Happy New Year, friends! The tree is down and the various decorations are back in their bins for another year, the house is clean, and I’m slowly and gently nudging myself back into my regular routine. I have had, as mentioned, a restful few weeks filled with restorative yoga, long dog walks, reading, and putting together puzzles.
I have also been cooking.
In my recent Ask Me Anything, Coco (HI COCO) asked what is the division of labour in your household, with your husband, and I will say that since he retired it is quite equitable. Prior to his retirement, the house, and the health and welfare of the inhabitants were strictly My Department, with the exception of Home Repairs, which were in his jurisdiction. In general, I was the Department of Health, Welfare, and Education. These days the kids are grown and my husband has the time to do all sorts of domestic duties, but there is one thing that remains the same: I am the Department of Nutrition. I do all the grocery shopping and I do all the meal planning, without exception I make dinner every day and I ensure that there are ingredients for lunch and breakfasts, which are fend-for-yourself affairs around here, and have been for many, many years. In turn, my husband and whichever son happens to be around clean the kitchen after dinner. It is a system that works well for us, as I truly enjoy cooking and I also like wielding the power of being the Person in Charge of the Meal Plan.
But during the holidays, when there are so many Special Meals, I wish I had a break from this food dictatorship of my own making.
It’s my own fault: my husband can cook and is more than willing to help, but as I am person who cooks with zero recipes and just flings things together, it’s hard to delegate. Sprinkle in some cumin. I don’t know how much. I also think that it’s impossible to get delegate the mental heavy lifting of figuring out what we are going to eat for a week and then procuring all the ingredients for them. I just want someone to magically make me exactly what I want without asking me what that is, and for that person to time travel backward to get the required groceries. Is that too much to ask? And listen, I know. I know that takeout exists and restaurants exist and we certainly COULD utilize those modern innovations, but they still require effort and I want it to be effortless.
Along with a chauffeur, Mike Vrabel, and an array of buskers who follow me around knowing exactly what songs I want to hear at the exact right time, I also want someone to read my mind and procure exactly what I want to eat every day – but only during the holidays, when it feels like meals have to be More Special Than Usual. The rest of the time I can, and want to, manage that on my own.
Our equitable division of labour does not extend to travel planning. Coco also asked how do you plan your travels, and this is what I do: absolutely nothing. Well, that’s not true. I will say, for example, I’ve always wanted to go to Morocco, and then, magically, I go to Morocco! I don’t know if this is how my family feels when dinner is always ready and delicious at the same time every night, but it’s kind of magical to have a husband who researches, plans, and then executes all our trips. I’m sure he occasionally wearies of the load – heavy is the head who wears the Travel or Meal Planning Crown – but in general he enjoys it and is good at it.
For my money, a good partnership has a nice balance of a Person Who Wants To Be A Dictator Of A Certain Thing, and a Person Who Goes With The Flow. For my husband, it’s oh, it’s stir-fry night, great! and for me, it’s where are we going again? You sent me the itinerary? Did I look at it? Two people cannot be both 100% in charge of dinner, and two people cannot be 100% in charge of travel planning. Alternately, two people cannot be so laissez-faire about either of those things, or neither of them would happen.
Speaking of which, my husband and I watched a movie on Netflix called Lonely Planet, which takes place in a writers’ retreat IN MOROCCO. Not only was the movie visually stunning, but we were in most of the places. We were there! We were right there! we kept saying to each other over and over. It is also a romance between Laura Dern and Liam Hemsworth and believe you me, I was here for it. HOO BOY. Sexytimes! There was a lot about writing processes, and the challenges faced, and I really cannot recommend it enough.
Holiday Reading
In 2025, I read 153 books and 91% of those were written by women. The two male authors that I read this last week of December bumped that percentage down, but as is my wont, the male authors are gay and/ or British.
Calypso. In the leadup to Christmas, I had finished all my library books and wanted something light to read, on the heels of Wave, which was the opposite of light. I decided to reread an old favourite; this is my absolute number one Sedaris collection, and I love it so much. I will say that, after reading Happy Go Lucky, I found much of it poignant and sad. If you know, you know.
