Have you seen those memes on Instagram about what to get your spouse for Christmas/birthday/anniversary? “I’d like to get him the perfect gift, but he already got me.” I thought of this yesterday just after the grocery delivery person showed up and as my phone sat on the counter with the recipe for dinner open on the screen. On Mondays, Lauren goes into the office, which generally leaves me in the position of making dinner. We often have groceries delivered on Tuesday when we are both home so that we both help to put stuff away, but in this case, the dinner required items we didn’t have, so Lauren arranged its delivery when I would be home with the always-willing and ever-helpful Graham whose life motto is “I liked it a lot better when everyone did everything for me.”
I made honey-garlic chicken over basmati rice with stir fry vegetables. I clean as I cook (unlike some unnamed people around here), so the kitchen was more or less back together as I finished. Man, am I a catch or what? That’s right, folks—find a partner who puts groceries away, makes dinner, and cleans up one night a week! The greatest gift I ever gave Lauren was me!
I enjoy cooking, but parts of it give me anxiety. For example, when the recipe calls for honey and we are nearly out of it in the bottle I can find easily in the lazy Susan, I’m stuck wondering whether there is a second bottle buried somewhere in the pantry. Lauren loves nothing better than me struggling to find a challenge item in the abyss of our pantry or the hellscape of our spice cabinet. And when the recipe calls for a tablespoon of soy sauce but we only have a teaspoon left, I’m not sure if I’m supposed to swap in fish sauce or hoisin sauce or dive into said pantry abyss or just make a note that we probably need this in the next grocery order for me to put away by myself. You might say, “Look, Lauren trusts your judgment and most likely she didn’t know that those ingredients would be almost gone because who checks out their honey and their soy sauce almost daily?” but you would be wrong. If I’m suddenly proficient at those things, what does that leave Lauren to do besides work, run our finances, order all the groceries online, do our taxes, pay all our bills, keep up with the pet groomer and vet appointments, help the kids with their FAFSAs, and so forth? Yeah, it’s job security for her for sure.
So you know what I did? After I asked about the honey, I didn’t bother about the soy sauce, and I just made do. And dinner was great, and Lauren even praised it to the Goons who were appropriately appreciative. Deep inside, though, I know she feels threatened. Which is probably why last night, she conned Dobby into sleeping on her side of the bed instead of in the middle of us. Because there’s no greater way to get back at me than to come for the dog.
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