I got home from work at about 5:30 on Monday because an issue had come up that I had to deal with and it couldn't wait. I got it taken care of, but I was frustrated that I was at school for over two hours after my last class ended, and I had not accomplished any of the grading that I planned to do that afternoon. Christopher was reading on the couch when I got home. When I finished telling him about work, I asked him about his day.
He said, "Today is the day we started the blog for Powell's."
My response was, "What are you talking about?"
"You know, we are going to write a blog for Powell's for a week." While I insisted that this was the first I had heard about it, he was adamant that I knew because it had been in an email. However, this was an email I had never received.
"This is the first I've heard of this," I said.
"Oh, well, we are blogging. I did it today, can you do tomorrow?"
This is fairly reminiscent of the way we started blogging in the first place. Christopher sprung it on me last minute. I believe he already had spent a few hours setting up a website before he came to me and told me we needed to take a picture for it. I had just gotten out of the shower and had a towel wrapped around my hair and no make-up on. I insisted that I at least wanted to dry my hair first and Christopher waited for me to get ready, but not before protesting, "Come on, how many people do you think are actually going to see this?" The picture from that day is still at the top of our blog.
This week I was not ready to write. In addition to feeling like I did not get much done on Monday, I take a Spanish class on Tuesday night, Wednesday night was my school's second-semester back-to-school night, tonight we are going to an event at the Institute for Peace and Justice to see Raymond C. Offenheiser, the president of Oxfam, speak — and, on top of that, I am applying to an MA program and my application is due March 1. I am not intending to complain; it is just a busy week.
Fortunately, this week Christopher has been helping with meal preparation. While working on our experiments with food, the issue of food preparation became a bit contentious at times. While eating on a dollar was Christopher's idea, I did most of the meal planning and cooking. As we moved on into our other experiments, the task of planning became more challenging, and still I got very little help. There were many times that the help I did get was grudgingly.
When we set out to write about food, it did not really cross our minds that we would also be writing about the division of labor in homes (particularly ours) and our own relationship. There have been many changes since then, but still we are working to find a balance. Just this weekend I had to force him to sit down with me to plan a menu so that we could go grocery shopping, but he also has made two dinners this week since I had late nights. When I walked in the door from back-to-school night, there was a hot plate of spaghetti waiting for me.