Most readers of my blog know that I’ve been sick with the flu all week. During the week as Yasu has worked late every day, I’ve struggled through my flu fog to cook dinner for us every night even when I had to push myself just to lift up my feet and arms and do stuff. I’ve had no energy whatsoever, and not being able to sleep at night has added to it. However, I don’t like complaining about it so I just got on and did it.
Well this morning we had to go shopping for groceries which we did, and I got a different kind of cold and flu pills, Codral, which you need a drivers license as ID because they have pseudoephydrine in. (The laws have recently changed making it impossible to buy drugs of this sort without proper photo ID because drug makers were buying these drugs in bulk or raiding chemists at night, robbing pharmacies to get these drugs to make drugs etc).
As I don’t have a licence I got Yasu to buy them for me. They have made a difference in a big way to the way I feel and stopped my nose from running.
Anyway, last night I really wanted Yasu to cook but he came home too late and I had to in the end. So today I asked him if he could cook this weekend so I could have a chance to get over my sickness. He agreed, but had to work this afternoon, promising me he would be home by 5pm.
He didn’t get home until 6pm, and because I’m a nice wife, I had already cooked the rice. I expected him to get started on dinner, but no, he said he had a program on nhk that he wanted to watch. I was pretty hungry by this time so I started to raid the cookie jar.
I must admit I was abit peeved. If Yasu was waiting for me to come home, and when I come home stated that I wanted to do something for an hour while he waited for dinner, he would be pretty pissed off with me. Not to mention the fact that even when he knows I’m going to be late, he never puts the rice on for me ahead of time, he just doesn’t think about it.
I don’t let it bother me about the rice thing because I know the way he is, and I know by now how he thinks or doesn’t think. It didn’t occur to me though that when our roles were reversed how different our expectations of each other would be.
Yasu is still in his work clothes that is why his top is dirty,
not because of the cooking!
Cooking, for him is an extra, not in his job description, something he does which doesn’t count towards his weekly ‘work’. Cooking for me is considered my ‘work’ and goes along with the cleaning and general upkeep of the house. I can see why if I’m not holding up my end of the bargain, getting meals together on time, why he would be pissed off at me.
I think it is easy for us to expect others to do what we want them to do how we would do it. For me, that’s what I expected but because he didn’t do it the way I wanted, I got mad. I didn’t challenge him keeping me waiting, which is something he would do to me, probably in the form of an argument or the silent treatment, if it was me who had kept him waiting. The fact that I didn’t challenge him but went along with it I guess lets him perpetuate that behaviour in the future. I guess I should draw the boundaries properly, but I didn’t feel like arguing about it tonight.
Yasu didn’t want me to take a picture of this because
he said the presentation of the food was awful.
In any case it took him an hour to cook a simple meal of patties and egg. It was tasty but he made the eggs with cream cheese and corn and it was too sweet for me so he had to eat it. Another reason why I don’t often get him to cook is that he makes weird food. He made pork patties tonight with all these different spices in them and corn and onion, okay, not so weird. But the sauce was made with bulldog sauce, tomato sauce and lemon. Then the egg was eggs, sugar, corn, and cream cheese. He always puts things together which I don’t think should go together. Sometimes it works out okay but alot of the times the food tastes weird. Tonight was a night I was prepared to eat weird food and let him do the effort, but after eating, I questioned my choice. Would it have not been easier to get the meal prepared in 30 minutes and got it over and done with? Maybe so. Sometimes doing it yourself is much easier than making someone else do it.
I guess in Yasu’s mind something that is being done as an ‘extra’ is not as important as that which is a regular part of your task. Because of that, unless I work full-time as well and have housework as my ‘extra’, when it comes to making food, we will never be on equal footing. It’s nothing really bad, it’s just something I realised tonight that I never did before. Even If I think our relationship is equal in every way, it never will be because there are certain aspects of our lives that are serving a purpose for each other that only work because we are unequal.
(By the way if any of this doesn’t make sense I blame my head fog).
10 Comments
When I'm sick (or expect to be too tired), my husband and I always make alternate dinner arrangements. That is, we have him bring home some sort of take-out so that he doesn't have to cook when he's tired and I don't have to when I'm sick. Of course, we often have leftovers around (at least twice a week) so it all depends.
It's not that he feels cooking is "my work" since he used to be a part-time househusband and did all the cooking and cleaning for about 6 years during that time. It's more a matter of him being too tired after work and needing to relax for awhile before he can do anything. When I was confined to bed due to a back injury, we used to have arguments because I was starving and he came home from work and didn't make any food for awhile (and I wasn't allowed to get up and do it).
