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No, I'm not crazy. And I haven't found a sugar daddy or moved to a commune. Yet.
OK. Here's the deal.
I think I have the Hoarder gene from my grandma. For me it manifests a little differently than it did for her (read: I don't have 247 sweaters and she did.) For me it's food. And maybe office/school supplies.
But it's not food that I necessarily eat - although clearly I'm doing my fair share of that - but I seem to hoard food in a way that has it come into my house and stay in the cupboard or freezer, or refrigerator. (Until it spoils or walks out on it's own. (don't ask))
I think this situation is partly a manifestation of the fact that I have no real idea of how much food the boys and I actually eat. Even pre-divorce, when it was four of us, it was a challenge. I would plan and shop for a week's worth of meals but then we'd be at the soccer field or a meeting or a something and catch dinner on the fly. I have thrown away a lot of food in my days. And yes, I know that not only would a starving child in Borneo have eaten that, but I could have improved my garden by a lot had I been a more conscientious compost-er.
Let's tackle one environmental sin at a time, shall we?
In addition to just not being able to accurately estimate how much food it takes to feed me and the boys, the divorce has removed "feed the boys" from my to-do list for about 1/2 the nights of the month. So on those nights it is cooking for one.* When there was cooking.** On top of that, now that DS1 has gone off to college, a full house is cooking for me and DS2. Include G when he's around and that's still only three people. At any rate, I just still haven't gotten a good handle on what this all means for meal planning, shopping.
I also freely admit that I'm horribly averse to hearing the "there's nothing to eat" complaint and so I clearly overcompensate. Hey, nothing says "I'm a good mom!" like making sure your kids never have anything of substance to complain about.
Even when I was struggling with debt I made sure there was always something (lots of somethings) they could make for themselves if I was being a "bad" mom by daring to, I don't know, be at work when they were hungry. I think that's part of the hoarder instinct; trying to find comfort and security in stuff.
I didn't say I didn't need therapy about some of these issues. I just maybe haven't gotten to it yet, OK?
On top of all that, there are plenty of times I'm at the grocery store and I'll think "I should save money by bringing my lunch to work." So I'll shop to enable that and still not do it. So much for saving money.
I was digging around in the freezer this weekend I was trying to find room for the stuff I brought home from the grocery store (I have a 1/2 chest freezer downstairs in addition to the refrigerator/freezer combo upstairs.) and I discovered two packages of boneless, skinless chicken breasts, a package of boneless pork chops, about 5 lbs of ground beef (left over from DS1's graduation party preparation) and most of the salmon we brought home from Door County. There are still a couple of containers of already cooked taco meat (beef or chicken) and at least one pork roast down there. Not to mention frozen tomatoes, other veggies and fruit. Bags of flour (whole wheat, all purpose, cake and bread.) (Yes, there are differences.) (Keeping the flour in the freezer keeps the bugs out of it when you don't use it fast enough.) And the frozen tortellini and ravioli I added to the freezer on Saturday. And last night I moved the farmer ribs (for sauce) and the soup bone (for stock) from the refrigerator to the freezer because I realized: I'm not going to be home this weekend to either cook or eat either one.
The inventory upstairs includes frozen veggies (no idea how freezer burnt those are) containers of pesto from this past spring and coffee. Several half used bags of coffee beans, both whole and ground and several pounds of unsalted butter. Not to mention half of a 1/2 gallon of ice cream.
The
