With the new job, my husband will work full time a normal office schedule an hour away and until the end of the college semester he will be taking a PhD class, teaching online and doing his graduate assistant work. I also am committed to my job at this time. This means that in order to make the home run properly, we will have to all get up at about the same time and I have to get the kiddo ready for school while my husband leaves for work, I will have to drive her to before school daycare, go to work, pick her up at after school daycare, make dinner (thankfully we will be getting a programmable crockpot any day now in the mail from Amazon!) and clean the house. On weekends, I will have to do the groceries and any extra cleaning in the morning so we can try to have a bit of family time if my husband's homework load allows.
Knowing this would be a big change for us and a big burden on me, I planned ahead. My husband doesn't like to drive and we both hate it when we get into one of the vehicles and the other person left it without gas. I have been driving the car (that I hate) because it is better on gas mileage unless weather has been poor and my husband has been driving the new truck we just bought to replace my old vehicle but we will be switching out our to his driving further, so I made sure he had a full tank of gas, washed the car, vacuumed it out, and cleaned the inside. I made sure all the laundry in the house was done, we bought him some new clothes that I ironed tonight before making dinner. I got some healthier food at the grocery store so we can eat more wholesome meals and so he had enough food to bring on lunches, made him some Copycat Olive Garden Chicken Gnocchi soup, and decided to be adventurous for dinner tonight and do a cheese tortellini that I could make into soup later with the leftovers.
The tortellini turned out horrible! I made a huge mess in the kitchen and it was just awful!
Now, normally, my husband would get upset if dinner was really bad (I am not a bad cook but sometimes recipes go terribly wrong). Normally, he would pout and huff and puff. But lately we have been really working on our relationship and when the tortellini turned out awful, he not only tried everything to make it work, but he just heated up something else for himself instead of even asking me to. He hugged me and thanked me for my hard work, and even offered to help me clean up the disaster I made in the kitchen.
Although the food was bad and I felt awful, I really felt a connection with my husband. In the past, I would have felt awful about it turning out bad, he would have acted like a child, I would have been angry at this and it would have soured our night. But because he just thanked me for trying and hugged me offering to help me, I felt like all I had done for him to help prepare us for this new life change was appreciated.
A month ago we were on the verge of divorce. For almost nine years, I have felt unappreciated, like my love was taken for granted, like I was just a warm body. I spent hours upon hours arguing with him over the years about how I felt and I never felt any resolve. But when we had a large blow out one night recently, he was quiet, I said my piece and he simply replied "you're right." To which I told him that I felt like this was the first time in nine years he had ever really heard me, and he replied that it probably was.
To many people, the above plate is just a plate full of really awful looking cheese tortellini, too big, over stuffed, folded incorrectly, made with whole wheat flour instead of white flour, too thick (no thanks to the pasta maker my husband got me for Christmas). But to me, it's a life change. It's a symbol that even though we are going through rough times, even though we are going to have to face some challenges in our family to make things better for us, to get ahead; we are going to be okay and in fact, we will be stronger because of it.
Thank you, cheese tortellini! Here's the recipe if anyone is interested! http://culinaryginger.com/cheese-tortellini/
Oh, and by the way, the soup turned out great though!
http://www.food.com/recipe/olive-garden-style-chicken-and-gnocchi-soup-348802
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