I just realized that he worked differently than me and couldn't just come home and start working on something. He really needed to sit down and mellow out for a bit. Perhaps Yasu is the same? In general, I have a sense that many men don't have the slow burn energy that women do. That is, they can't keep moving and working from sun up to sun down and beyond. They get tapped out and have to just sit around and do nothing for awhile. Well, either that or they really won't work when they're tired. ;-)
As for the meal he made, the Japanese thing of putting sugar in eggs has always seemed really unpalatable to me, but I'm sure there is plenty we make that they think is weird.
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When I'm sick (or expect to be too tired), my husband and I always make alternate dinner arrangements. That is, we have him bring home some sort of take-out so that he doesn't have to cook when he's tired and I don't have to when I'm sick. Of course, we often have leftovers around (at least twice a week) so it all depends.
It's not that he feels cooking is "my work" since he used to be a part-time househusband and did all the cooking and cleaning for about 6 years during that time. It's more a matter of him being too tired after work and needing to relax for awhile before he can do anything. When I was confined to bed due to a back injury, we used to have arguments because I was starving and he came home from work and didn't make any food for awhile (and I wasn't allowed to get up and do it).
I just realized that he worked differently than me and couldn't just come home and start working on something. He really needed to sit down and mellow out for a bit. Perhaps Yasu is the same? In general, I have a sense that many men don't have the slow burn energy that women do. That is, they can't keep moving and working from sun up to sun down and beyond. They get tapped out and have to just sit around and do nothing for awhile. Well, either that or they really won't work when they're tired. ;-)
As for the meal he made, the Japanese thing of putting sugar in eggs has always seemed really unpalatable to me, but I'm sure there is plenty we make that they think is weird.
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Just popping on by, but I want to say that perhaps is a Japanese man/TV thing. My DH does the same exact thing, even if he agrees to make dinner, you better specify that you want it by a certain time because if there is a TV show on that he wants to watch you better believe he wont be doing any cooking until its over, no matter how hungry you are. Of course you can see our TV frm the kitchen so I dont understand what the problem is
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Just popping on by, but I want to say that perhaps is a Japanese man/TV thing. My DH does the same exact thing, even if he agrees to make dinner, you better specify that you want it by a certain time because if there is a TV show on that he wants to watch you better believe he wont be doing any cooking until its over, no matter how hungry you are. Of course you can see our TV frm the kitchen so I dont understand what the problem is
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Hey Orchid, it could be that. I never thought of it like that.
If I have things to do I like to keep doing them until I've finished, then enjoy my free time. I guess I thought he was the same, but I guess having stood up all day at work, he's eager to sit down for a while and relax.
Hey atw3, thanks for stopping by and for your comment. Glad to know I'm not the only one out there. Yasu doesn't like to be bossed around, so If I said to him "can you make dinner by 6pm?" he would probably do it by 7pm just to spite me. haha :)
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Hey Orchid, it could be that. I never thought of it like that.
If I have things to do I like to keep doing them until I've finished, then enjoy my free time. I guess I thought he was the same, but I guess having stood up all day at work, he's eager to sit down for a while and relax.
Hey atw3, thanks for stopping by and for your comment. Glad to know I'm not the only one out there. Yasu doesn't like to be bossed around, so If I said to him "can you make dinner by 6pm?" he would probably do it by 7pm just to spite me. haha :)
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I would have been hurt and peeved as well Kel, should I fly over there? "wink"! But in the end he cooked so he tried to redeem himself = )
For us, I noticed we have been scratching each others backs.. otherwise I would have stomped my feet… put on a sissy fit. He usually cooks, or likes too and I do so and alternate, but if we are both not up to it, he brings a bento home, which was usually the case for the past year… we couldn't beat the dept store prices at half off… and no cooking.. I was game.
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I would have been hurt and peeved as well Kel, should I fly over there? "wink"! But in the end he cooked so he tried to redeem himself = )
For us, I noticed we have been scratching each others backs.. otherwise I would have stomped my feet… put on a sissy fit. He usually cooks, or likes too and I do so and alternate, but if we are both not up to it, he brings a bento home, which was usually the case for the past year… we couldn't beat the dept store prices at half off… and no cooking.. I was game.
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No cooking sounds good April!! :)
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No cooking sounds good April!! :)
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