Not necessarily

I’m in get ready for fall and a new school year mode big-time.  I’ve been working to clean out every cupboard and cabinet, plan meals for September, and get a loose daily schedule pulled together.  Okay, so I haven’t actually planned any meals yet, but it’s on my list to do this week.  I want to plan three meals a day for every day of September (well, starting after Labor Day) because September is traditionally our most difficult month of the year.  My big problem is that I would rather do most anything, even clean bathrooms,  than plan meals, shop for groceries, or cook those meals.  I do like good food, I just hate to plan for it, and I hate to execute those plans.  I can’t explain it.  I love food and I hate food.  I was raised this way, that food is sort of a necessary evil.  One must eat to live, but my mom fought intensely personal battles with food throughout her life, and while I didn’t inherit her precise struggles, I definitely absorbed some of her negativity.  I share her stress over figuring out what to feed one’s people.  Complicating the matter are seven children.  Some hate beans, some hate chicken, some hate most everything outside of smoothies.

I’m fine with my kids hating what I cook.  I simply get tired of them sharing their feelings with me.  I wonder if I added to my mom’s food woes with my own bad attitude.  She was devoted to frozen mixed vegetables, and I surely hated them with all my being, still do, though I totally get their appeal.  All the colors, and all the ease.  Getting your kids to eat four vegetables at once feels good.  I’m sure I mentioned my negative feelings more than once, because I suspect that I struggled to keep my opinions to myself.  Knowing when to keep silent wasn’t my special childhood talent (nor a hallmark of adult Ginny, though I think I’ve improved).  I have a daughter (guess which one?) who has the same issue.  In fact, last night in an attempt to avoid planning or making dinner, I took a handful of children to the grocery store and fed them from the pizza bar.  Beatrix requested a piece of pizza from the center of the pie because it had the best bubble, and the teenage boy reached awkwardly across to slide the wedge onto his spatula.  He remarked, “If I were smart, I would have turned the pan around.”  Beatrix immediately replied, “Well, I guess you’re not!”  Fortunately, he was amused.

Anyway, I better get planning, because September starts tomorrow.

Things that were not necessarily on my list for this past week:  Dyeing more yarn and starting a new shawl.  These things help me to attack all the less appealing items on the actual list, and for those reasons I view them as important and necessary.

Ravelry notes for the pink shawl here.  Yarn here.  Pattern here.

Also, I seem to love pink and yellow now.  This is new.