We were at the grocery store the other night when Captain OCD spied a display of sushi (I’m using that term generically – I don’t know from sushi because my tastes run toward fish sticks, and not those fancy-pants ones from Costco with “More Fish!”). Sometimes I buy sushi for him at Costco so he can take it for lunch, but he rarely buys it for himself. He loves it, but my understanding is that there is not, in general, a lot of eating of sushi on underground construction crews.
He was terribly excited at the sudden solution to tomorrow’s lunch and, after picking out the package he wanted, said, “Yes! I just saved myself a lot of time in the morning!” I suggested that if a simple package of sushi would make such a difference to his morning, perhaps he needed to rethink his lunch-making practices.
This will save me about 45 minutes!
Really? Forty-five minutes just to make your lunch? [Doesn’t matter to me as long as he doesn’t wake me up during the commission of lunch, which is not a given because he has woken me in the past to tell me about a particularly fine lunch he’s just prepared.]
There’s planning involved. I have to decide what to have and what will go with the main course. [I was not aware that a lunch that one carries to a job site and then eats while sitting on a stack of sewer pipes has a hierarchy of courses.] I might need to boil some eggs so I can make deviled eggs. There might be chicken salad to make. I might have to defrost some jam. Cut up watermelon and make a fruit-salad dressing. Make soup out of the ham bone.
This is the guy who doesn’t eat lunch on the weekends, when he works at least as hard as he does during the week, which is very hard indeed, so it’s a bit odd that he puts so much thought into his weekday repasts.
Here’s how the reverse conversation would go:
Are you making your lunch tomorrow?
No.
Do you want me to make you a lunch?
Yes, please.
As long as you don’t wake me up to tell me about it.
