Pity Party & Sabotage

I’m now on day 8 of Belles 100 Day Challenge. I feel amazing but it’s not been all plain sailing.

Friday* nights are hard for me without booze.  Crazy Cat Boy and I traditionally kick off the shoes and zone out with a bottle (who’m I kidding – two bottles), watch crap TV and chat.  The first bottle is gone before dinner giving us a nice buzz and the right air of irresponsibility to crack on with the second, regardless of what Saturday is supposed to look like.

Last Friday I sulked, watered the garden and generally mooched around the house doing random tasks before slinking off to watch TV in a separate room all by myself and have a bit of a pity party… you see Saturday was my birthday and all week CCB had been making references to nice bottles of champagne with me correcting him about my “challenge”.  I think this is the first birthday I’ve done completely sober. I felt sorry for myself but I made it through.

I know CCB loves me but he’s also very good at subconsciously trying to sabotage me.  Saturday he pulled out the verjuice to cook dinner with but then went to the shop and came back with a bottle of white to cook with instead.  Now this was no ordinary we’ll chuck it in the slow cooked lamb wine, it was very nice, local drop that we quite enjoy.  The recipe only calls for 1/2 a cup and once he’d put it back in the fridge (that’s right, he bought a COLD  bottle to “cook” with!  Yeah right.) I deliberately hid it in the very back of the fridge (it’s on the bottom shelf if you are looking for it  😉  ) so it would be out of my line of sight.  That does help me, often if I cant see something I’ll forget it’s there.  I know he was disappointed that I didn’t crack and have a glass, but I’m feeling so much better for it.

I know that I can do this 100 days but I’m sure there’ll be a few more pity parties along the way.

 

*I’m telling myself only 11 more Fridays to go, counting them down helps right???!!

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The Gourmet Creative “Process”

I’m seriously considering commissioning a time and motion study to get to the bottom of this issue. There have to be efficiencies that can be applied to the current processes – Marco Pierre White would lose his mind if he saw Crazy Cat Boy cook!

I’m standing in our kitchen surrounded by an inconceivably large mess that produced a single dinner for two last night.

Stains I don’t recognise spread across the floor (I’m ignoring the larger bits of ‘stuff”, I leave them for the cats to clean up so they aren’t my problem), there are brightly colour dribbles down every cupboard.

Weird spices coat the bits of the bench, sink and cooktop that I can see past the truly staggering number of utensils, plates, chopping boards and saucepans that clutter every available surface.

I don’t understand!  The dishwasher is right there and it’s empty, why not put the dirty stuff in there when you’re done with it?  Every knife has been used; why must he use every knife?

Once clean tea towels are caked with god knows what.  Why is it always the good tea towels that he uses, why not the ratty old ones that I hang right next to them?! Soaking doesn’t work; they never look the same again.

The kicker is that the one who cooks doesn’t clean in our house.  There is no incentive for him to change anything in his creative process.

One of the younger cats jumps lightly up on to a slightly less crowed part of the bench and gives me a look that says “There’s nothing good left up here, I checked last night”.  The older cat licks a random patch of floor hoping for a find, he’ll probably have success judging from the looks of all this.  With a resigned sigh I pull on rubber gloves and start the recovery process….

I really shouldn’t complain.  I do cook, but I don’t enjoy it and he does.   My major contribution to keeping us fed is to suggest that wine might be nice and grabbing the glasses out.  Apart from the colossal mess, the system works for us.