The weirdest thing happened to me tonight.
It was about 6pm. I was still at the office, mostly because I had run across an intriguing Mac problem around 4:30 and didn’t want to let it go (the customer runs on CST, so they weren’t really staying late because of my curiosity). That issue had been dealt with, though, and now I was left, sitting at my desk, not wanting to go home. I blamed inertia; that feeling that getting up, locking up the office, and then going out to the car and heading home to make dinner was entirely too much effort. Staying parked in my chair was effortless. This seems like an easy choice.
However, I was not in a mood to spend money to eat downtown, and you do have to go home eventually, so I found the strength to overcome the inertia and get up and go home. While on my way across the parking lot, I realized something: it wasn’t a desire to stay in one spot that had kept me anchored so firmly, it was the fact that I was going to have to go home and figure out what to do about dinner, and then go about making said dinner. This was not something I wanted to do.
I have never, up until tonight, wished that I could just come home to a ready meal and a waiting significant other. I’ve always considered myself highly self-sufficient, and the fact that I can cook means I’m not doomed to a life of Ramen noodles and macaroni and cheese, delicious as that may be. Yet here I found myself tonight, wishing that I could come home and at least realize that dinner was in progress. The hard decisions of what to have and when to have it and getting it ready were theoretically largely taken care of. This sounded spectacular.
Don’t consider me converted to the notion of finding a housewife. That’s not the case. I blame this mood largely on a failure to plan: I didn’t put together an option or two this weekend that would yield adequate leftovers for the week. A week spent eating ad-hoc can pretty easily generate this dilemma. The lesson from this moment of inertia? Make some friggin’ scalloped potatoes with ham on Sunday for when nights like this strike.
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