Unpleasant: Feeding My Family

I've been a stay-at-home mom for about eight years (I worked part-time from home for a half year after maternity leave when Jane was a baby, and I'm definitely working from home now). Even so, I still don't have the hang of the homemaker duties. Cleaning definitely is not something I enjoy or excel at. It's never ending, of course, and my piling tendencies and just general I-want-stuff desires makes for clutter. And I just don't have patience to deep clean, although I much prefer a deep cleaned house. I keep up with vacuuming the floors, cleaning bathrooms as best I can and laundry of course. Shawn manages dishes and most kitchen cleanup.

Another awful-to-me chore is cooking. Day after day, coming up with meals that my family will eat and that are somewhat nutritious is grating on me. When Jane was little I was much more thoughtful about varying things, making sure there were veggies on every plate, that fruits were colorful and plentiful. The girls still eat fruit, but they're less keen on vegetables. Rather than dumping things out or doing showdowns I haven't been making them as much, except for whatever Shawn and I might have. We have a few standards -- spaghetti, meatloaf, a chicken casserole -- and fast things like frozen pizza or scrambled eggs with toaster waffles. When Shawn's out of town sandwiches are features for most meals -- girls are happy with toasted cheese or peanut butter and jelly. I eat cereal and just hang on.

Did I ever enjoy meal planning? I don't remember it being so awful and feeling like such a big hole for me. Grocery shopping is also getting me down. I know I could do online shopping now and there are delivery and drive up services that would save time (although not money). It's not the time it takes to shop, although it's been difficult to find the time these last few weekends and I end up using some of my precious girls-in-school time for shopping, meh. It's really the monotony and the fact that I do it and do it again and again and again. Maybe with some new recipes or when the holidays hit and I'm cooking yummy foods I'll feel better about it.

But for now I am feeling very blah and overwhelmed and tired, so this is the word vomit I have for today.