Monday, July 1

[gottawonder]

Today I am grateful for:

It is Canada Day, and I am grateful for being a Canadian.

We had nice weather for it.

Another fairly lazy approach to the day, and I'm fine with that. Soon enough, my Sweetie will maybe be going on a short trip related to work, and soon after that he might be working away from home again. Nice just to have some time to be together without rushing.

When we did go outside, I worked on pulling grass that is now waist high from the area around the compost pile. I try to keep that area tidy, but I've been afraid to mow it because there are so many garter snakes in the compost pile this year. Me pulling the grass is not meant to be like weeding it out, but just to make it lower and more manageable.

I did see LOTS of snakes. I am a blown away that everywhere I looked, there seemed to be another snake on this compost pile. They seem very happy there, and I guess there must be lots for them to eat in our yard, so it's nice to have the opportunity to see them doing peaceful things like sun bathing or just moseying around.

My Sweetie replaced his bike tires (just the tire part, not the whole rim etc) and other bike maintenance.

Our neighbor to the South of our yard came by and offered us some old fence posts that were on the property (they were there when they started renting it, just sitting in a shed) and he's trying to clear out that shed so he can park vehicles in it (aren't we all). My husband got some that might be usable.

Then we went to town.

We had a weird miscommunication about getting groceries that left me a bit frustrated. Before we left the house, I had clearly stated that we needed to get groceries, and my husband was like "I don't think it's going to be open". I looked it up online, and I said "It looks like it will be open, how about we just plan on going for groceries and see how it goes?". He agreed and everything, so I have to assume that he understood the conversation.

We got to town, and I have to admit that I momentarily got side tracked by other discussions of going for a walk, and didn't remember about groceries until we got there. We got into town, and I mentioned something about where he'd like to walk, but then I realized that we didn't have enough time to go for a walk 'AND then go see fireworks, because after the fireworks it would be too late to get to the store.

So, I said "I think we have to go get groceries first, and if we have time slip in a quick walk before the fireworks start". He was all like "What? I wasn't planning on getting any groceries. Why are we getting groceries, I have enough food for my lunches." I had literally talked to him about getting groceries, loud and clear before we left.

WELL, he might have enough food for lunches, but I have been out of all kinds of "my" food for days, because he didn't want to get groceries the last time we were in town either (when we came in to see a movie. He literally shut down my protests, saying he would just get groceries after work, except he DIDN'T get any groceries after work, leaving me without some of "my" essentials.).

So, we did go get groceries, and I got the food I needed, but I was still feeling weird. This happens a lot with my husband, where he thinks somehow that we just never need to get groceries.

I think it's a holdover to how he shops when he is away at work, and only buys a small amount of food at a time because he's usually sharing the refrigerator with two other guys, and space is at a premium, and he also comes home for four days at a time so there's no point leaving excess food to go bad when he's away.

For me, if I have to get groceries, it's not "on the way home from work", it's a special trip to town that takes half an hour, and has to be on a day where I'm not working with River. I have been trying to get groceries on Monday, and I get enough food that we don't run out of anything that week. In fact, if there's a good price, I stock up on staples.

Lately I feel like I've had to struggle with my husband to honor the schedule of me shopping on Monday, and if we miss that day, we struggle all week to have enough staples, then my husband does that thing of trying to buy stuff after work, but if it makes sense, YOU BUY MILK ON MONDAYS so that it's used up by next Monday. If you buy it on Wednesday, it isn't used up by Monday, so you don't buy more milk, but you run out before the next Monday.

My schedule WORKS, and I buy LOTS of food because I don't want to DO IT AGAIN in the same week.

My Sweetie thinks that we should just buy food when we run out, or, DAYS AFTER WE RUN OUT, as long as it isn't HIS food we run out of. It feels like he's undermining me by interfering with me shopping when I say we need food. If I say we need food, I'm not just making things up because I love going to the grocery store. If I say we need food, it's because WE NEED FOOD.

Anyhow, by the time we got food, and made a super fast visit to the pottery studio to check on some pieces I had drying, we didn't have enough time to go for a walk, just as I suspected. We did make it to the fireworks, and found a good spot to sit, and it was very enjoyable.

We came home, and I quickly got my Sweetie to pull out his heaver dress pants that he's not wearing right now so I could wash them and put them away for the summer, and got his new clothes de-tagged and tumbled in the dryer to get rid of fold lines so he could wear them. We quickly looked at what shirts worked with pants he already has.

Happy Canada Day!
So, though it was a bit of a rough start, we got everything done that we needed to get done.