Men are like puppies

I've got to tell you about last night. Specifically, about Mike making dinner last night.

Let's stop the post right here: Mike made dinner last night! Cue the fireworks and the band! He was so proud of himself! He even washed a pot or two!

So...you know how when you're house training a dog, the goal is just to get them to go on the paper? You praise, you give treats, you love on the dog for going on the paper. Then, one day, the puppy goes on the paper... but you'd really been planning on reading that paper? But you can't be mad at the puppy, or else you'll ruin all the good training you'd done so far?

Yeah, last night was kind of like that.

What you may or may not know about me is that I generally (read: 99 percent of the time) am in charge of dinner at our house. But I also have a full-time job, and I'm really serious about my exercise. So when I get home from work, I want to work out. That doesn't leave much time for dinner-making.

That means I spend a few hours on Sunday prepping for dinners for Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. This Sunday, I spent some time planning out dinners for the next few nights, including buying all the ingredients I'd need, and prepping as much as I could ahead of time.


For Monday, I had cut up some chicken breast into bite-sized pieces, made a sweet and sour sauce, diced fresh ginger and garlic, set aside some peanuts and cleaned Bibb lettuce. Planned for Monday: lettuce wraps. Nothing too exciting, but quick to throw together (with all the prep done), and pretty light.


Got home from work Monday, and ran right to Curves. Left a note (we had driven separately) that dinner would be a 6:30 p.m.


I walked into the house a few minutes after 6, and could smell tacos. Mike shouted from the kitchen: "dinner!"


As I walked up the stairs, he says, "I felt like tacos tonight (side note: he wasn't that into the fajitas Sunday night. If it doesn't have Ortega taco seasoning, he doesn't consider it Tex-Mex.). You weren't planning on using that cut-up chicken for anything, were you?"


I did my best with excitement. I ate the tacos (and they were delicious). I didn't worry about the other ingredients I had prepped, and what that did to the rest of the week's planning (okay, I worried a little. But I tried really hard to keep that to myself.)


I hope I did a good job with my excitement. I really, really, would like him to make dinner again. Just, not when I was planning on reading the paper.