Self-Discipline to the Extreme

This morning Vince went to the pallet store. After all these years of begging me to go to town with him, I would say no, then I’d feel guilty because he does so much for me, then I’d end up going and I knew he’d have more fun shopping without me because if you’re not a shopper, five minutes is good, six minutes is pushing my limit and seven minutes and I know he’s thinking . . it’s time to go before she blows! Not really but I never knew why he wanted me to go to town with him when he knew I didn’t want to go and when he knew he’d have a better time without me there.

I think he’s finally figured it out because after breakfast, Vince said “I think I’m going to run to the pallet store.” He did not say “Go with me!”

At the pallet store, since everything is in bins and nothing has a specific place, he puts everything he thinks he may want in his cart as he’s shopping. When he gets to the end, he goes through it and returns the things to the bins that he doesn’t want. Today he found a nice lasagna pan and a set of storage containers that I will enjoy. Saturday is when they have the best stuff but everything is $7 per item. By Wednesday or Thursday, when everything is $3, it’s pretty picked over. Vince rarely goes on $7 day though but today he felt like digging through the good stuff.

So . . when he gets to the end, he calls me with the things he found that he thinks I might want. He may also ask me to look up some things on Amazon and see if $7 is a good price.

I was happy that he found the lasagna pan. It’s deeper than a 9 x 13 cake pan and I think it’s easier to make a good lasagna in a deeper pan but I’ve never had anything other than a regular 9 x 13 pyrex type dish so, for $7, I was glad he found the deeper dish.

Then I was thinking . . I have to go back to the doctor early next week. I can stop by the store and get ricotta and cottage cheese and that’s all I’ll need to be able to make lasagna. Vince loves lasagna. I do not . . not at all. There are a lot of things he likes that I can make and find a way to eat it. When I fix spaghetti and meatballs, I’ll add butter or make a cream sauce and have a meatball with white sauce on my pasta but when I make lasagna (1) it makes a lot so there’s always at least three or four meals from a pan of lasagna and (2) there’s not much I can do to make lasagna something I would eat. But, I do make it from time to time and I’ll cut it into serving size squares, flash freeze it on a cookie sheet, vacuum seal it and fix it for Vince when there’s something I want that he’s not crazy about.

Then I thought . . I can’t make lasagna til February 1 because I have my entire menu made out for January. I kept thinking about it and no, that would just not fit into my plans to deviate from my menu but then I decided that’s where discipline can go wrong. I have to be flexible enough to substitute a meal every now and then when the need arises.

Probably Thursday of this coming week, I’ll fix lasagna and I’ll just have to get over screwing up my menu! 🙂