The Family Table

As much as I complained about how useless my weekend was, there was one significant event that occurred. For the first time since I can remember, my husband and I ate dinner together three nights in a row.

I've explained this so many times before but even still my friends don't realize how different my life is from theirs. Most days of the week, I'm out the door well before 6am. I work until about 2pm. So breakfast is usually eaten in my car on the way to work (at least round 1 is) and lunch is eaten sometime during my workday. When I get home, I usually have about 4 minutes during which I can talk to the man before he has to start getting ready to leave for work. Three of those four minutes are generally spent discussing SB (what she ate, when she went down for a nap, etc.). Most days, that last minute is spent with me whining about how tired I am. I know, I'm such a baby.

Then he showers and leaves for work while I stay home and entertain SB. He usually gets home from work around 9-9:30pm, which is about the time I start thinking about going to bed. Or taking a bath with poo.

Sometimes on the weekends, we'll get to eat together. Usually this is carryout because we all know I don't cook. But a lot of times, we kind of fend for ourselves during the day since that's pretty much what we're used to.

I never really grew up doing the big family dinner thing. When I was younger, it was just my brother and me. My mom would fix dinner for us and we'd eat it together and she would sit there and read to us while we ate. I'm not sure why she didn't just eat with us. Then as we got older, our schedules got hectic with work, school, clubs, sports, and social lives so my mom would just make meals for us to heat up whenever.

Some television channel made a big deal about the "family table" for a while, advertising that kids who ate a sit-down dinner with their family on a regular basis were more likely to stay off drugs, get good jobs, become snappy dressers and have fresher morning breath, or something like that. So I naturally wanted all that for SB, because she definitely has some nasty morning breath.

But I'm rambling on. It was nice that we were able to sit down together three days in a row. I was even able to turn a blind eye to my husband's abominable eating habits long enough to enjoy it. (Seriously, is his elbow glued to the table?)

I know that seems really lame, but that never happens. And for those of you who are able to have a normal dinner - or any meal! - with your spouse/partner on a daily basis, please don't take that for granted.