What's for dinner?

I know I bitch a lot about how hard it is to work all damn day, rush home to spend time with my family, maintain a clean house and still feel like I have time for myself--I'm not apologizing for adding to the whining here. Although I hate that my house looks like wolves have torn through it ripping apart well-organized bins of toys and leaving bits of chewed up food all over my kitchen floor before grinding it in with their heels, our home's constant state of dishevelment doesn't bother me nearly as much as the great struggle that is dinner. When Nate and I lived alone, we didn't have to think about dinner at all (or at least nearly as much as we do now). We could spend all night cooking a fantastic four course meal, eat at 10 and not do the dishes for a week. We could eat potato chips and ice cream if we wanted or just bread or just peas. Better yet, if we didn't want to deal with it, we didn't have to eat at all.

But dinner now that we are providing a home for a growing toddler is frankly a pain in the ass that seems to require four or five phone calls between us a day, seemingly endless trips to the grocery store (I should have my own parking place by now) and strange experimentation to find meals that are easy and quick to make and provide a pretty balanced variety of veggies, proteins, tastes, etc. without having so many ingredients that I spend time whirling around the kitchen saying stupid things like, "Now where is that smoked paprika again? I can only seem to find the sweet" instead of playing with darling C or at least making sure she doesn't cause herself major head trauma by standing up on the sit-n-spin. Again.

About a week ago I had a total meltdown at Nate when he called to ask me what I wanted for dinner. I know this sounds crazy because I listen to so many women at work bitch about how their husbands don't cook. Mine does, and he's more than willing to when I ask (though I still somehow end up doing more of it which is either my inner control freak, some gender preprogramming we can't seem to shake or my inability to ask for help when I need it), for which I know I should be grateful. But maybe what irks me is that I have to ask. Or, if he takes the initiative, I still have to answer a 20-question survey on what I feel like eating and what else he can get for the girl. Yes, I know this is very considerate and I'm a world class bitch for complaining about it (he's just trying to make me happy, right?), but what I really want on the nights Nate cooks is to not think about it AT ALL. I don't want to plan the shopping list, think about what pan to use or how to modify it for toddler tastes. I don't want to tell him which I like better or what I've been craving because really all I want is to not think about food and still have it appear. He could make tripe with sour cream for all I care, as long as I don't have to think about it or discuss it before it magically appears in front of me.

The upshot of my meltdown (once the smoke cleared and Nate saw I maybe had a point) is that we're working on a system to divide household labor in a way that is fair and equal. We're not doing this because one of us is bad at pulling his or her weight. On the contrary, I think we both pull more than our weight most of the time in order to keep up with the ebb and flow of parent energy. We run into problems, though, when we're both ebbing (or is it flowing?) and neither of us wants to pull any weight. When that happens on the same day we end up eating lord-knows-what for dinner, secretly tabulating how much more work we do than the other and glowering at each other while trying to get C to stop throwing the food over her high chair. It's not pretty. But neither are the conversations on the need to divide labor better because Nate feels like we're only talking about it because he isn't doing something right. Talk about frustration! The way I see it we need a system because my only everyday parenting role model was my mom--a single working woman who brought home the bacon and fried it up in a pan. I have a serious need to be able to do everything and I feel guilty about asking for help. We clearly both have issues.

I feel like a system, a division of labor with clear expectations, will really help us navigate the nights when we're just too tired to think about anything but lying on the couch and watching shitty TV. I hate to say it because I loathe this much forethought and organization (next we'll be scheduling sex), but I was briefly considering a chart or calendar to help us keep straight whose turn it is to do what. This way someone will know that even if she wants to eat peanut butter out of the jar and call it a night she can't because it's her turn and no one else's to think about, shop and plan for dinner. And do laundry. It sounded OK in theory, but we just couldn't figure out a system to equally divide the seven nights of a week--if we go on a routine (every Monday and Wednesday = me, Tuesday and Thursday = Nate) it seems too structured (will I ever get to spontaneously eat with a friend on a Wednesday?). If we flip-flop every other day, no one really gets a break.

Calling Donna Reed! We need a housewife, someone who will wear an apron and vaccuum and pack lunches and bake cookies and make dinner and change the sheets more than once a month (who am I kidding?) and have dinner in the oven when we come home and organize our bookshelves and pay our bills and file our mail and dust, yes, dust and have perfect hair all the time.

But seeing as we can't afford a polygamous lifestyle (or at least a housekeeper), we're going to settle on switching weeks. One week Nate will be Donna Reed (apron and all), doing all shopping, meal planning and cooking and even laundry, and the next I will take over. We have agreed this will work and are anxious to put our plan in motion and talk about it pompously at dinner parties when our friends ask "How do you do it all?" The only problem so far is that we haven't had actual time to sit down and say "Ready? Go!" to get the ball rolling. This means that dinner this week (up until tonight and Nate's fabulous chicken soup, that is) has bordered on the fend-for-yourself potluck side, not the healthiest for a child. I feel like I discovered a whole new universe last night when I decided we should have pancakes for dinner. It alwasy seemed like such a treat when we would get this as children, but as an adult I now see that pancakes for dinner is what you do when you need something easy, fast and predictable so your kids will just shut up and eat while you try to shake the cobwebs from your brain.