What Matters in Jane Austen. This deep dive into the work of Jane Austen is RIGHT up my alley! This is NOT meant for the person who read Pride and Prejudice once and liked it. This is for the Super Fan – like me! It really gets into the weeds – what card games the characters play, what characters never talk, what incomes reflect – and I am here for it. It’s extremely detailed and I loved it!
Book of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts. I have been a Margaret Atwood fan for decades, and I have been nosily curious about her life for almost as long, gleaning what I could from her many wonderful novels and short stories. I particularly pored over Cat’s Eye, The Edible Woman, Bluebeard’s Egg, and Moral Disorder as providing clues about her fascinating life – indeed, she has lived many lives, as the title suggests, and as we all do. I will say that particularly after Moral Disorder, I wondered what drew her to Graeme Gibson, and her memoir provides some insight to that, although he seemed to me to be a man with a lot of baggage and difficulties. Red flags abound in every way! However, the heart wants what it wants, even if Amy March and I both disagree with the sentiment that you can’t choose who you fall in love with. In any case, it was so interesting to read about Atwood and Gibson working with others to really put CanLit in the spotlight; they did so much for Canadian literature and the publishing industry. Atwood’s early life, a source of much fascination for me, is described in detail, as are her various writing processes for her various books. I was so happy to read how she wrote my beloved favourites, and in particular, my number-one favourite of all time, The Blind Assassin. Friends, this work of art was panned by the New York Times, proof that reviewers often get it terribly wrong. In any case, Atwood is a NATIONAL TREASURE and this memoir is everything I could have ever hoped for, and more.
Goodness, I meant for this just to be a brief roundup of the books I read over the holidays, and look what happened. I guess when I take a break, a lot of thoughts pile up for the old blog. I hope you have a wonderful weekend, friends, and I’ll be talking all things rest and relaxation on Monday. xo
Happy 2026, Nicole! Your role of Food Dictator is funny! Since my husband and I moved to a smaller home, the cleaning is all mine. It’s a catch 22..despite my orthopedic issues, I NEED to move around so I choose to be the “cleaner of all things”. If I’m having a bad day, sure..my husband will do a task if I ask. I want to read more! I’m curious what time of day do you read? I would like to carve out time. I’m too sleepy at night!
Hi Judy! Great question! I am also pretty sleepy in the evenings but I usually have an hour or so to read – from 7 to 8, unless I’m super tired. I also carve out some time in the afternoons, usually at least thirty minutes. I also often read while eating my lunch! And I never leave home without a book in my bag, in case I have to wait somewhere.
Hubs and I had “separate but equal” domestic responsibilities back in the day, but at about this time last year I had the revelation that I was working the most hours out of anyone in the house and that it would do the rest of the folks a ton of good to take over the house cleaning. It was a sweet setup! I took over the cleaning again when Hubs switched to a non-WFH position and the boys went back to school. Now that they’re home on winter break, they are our cleaning staff and it’s pretty sweet. In return I plan to pick up some yard work duties this spring so that I don’t have to be a Lawn Care Widow on the weekends.
I’m glad that the Atwood book was a hit, and a good rule of thumb is not to care what the NYT says about anything. Did she write much about Pelee Island?
Birchie, she did write about Pelee Island! It is such a good memoir, especially for someone like me who has followed her for so long. And you’re right, the NYT just gets into snits about things and then writes “edgy” reviews.
I need to watch Lonely Planet so I can see where Nicole and her husband went and the stuff they did!
Food Dictator! (me) Travel Dictator! (Husband) This works for us too!
Yes, in my fantasy, food is procured and prepared by some fairy who always knows exactly what I want to eat, when I want to eat it.
I loved Calypso! I believe that I have The Blind Assassin on my shelf, but I’ve not read it yet.
It’s like we are twins separated at birth, Suz. I always feel like we are living parallel lives!
I love the division on labour. I want to move in and have you make all my meals and Rob plan all my trips.
