The "Fixing Maegan Project" begins.

Several days ago, I was talking to a friend about my ambivalence about having children. As much as I'm looking forward to someday starting our family, I sometimes doubt whether I'm going to be good at the job. Being a full-time mom is, after all, a job - and from what I've heard, it's challenging to do it right. And one of my biggest concerns is whether I'll be able to even do the minimum at home - keep the house clean, get dinner on the table, and be a happy mom.

It's always been a challenge for me to use my time efficiently, and that has become even more difficult since getting married, now that I spend most of my time at home. When I wake up in the morning, the hours of the day stretch on before me and I feel as though I've got all the time in the world. Before I know it, though, it's three in the afternoon and I've managed to push most of my to-do list down to the last two hours before Brian comes home. The most frustrating thing about this is that I know most people would realize they're making this mistake and then would just decide to get everything done in the morning. But I can't seem to get my butt in gear. And so I wonder - am I just going to get worse when kids come along?

So I was voicing these concerns to my friend, whose kids are mostly grown and out of the house and whose life and routine seem very well-organized. "You waste time," she pointed out, "because you have no one to answer to. There's no baby waking up at this time, who needs to nurse at this time, and who needs to nap at this time. You'll see that you'll have to manage your day better just because you know that all that time isn't yours anymore."

"I think I would feel more organized if I could just get a good dinner on the table within a reasonable time after Brian got home," I said. Recently, Brian has been coming home, nine nights out of ten, to me racing around the kitchen trying to come up with something to make for dinner. And more often than not, it's been eggs. What kind of wife am I, I ask myself, when my list of responsibilities is so short and yet I consistently fail to get it done? Even the most basic - dinner - when cooking is supposedly one of my favorite things to do? "Did you always have dinner ready at the same time every night?" I asked her.

She nodded. She explained that her husband was always starving when he came home from work at the same time every day and that it just made sense to feed the family at 6:30. "I just figured out in my head what I was going to make for the week and then I'd shop for those meals. I never wrote out an actual meal plan, but I have friends who do and it works really well for them. I just had the same fifteen meals that I sort of rotated every couple of weeks. It was sort of comforting for there to be a meal that everybody liked."

Several days later, I got a free issue of Cooking Light in the mail. Of all the cooking magazines that I've tried, this one is my favorite. The recipes are creative, affordable, and always spot-on (the ones I've tried, anyway). So last night, I sat down to pick out new recipes to add to my new "Meals We Eat in the Summer" list. A cardboard insert in the magazine caused the pages to flip open to some place in the middle, a beautiful picture of a garden-fresh meal. Over it, in bright yellow type, were the words, "Make a meal plan." I laughed to myself. I guess this is something I just should be doing. I'll let you guys know how it goes.

Meals We Eat in the Summer

Whole chicken on the grill / salad or grilled vegetables

Venison kabobs / grilled vegetables and sweet potatoes

Barbecued chicken thighs / grilled vegetables or salad

Cuban black bean patties with pineapple rice / salad

Salmon cakes with dill yogurt sauce / salad

Chicken caesar salad

Barbecue venison / coleslaw

Stuffed chicken breasts with basil and sun-dried tomatoes / potatoes and broccoli

Chicken breasts with roasted cherry tomato sauce / grilled broccoli or asparagus

Venison steaks with herb butter / grilled vegetables or salad

Pecan-crusted chicken and mandarin orange salad

Omelets with spinach, ham, and mushrooms

Chicken marinara / grilled broccoli

Still in progress...

Things that happened this weekend.

1. I realized we needed some color in our living room, which is currently decorated in several shades of brown, beige, and tan. With highlights of beige and tan. So I bought a few things to hang on the walls, things that might bring in a touch of color.

Well, I found out that Brian’s decorating opinions are very strong. Here’s a conversation that took place yesterday regarding the thing that you can see to the right of that handsome puppy.



Brian: “I hate it. There’s no point to it. It’s ugly.”
Me: “That’s not true! Look, it’s got fall colors and it brings out the colors of our living room. Look – the brown in our couch and the red in the chairs.”
Brian: “It looks like 1970s disco décor.”
Me: “Noooooo. It looks like… like nature. Like I gathered the autumn leaves from the forest and covered them with a river and brought it into our house. It goes perfectly.”
Brian: “No, it definitely does not. It’s ugly. There’s no point. Art should have a point.”
Maegan: “Not necessarily. The point of it is to bring in more color and it does!”
Brian: “Why can’t we put up pictures?”
Maegan: “We don’t have any kids!
Brian: “Put up pictures of Bo! I don’t care!”
Maegan: “I’m not going to be one of those people who puts up pictures of her dog all over the house. I don’t understand what’s wrong with this. It’s pretty!”
Brian: “Not in our house, it’s not.”
Maegan: “What kind of house would it look good in?”
Brian: “Have you ever seen That 70s Show?”

What do you guys think?

2. I tried not to wonder whether I was pregnant. Told myself I didn’t want to be pregnant. Kind of hoped I was pregnant and kept counting my cycle length in my head. Then realized I truly didn’t want to be pregnant, because that would put me at about eight months pregnant for our trip to the Bahamas in February. Began desperately telling Brian that now was really not a good time to be pregnant, that we couldn’t be pregnant until at least after February. Mentally slapped the girl inside my brain who kept talking about how nice it would be to be pregnant. Finally, found out I definitely wasn’t pregnant. Sighed with relief and stuck out my tongue at the girl inside my brain, who was carrying on with her "maybe next month" foolishness.

3. I went shopping with my friend, who dragged me into the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory between stores and insisted that I let her buy me a piece of chocolate. And I loved her!

So I stood in front of the case of chocolates, feeling like a child in a custody battle who had to choose between her parents. Only here, there were fifty different kinds of parents, all equally perfect. But after great deliberation, second-guessing, and consternation, I chose. I chose a piece of thick, crunchy toffee, dipped in milk chocolate and covered in macadamia nuts. Now, I could tell you it was delicious, if "delicious" meant “caused me to understand why crack addicts resort to crime” and “made me fantasize about drugging Brian with sleeping pills, sneaking out in the dead of night, and breaking into the store in order to steal the rest of that toffee". Ohhhh, that toffee. That toffee...

If you can believe it, I restrained myself after eating half of it – it was a big piece – and carefully wrapped the remainder in its wax paper. When I got home, I presented it to Brian as an offering of love, a payment for watching Fireproof with me. I felt like one of the Magi.

So imagine my distress when, this morning, he shrugged when I mentioned it and said, “Meh. It was okay. But I like M&M’s a lot better.”

What a weasel. I am totally going to make him watch Hairspray with me next weekend.