Seven Red

So she  is on maternity leave, and I’m just loving it. Be aware that she’s bored stiff, despite a (fingers crossed) very non-colicky baby. Everybody told us with Ellie that her non-stop screaming was very much out of the normal range, and I think we knew that implicitly, but when you have no measure for comparison, the whole claim seems somewhat unreal. But this baby might be on the other end of the range; he seems to fuss in minor ways and eat constantly one day, and sleep all the next. I think it’s an eating-growing-eating-growing thing, but what do I know, really? Answer: not much.

But back to maternity leave. Thanks to the good people at Giant Foreign Financial Institution, she gets three months leave. But what do you do to eat up the time? Ellie’s in daycare all day, and once you get them in a daycare here at a particular clip, it’s foolish to try to move them back to part time. I go in every day on my usual 8-4 schedule, though I’ve been coming home a bit earlier than usual since the kid was born (ah, academic schedules…how anyone complains about a job where you can just pick up and leave when you want is still beyond me). But still: that’s a lot of hours, and that dude from The Big Bang Theory can only be on The View so often. So she‘s taken to making some food. I likes it.

To be clear, I do the dinner cooking in the family. Always have. I think we’ve gone weeks at some points during which she never cooked one meal. This is a great deal for me, since I like cooking, and yet I can still pretend it is a household chore. The problem does not escape she‘s attention. Versed in all the feminist arguments about unequal household labor, she consistently points out that traditionally male household labor can often double as a hobby (home repairs and the like), while traditionally female household labor could never be mistaken for hobby (just don’t tell the Bathroom Cleaning Club of Vancouver). I’m like the guy who argues that he shouldn’t have to clean up after the barbecue because he “manned the grill.” So my feeble attempts to suggest that we share the household labor equally because I cook does not fly even as a theoretical matter. (I think it’s also a case of tolerance for general disorder, or household entropy, where my cycle is about two weeks, while she‘s cycle is about 8-12 hours.) But now there’s more encroachment on my already weak case, as she gets more and more into doing the cooking. I’d say cooking every night buys me out of maybe two loads of laundry, in the Family Labor Exchange Guilt System. And I feel like I’m losing a load in the bargain, especially if this whole cooking thing sticks, and perhaps even drifting toward mopping the kitchen floor territory, ledger-sheet-wise.

But the upside, despite the looming threat of all natural all purpose cleaners in my future, is that she actually makes good goddamn food. I make good food. I’m a good recipe cook. I’m not very creative in my cooking, I don’t think, but if you give me a decently constructed recipe, I can make something really good. And because I’ve been at it for awhile, I’m more comfortable, and for even some complex meals that I’ve done several time, I even understand the theory (I guess you’d call it), so I can do those without checking the recipe and make some variations. Blah blah blah. I’m still talking about me, when this is a post about she’s cooking! Do I ever shut up? In any case, the larger point is that I’ve been coming home to really good meals and other foodstuffs, which seems like a definite benefit attached to this whole baby thing. So I took the following pictures, which she calls my “documenting of her domesticity.” We’re only two weeks into this thing and she’s going all Germaine Greer on me.  Anyway, it’s nice when you show up and find

Butternut Squash Risotto

fresh baked Banana Bread

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