous laughter that has been playing in the background of my ever-so-urgent conversation with my husband.

One minute until meeting time so we rush to share in this quasi-dysfunctional experience of my life.

RANDOM COMMENTS:

  • OMG! That is a Tik-Tok video. (raucous laughter)
  • You should have a podcast! That’s hilarious!
  • Does he do this all the time ?
  • Put him on speaker next time !

BING! 10:00am – meeting time

Earbuds in. Click on join meeting. Good to go.

I am 10 minutes into the meeting when I hear the PING or my personal phone. It’s a text message from my significant other. I quickly grab my cell phone worried about what new life dilemma has occurred only to find a photo of the ever elusive smoked salt and an upbeat comment of “found it”. Life goes on.

Please note that although this particular spice drawer is locked in place the items on it live in a drawer that is 2 feet by 2 feet. Not a lot of space that needs to covered, yet it took my humble hubby 12 minutes to discover the special container.

I am sure there are some who will believe that my glorious husband went above and beyond his call of duty to ensure that we had the most exotic and flavourful meal. He followed that recipe as if it was a treasure map and would not be dissuaded from finding all the necessary ingredients.

And I would like to thank Mark Bland and his Helpdesk for Men. This is what my day felt like. https://www.tiktok.com/@mark_bland/video/7261624424481393966?lang=en

@mark_bland

Wait time is currently 3 hours… #marriagehumor #marriedlife #marriagecomedy #married #wivesoftiktok #husbandsoftiktok

♬ original sound – Mark Bland

What’s For Supper?

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Remember me? I am the one who is constantly thinking of food. A trip to the grocery store is torturous for some, yet I relish in wandering the aisles and seeing what’s new on the food scene. This will eventually lead to me googling recipes that will include my new ingredient. This is my happy place. My world of wonder. That is, until my husband, Wiseguy, calls me at 10am at work and asks, “What’s for supper?” I am not sure what sort of trigger that phrase is for me, but my heart starts palpitating, my blood pressure goes up, and I feel like She Hulk ready to SMASH! I will try and explain.

We have been married for almost three decades (I could have said twenty-seven years, but decades definitely makes it sound longer). The first few years were filled with my desire to create a loving home with delicious home cooked meals. Growing up in a European household, with a stay at home mom, did not provide me with the fortuitous education of any culinary skills. Even when asked to assist my maternal unit, it was to circularly stir something in a pot and I, apparently, did it wrong every time. So, learning to cook for my new husband and stepchildren was at the top of the To Do list. It went so well! Kind of.

Wiseguy actually could cook. So imagine when, I meticulously imitated my mother’s way of making sunnyside up eggs. I poured an inch of oil into the pan, turned the heat on high, cracked the egg over the pan and was immediately assaulted with hot spits of oil upon my person. OUCH! My husband came over to assess the situation and asked two very good questions:

  1. Why did you pour all that oil in?
  2. You do know there is a dial on the stove so you can put the temperature higher or lower?

Hmmmm, lessons learned. For eggs I started using a pat of butter, and most of my cooking was now done on lower heat. That fixed the breakfast portion of my culinary life.

Supper. At my childhood home it was always called dinner. Apparently, the term dinner is for fancy meals. Regular, everyday persons, call it supper, but I digress. My first attempt at roast beef was extraordinary! It was sooooooo good! The pizza, that is. My beef was hard as a rock and you could easily shingle a roof with it. Lesson learned. I would not make roast beef again for another twenty years. Now that’s trauma for you.

Fast forward to today. The children are grown and living on their own. When special occasions occur, I will still go out of my way to make the most wonderful food and spoil my loved ones. With life encompassing just me and my Wiseguy, I have sort of become disinterested and fatigued in the daily need to create creative meals. It appears that after decades of blissful marriage, the only thing left to discuss is: “What’s for supper?” Everyday. And then you die. Right? Does anyone else feel that way?

Again, being brought up in the European standards, we don’t get the luxury of, say, having a bowl of cereal for dinner. That is not an option. The European ethos states: For all dinners (American translation: supper) thou shalt char meat, accompanied by a hot carbohydrate (potatoes / pasta) or rice. Thou shalt attempt to have vegetables of the green variety, cruciferous, if desired by your husband. If not skip the veg and enjoy your meal. Done. My favorite meal if my husband isn’t home? I grab a slice of salami, layer a slice of cheese upon it, and add a pickle. Roll it up. Eat it. Dinner done and there is no clean up! But noooooooo…we are recreating the lives of our ancestors on a nightly basis.

