It's 5:01pm...

...and most of the SAHMs across America are probably making dinner, or at least thinking about making dinner. Not me. I'm sitting on my bed, as far away from the kitchen as I can get, studiously avoiding thinking about making dinner.

I love food. I really love good food. I've blogged at length about my love of food. I grew up in a house where we had good food for dinner every night. My mom, who feeds the missionaries (19-22ish year-old guys and girls) things like Moroccan-Thai fusion tagines when they come to visit, used us as guinea pigs when we were kids, and we had labor-intensive meals almost every night of the week. On the easy nights, when my dad cooked, we'd eat things like cheese souffle and banana-sausage-green pepper omlets (sounds gross, but it's not).

But I loathe making dinner. It's not that I can't cook well, because I can, when I want to, but I would rather donate blood every night than make dinner. Part of the problem is that I never know Eddie's schedule. On a given night, he can be home any time between 4:30 and 7:30pm. I feel compelled to make an effort to eat dinner as a family, but he's unreachable by phone about 90% of the time I try to call. Usually it means that the kids are starving and cranky if he's having a later night. He usually calls as he's leaving the hospital, so I try to plan things that I can start when he calls and can be on the table when he gets home half an hour later. Tonight, for example, we're having taco salads. They should take about fifteen minutes to make, but I can't motivate myself to get started. I'm totally sick of all of the easy, fifteen minute meals, totally sick of anything that can be made in a crockpot, pretty much totally sick of anything that doesn't come in a take-out bag.

I've also blogged about how my kids eat nothing. Even when I let them have input in our menu, there's invariably a kid screaming at my feet about how I'm torturing them with our dinner as I make it. And let me tell you, that's the best kind of motivation of all.

Finally, there's the fact that I have the energy of a sloth by this time of day. I start out peppy enough to run 3 1/2 miles before 7am, but by dinnertime I just want to sit with my feet up and have someone serve me.

You know when you fantasize about striking it rich and how your life will change? I think a lot of people dream about having someone come in to clean their houses or watch their kids or organize their lives. I'd want someone to come in and cook for me. I was watching Oprah this afternoon as I folded laundry and she and Gayle recalled an anecdote involving Oprah's chef. I've looked through her magazine before and seen pictures of all of her different houses and her special cashmere sweaters and her vacation getaways, but I've never coveted any of those things. But a chef? Man, I could really use a chef.

What daily task would you hand over to a professional?

It's only 5:20-- now I need to find something else to do to procrastinate.

--originally published 9/14/06