On Serving Breakfast at Boyfriends, and Vice Versa (I encourage you to experiment with prepositions as you read this title)

This post was originally intended to be a part of a writing challenge. It remains as a testament to my inability to complete writing challenges. There was going to be a punch line here but I can't be bothered to think of one. 

This is not breakfast.

1. Breakfast is easy. Oatmeal takes approximately four minutes to make, and that's including toppings (always raisins, usually a banana, and sometimes cinnamon sugar if I'm feeling frisky.) Pancakes are reserved for weekends only because I usually need to go back to sleep after eating them, but omelettes? Easy. Eggs + whatever happens to be next to the eggs in the refrigerator + cheese if Diego bought any. Which leads me to the next thing.

2. Diego buys most of our food. If I had to guess - which, um, I do, because no matter how sternly Suze Orman tells me anything I do not feel like keeping track of grocery receipts - I'd say we split it about 60/40. Usually. Also, he goes to the store way more often than I do and is more patient with picking out good beets and things and also also he carries the heavy things home. His breakfasts are earned. Which brings me to the NEXT thing (boy this is well written, when does my Pulitzer get here?)

3. He makes every single one of our other meals, the quality of which are far superior to anything I concoct in that room that has the stove in it. He also plates them so nicely that even if we're eating something simple, which we usually are, it still feels fancy. He also doesn't watch Teen Mom 2 while he's cooking, which means he screws things up way less often.

4. He makes every single one of our other meals. You might think this is the same thing as number three, but I assure you, it is not. Well it is. But. There are other meals. Before we moved in together I regularly ate jelly beans for dinner. (Side note: Probably this is only me because I have weird food and/or/also control issues, but once in a while I feel real anger at the fact that I can no longer eat candy as a meal. Or a spoonful of peanut butter. Or two yogurts and a popsicle. I don't always feel like having DINNER dinner, you know? Meals are healthier, though, than candy, I GUESS. And I do like that we're sketching out what our family life will look like once the idea of having a baby doesn't turn my internal organs into cold, hard steel. Also once we have somewhere to put a baby. #ILIVEINATINYBOXOFPAINTS)

5. Breakfast duty naturally falls to me because I'm the one who's awake. I've always gotten up early, and after waking up at 3:30AM for two years sleeping in until 5:30 will never stop feeling straight up luxurious. Getting up early is not a hardship, for me. I want, nay, I need that hour by myself; ten minutes to put on my makeup in peace, fifty to stare into the pre-dawn abyss. And yes, it does in fact stare back. Anyway morning is the time when I like to do things, and dinner is the time I like to... not do things. I'm tired. I GOT UP EARLY. (ETA: He wakes up a little earlier than he has to so that we have time to eat the breakfast I make together. Just saying.)

~

I think we're very lucky in the sense that the division of responsibilities happened pretty naturally for us. Honestly I think we moved in together pretty fast - we hadn't even been together for a full year when I convinced him to pay for a mover because it was hot out and I didn't feel like making more than one trip. OH, LOVE. Honestly though, if we didn't live in this city I think we both would have waited a little bit longer before plunging into cohabitation. It's a side effect of living in any big, expensive city, probably, the earlier-than-usual combining of the kitchen appliances. But again - I got lucky. Most of the big chores (laundry, major grocery shopping) we do together which makes them more like very productive dates than chores. As for the rest of it (I clean the bathroom ALWAYS, he uses that weird stick with the sponge on the end of it to keep our floors from being sticky) we pretty much just both do the things we don't mind doing and everything somehow gets done.

Because we're in love with each other and because I associate positively with the word and the act of "service" (hi, most of my adult life has centered around opportunities to serve others and I couldn't be more grateful), I feel fine about saying that we serve each other when we do these things. And we do - for example, I don't always want to eat dinner but he does and it's important to him that I'm healthy and meals are one of the ways that we consciously spend time with each other. I eat what he cooks, he cooks what I'll eat. He cooks and I clean up the mess he makes doing it.

I have no more food pictures, make up your own caption. 
SERVE YOURSELF, in other words. 

On the other hand, it's not like either one of us was living in squalor before. Our individual dread of or willingness to perform certain household tasks just happens to complement the other person's. And we're not perfect, by which I mean HE'S not perfect, because he leaves the sponge in the sink sometimes when he's done washing the dishes and I CANNOT ABIDE a stinky sponge.

I obviously am perfect.

You know what's fun? The way I keep petering out by the end of writing these. Don't take this the wrong way, but I'm bored of this and I want to go watch more Teen Mom 2.