I believe that my creative juices for cooking have gone to the wayside. I have fried, boiled, broiled, grilled, baked for almost thirty years. Add to that working forty five hours a week and then coming home, not to relax after a long day, but to happily prepare a delicious meal in forty-five minutes. (Truth be told, it takes an hour. Still working on that ultimate time goal.) Saturdays used to be my happy-go-hunting day for exciting new foodstuff or newly introduced condiments, to be prepped and ready to surprise my Wiseguy with an exhilarating and adventurous new recipe. Now I prefer to step outside our front door and enjoy life outside the home which would include restaurant lunch dates where SOMEONE ELSE does the cooking for me. No planning. No cooking. No clean up.

Maybe, I’m just in a stagnant cooking funk. This might miraculously lift soon and I’ll be back to pouring over cook books and searching out new meal ideas and then BAM! Back to being gloriously excited about meal making again.

It’s 10:00am. My cell phone will be ringing soon. Oh, there it goes. Hubby is calling me. Wonder what he’s going to ask?

Us

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Us seems to be a very short title, but I believe that sometimes less words are more integral in describing a thought than a run on sentence  full of adjectives, adverbs, nouns, verbs…and nothingness. This two letter word is so full of meaning and definition. It is a concept and way of life that I am finally beginning to fully understand.

We begin our lives as wonderful, dependent, little bundles of cuteness. Some babies are born into loving families. Others are born into dysfunctional families. In the end, there is a beginning. We emerge and grow and learn. Some lessons are taught to us and others we discover on our own. Life lessons. The world is our educator. In most cases we are taught to find our perfect soul mate so that we can live happily ever after.

Poor girls, we try so hard to find Prince Charming everywhere we look.  We can overlook the flaws in order to have someone to hold us and take care of us. Right? Heck no. Nowadays we want the handsome Prince, but he had better know how to wash dishes and do laundry and make  dinner. We are very busy women folk. Not to mention adding child  bearing and raising that child. Who’s going to do all that?

Fast forward in life…career woman,  make dinner, make lunches, attend meetings, get stuck in traffic, driving children to and from school and after school?  Dance or karate or baseball or soccer.  Grocery shopping, clothes shopping.  Hang out with significant other. Who? Oh yeah,  I remember you.

I remember when we used to jump into the two door sedan and just go driving. (Can’t do that now because gas prices are so crazy and we  have a mini van not a cool sporty vehicle). Remember when we would go out for dinner and just talk about nothing. (Dinner out now means going out when we get a coupon in the mail and then talking about bill payments or house renovations). Remember when it was just the two of us? Us.

I remember the early dating days. Money? We were lucky if we had 40.00 between the two of us. We would talk for hours. We would write little notes and letters to each other. There was no texting or e-mails.  It was pen to paper and it was beautiful and thoughtful.  Little things were monumental. A cup of coffee, ready-made, and nice and hot when I woke up. Sitting around on the balcony of our rented apartment and just enjoying the view.  Beautiful.  Calm. Quiet. Some music playing softly in the background.  Bliss.  Us.

Us then became extended us. Children and elder family. Family obligations. Us went from having no furniture to an apartment overflowing with stuff. Suddenly Us took a back seat. Everyone and everything else was more important. Keeping children happy was number one. There were bills to pay and items to purchase. There were future houses and mortgages. New / used cars to be purchased as old ones fell apart.  Schooling and weddings and grandchildren. Work became the most  important thing because money is needed to pay for everything. We were ships in the night….literally…since we ended up working different times of the day. What happened to Us? We talked about date night and once a year, for our anniversary, we could count on that, but otherwise, Us became a non-existent thing…until tonight.