In my house, I am in charge of week-day meals. John does the weekends. It’s not wholly black and white, but in general he prepares all the food we eat on weekends (or at least does the planning).
In terms of travel, we also divide and conquer. He handles the big rocks: transport, accommodations, flights. I handle all the itineraries. I research different museums, plot them on a map, sort out when we’re going to go where. He would gladly do those things but he would not do them the way I want them done, so I say Thanks for offering and then take my anal planning self into the corner to spend an hour figuring out what museum tour would best work for us.
Would you believe that I have never read a single book by Margaret Atwood?? I know. It’s criminal. But I do have her memoir on my bedside table. Will I get around to reading it before it’s due back at the library? That’s anyone’s guess…
Lol, we DO have a nice guest room, come on in!
I’m cracking up “anal planning self” – this is exactly me with dinners. HEAVY IS THE HEAD WHO WEARS THE CROWN.
Ooooh really, no Atwood books? I wish you luck in reading the memoir before it’s due back – it’s really long!
The reason we never go anywhere is because we are both laissez-faire about leaving the house. I don’t want to plan and he doesn’t want to go, so we just spend time at home.
Also, our Christmas decorations are staying up. The stubbornness of not putting them up until after American Thanksgiving means I am not tired of them. I suspect they won’t come down until the 10th or maybe even the 17th. Aren’t you glad you’re not hanging out in my house?!
Engie, I think you should enjoy the season as long as possible! Why not? The US Thanksgiving is so close to Christmas, it makes the season way too short in my opinion, so why not keep the decorations up!
I am the planner in my relationship. Full stop. Phil is just not a planner and that is ok because I think having 2 passionate planners in a marriage would be challenging to say the least… We have found a way to make meal planning/eating more equitable, though. I had tried some meal delivery packages for awhile which I really enjoyed because it took care of 2/3 parts of meals – planning and ingredient acquisition. Phil did not feel like the meals were as good as what I made. He was already doing ingredient acquisition since I gave the ultimatum of using Instacart or having Phil take over grocery shopping after I went back to work after we had Paul. I imagine some will read this and think – sheesh, she’s fun to be married to. But IT WAS NOT WORKING TO COME UP WITH ALL THE MEALS and then execute those meals. The coming up with meals process is exhausting for me. So now we discuss the 3 meals we will make each week and most weeks he comes up with 2/3 of the meals. I’m less particular about meals than he is so that is for the best. We put it at the top of our shared grocery list Apple note. Then I make the grocery list (he adds some things but I do about 90% of the list making) and he does the she shopping. So we each own one part of the 3 part process, and then share meal ideation.
But it is kind of complex and not for everyone. But we both have really demanding careers and small children so it’s the best way to navigate getting meals on the table that we are both fairly equally happy with.
I need to read The Blind Assassin. I think I will add that to my 25 in ’26 list and take something else off the list. I’ve been meaning to read it since finding out how much you love it! The only other book I’ve read by Atwood was The Handmaid’s Tale which I struggled with because it is so depressing and a little too real… But that’s a me problem, not an Atwood problem.
Oh and as far as travel, I am the R in our relationship. But Phil kind of wants some input on accommodations and such. My biggest issue is getting him to commit to travel in as far advance as I would like. I like to get flights and airbnbs booked well in advance and he’s more of a ‘wait and see person’ but that does NOT WORK with my travel schedule at work… like my travel is probably 70% booked for 2026 and it’s January 2nd…
Lisa, you both work such difficult and demanding jobs, I am impressed you get meals on the table at all! I mean, it’s a lot of work, figuring out the food and then getting the ingredients and then cooking. It sounds like you have figured out a good distribution of that labour!
With Beth retiring, we are about to redistribute household labor and we haven’t settled on how yet, but I am definitely offloading some of my menu planning/cooking/dishes doing duties to her. She’s as good a cook as me and now she will have more free time than me. I wouldn’t want to give up cooking entirely, though, as I enjoy it.
Steph, I do too, and I could probably stand to be a little less controlling. However, our distribution works quite well. There was definitely a redistribution when he retired, I will be interested to hear how it goes in your house.
It’s hard being at the top, Nicole! I really feel “dictatorship of my own making”! Things will settle down now that Jan 1 is behind us… Phew!
INHALE, EXHALE! :)!
Atwood is certainly a treasure… a universal one (please share!). I’m putting that memoir on my reading list. And thanks for the new Morocco pix… now with writing retreat vibes. XOXO
Lololol it’s hard being dictators, isn’t it!
We will share Atwood with the world, she makes the whole world better!
Thanks for answering my question Nicole. I can’t agree with you more about wanting someone to know what I want to eat and make it happen. Not only the act of preparing but also thinking and planning is mentally exhausting. Maybe one day AI can make it happen! So great that you husband takes care of the trip planning, I do that too. Most of the time I like it because I choose what where when to go, but could also be exhausting.
I enjoyed calypso.
Wouldn’t it be great to have someone just read our minds and then make the meals? Why can’t this happen?
The division of labour has changed over the years, but I am the planner, organizer. Husband has taken on the task of Costco and grocery shopping which I am glad to hand over. Cooking was usually me, but I love cooking so didn’t mind it. Now it’s a mix of both of us.
I am the planner in the house of most activities including travel. Our next trip is the same one you took to Morocco with Intrepid Travel, Nicole. We leave end of March and have two weeks – can’t wait!
I read Margaret Atwood’s memoir and I felt the same way about many of the things you mentioned. I particularly enjoyed the parts of the early days of the work she and other writers had in creating the “Canadian Lit Scene.” It was obviously a lot of work, but I think rewarding to see it flourish. I appreciated her honesty about Graeme and her letters in her head to herself. Relationships are complicated and like anyone she made compromises. I found the passage between her and Graeme near the end, re marriage/2nd child to be particularly moving. I cannot believe I have not read The Blind Assassin and have put in on my TBR list!
Eeeeee Jacquie!!! I am SO excited for you to take that trip. Please tell me everything, how it goes, etc. I’m so excited you have that ahead of you!
YESSSS I was really impressed at her honesty about their relationship. I felt (and still feel) like she was being financially used a lot by Graeme’s ex, but you’re right, like everyone she made compromises. They weren’t compromises I personally could have made, but everyone’s relationship is different. And I agree – that passage was very moving, as was the poem about the lion. Very wrenching!
You took your tree down already? Ours might stay up until the end of March at this rate, the weather being so crazy at the moment. We saw the new year in driving in a snow storm. It was wild.
Our division of labour is mostly equitable, the OH does all the scut jobs (cleaning the cooker, bath and emptying the bins) they also wash the dishes. I’m more than happy with that. I, of course, do all the cooking, otherwise we’d starve.
Oh, I remember watching Lonely Planet and really enjoyed it as a travel log! I remember longing to take a trip to Morocco.
I’m laughing here, too, as I though that catchline on Margaret Atwood’s book said: Book of lies! Hahahaha …
Well, it’s an artificial tree so it’s pretty easy to take down! It’s funny, we have no snow here! I wonder when it will come.
Perfect trade off IMO. Love the Morocco pics!! So dreamt.
Thank you, I agree! I don’t want to get bogged down with travel details, I want to just GO.
Hi Nicole, that’s a great round-up. I, too, rested as much as I could from December 24th till, well, now or January 5th- is when I have to report to work. I worked on a very twisted puzzle, in fact, both my husband and I worked on it, and it’s still in process. I hope we finish before I have to go back to work.
I started Less, a novel by Andrew Sean Greer that has been on my TBR list for about 5 years now?… I also finished SHU’s book on planning and felt a tad bit bad how I DON’T have all my ducks in a row. Maybe, her system can help me line my ducks up, who knows?
Re: travel. I AM the planner. There are certain places in this world that I absolutely must see, feel, visit before I transition into another dimension. Morocco is on that list. Has been, for years. Not this year, since I’m aiming for Northern Italy, the lakes, the Dolomites and Venice.