Tonight was special. Tonight you created magic. You decided to cook up a beautiful meal. I came home and did not have to prep anything.  We sat around and talked. Not about bills. Not about renovations.  Not about anything that adults would deem important. We talked about the sky and the perfect weather. We talked about your shopping spree at the grocery store and how meticulous you were in picking what you thought I would enjoy most for dinner. I was your primary concern and nothing else mattered. I want you to know how much I appreciated that and love you for it. My meal was excellent. The flavours were invigorating and the company was my favourite part. We sat outside. Just Us. The two of Us.  I realized more than ever tonight that in the end, we are in the “Us” part of our lives. The children are grown and living their own lives.  Taking care of elders is no longer part of our responsibility. All we are left with is Us.  You and me, as was before, but newly modified.  Husband and wife, grandparents, friends and lovers.  Another new exciting stage of our lives.

I love you, my other half of “Us”. Thank you for making tonight a special time and a special memory for me. I enjoy being able to date you again. The serenity and peacefulness. The non-drudgery of everyday life.  The laughter (including piggy snorts…my specialty).  You refocused my perspective and helped me don my rose-coloured glasses that I had misplaced.  Living in the pink is a pretty nice place to be.

Living the Life

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Well, I am so sorry for disappointing my regular blog followers.  Life has been quite invigorating for me lately.  Finding time to sit down and put my thoughts into words and into a newly entertaining blog, became quite a challenge.  I had to take my pick of what I should do.  Should I spend lots of time with The Princess and Little Kennie or write my blog?  Should I visit my niece in her new house and break bread with her or strap myself to my laptop?  Should I hang out with my visiting family from out-of-town, or should I hide away and start madly typing away?  Don’t get me wrong.  I love blogging, but sometimes real life escapes us because we are busy connecting with “web” people instead of spending time with those people who are around us.

So, last week, I referred to every day as a write-off, but in reality, it was only a vacation away from my trusty laptop.  It sat there, resting and charging everyday, while I was playing tag with Little Kennie and hanging out with The Princess.  Its little charge light was blinking away while I was in absentia visiting Monkey Breath at her new home.  (hmmm, maybe one day I shall rename her, but some nicknames just have to follow you through life.  Bwahaha!)  Upon return from my day trip, I joined my visiting family from Ottawa.  We sat outside, beads of sweat dripping from our faces, as we joked and laughed into the night.  My laptop?  It was not to be seen in my hands.

Don’t get my wrong, I typed little notes into my iPhone of incredible ideas for future tales.  Although socializing is great fun, my A.D.D. brain just seems to run its own course when there is a pause in conversation or when someone brings up a situation that just gets my mind off and running to that “writer’s idea” brain of mine.  I love to write.  I love to share tales.  At night, when I went exhausted to bed, my mind would still motor on with ideas, but my energy level would not let me stay up to type up these ingenious thoughts.

The next day I did feel guilty about not writing.  My body, however, was grateful that I got my eight hours sleep.  I would like to be able to get only 6 hours sleep and function like my normal self.  Sadly, this is not to be.  I have learned that I need to trust what my body is telling me.  If I miss that one hour that brings me to the magic 8 hour number, then quite a rebellion goes on.  The Yawn Monster just won’t leave me alone.  Just as the Red Eye Itch Developer goes to work basically blinding me with burning eyeballs. (Yes, I am a Drama Queen in case you hadn’t noticed already).

So, here I sit, all rejuvenated and happily clicking my keyboard keys with my thoughts of the day.  I am really enjoying spending all this time with family and friends.  I have even booked a dinner date with my cousins for a hang out night.  Very exciting!  I shall be traveling to a celebration this weekend.  I have a dinner date at a chinese restaurant tonight with my aunt and The Princess and Little Kennie.  I have an out-of-town lunch and shopping date with The Artist and her visiting sister.  How exciting can my life get?

So many people to joke with.  So many people to share stories with.  So many people who make me realize how great my life is and how much I am grateful to have them all in my life.  I am honoured that they are willing to spend their precious time with me as well.  I love them all.  I appreciate them all.  I wouldn’t change my busy lifestyle right now for anything in the world.  I also really value those who read my crazy thoughts and check daily to see what insane new thing I shall be writing about.  Thank you so much. 

If, however, you find that there might be nothing new posted…have no fear.  I shall return to type another day!  

I think I shall find a way to create a visual message on my blog…sort of like an answering machine.  It would say something like:  You have reached Maryann’s Life.  I am not here right now.  Please feel free to peruse past posts.  I shall return to entertain you another day.  www.Maryannslife.com  is out living Maryann’s life.  I hope you are going out and enjoying your life too.  ♥