I read Less a while ago and I…don’t remember much about it! Lol, I will have to look at my records. I also have SHU’s book but haven’t cracked it open yet – maybe this coming week!
I hate trying to figure out what the hell to cook. However, I want to have control over what we eat, so that’s a conundrum. In our house of three adults, my daughter cooks on Monday, I cook Tuesday – Thursday, we go out on Friday, and my husband cooks on Saturday and Sunday. Whomever cooks does not do dishes. If someone wants clean clothes, they put in a load, and we only have one hamper, so you’d better wash all of the darks or all of the lights while you’re at it. Trip planning, we divide and discuss. Often our interests are different, so it’s more of a compromise situation. Like, we have 2 days in Paris, what is 1 thing you want to do. We each picked one, and we did them all together. I think it would also work to each just go our own ways for a few hours, but we have not yet tried that option.
I haven’t heard of Lonely Planet, but I love Laura Dern and now I want to see it so I can see the places you went. I LOVE seeing places I have been in a movie or a TV show.
To be clear, I do not decide what we are eating on the nights when it is someone else’s responsibility, which is GREAT. I only have to come up with 3 meals a week.
It sounds like you have a system that really works! Figuring out the meal plan does feel like a lot at times, doesn’t it.
Around here, everyone just does their own laundry, although I do all the sheets and towels. Probably because I care the most about it!
I didn’t realize your daughter is going with you to Paris! How lovely J!
I never watch rom-coms but I love Laura Dern so I watched that one and it was SO GOOD. I LOVED all the indigo in Morocco. When we went to Italy we saw the fountain from Room With a View, which was very cool.
I think my favourite Margaret Atwood book is Lady Oracle – can’t wait to read the memoir. Did I tell you my brother-in-law went to university with Margaret Atwood’s daughter Jess and had her over for dinner once?
OH MY GOD NO YOU DIDN’T! *faints*
I think you will love the memoir! It’s just so good.
So much indigo in Morocco, it’s a beautiful country!
Yes! You are spot on: a good partnership needs one benevolent dictator and one happy go-with-the-flow person per domain!
We have a similar setup: I rule travel planning, he books the flights. I track expenses and do the taxes, he handles the investments. I clean the bathroom, he does the floors. Order!
Food is where it all falls apart. I like eating well but not cooking, so we’d limp along on salads until Kai swoops in with batch cooking and saves us from ourselves.
Oooh this is so interesting, I love hearing how other people run the households! Yay for Kai and his batch cooking! It sounds like you have a really good division, Catrina!
I love planning travel and wouldn’t delegate that to anyone, but since I mostly travel solo, I can do all the planning I want. I have done a few trips with my daughter and we try to do some equal planning around those, and since she’s a foodie, I leave the food decisions to her. Day-to-day meal planning is hit and miss most of the time and I too cook with ‘ a dash of this’ , a ‘sprinkle of that’, and never follow a recipe, or, if I do, I kinda make it my own by not following it exactly. Happy New Year.
I am a go-with-the-flow kind of gal when it comes to travel, so I’m happy to not do any of the planning! I can imagine us in the kitchen together, Pearl, we would make the most delicious meals! No recipes!
Sigh. Buying groceries, planning the meal, preparing the meal…ugh. By the time I’ve (now We’ve) done all that, I don’t want anything to do with eating it.
Like you, I want someone to just take care of a lot of that from inside my mind ahead of time.
Re: Margaret Atwood. I read The Blind Assassin many years ago and for some reason did not care for it. It was recommended to me by a good friend who was crazy about it. I think because it’s science fiction? That’s a genre I generally don’t care for.
There is a side story in which the love interest writes pulp fiction, so that is the science fiction component – but it is an epic story and I love it! I also don’t like science fiction or any kind of fantasy/ dystopia, but the side story is such an interesting part of The Blind Assassin. Oooh I feel like re-reading it right now, thinking about it!
Why can’t someone read our minds and just take care of dinner?
Our house is the same; I am the dictator of meals & husband does all the travel planning. He is so good at it and over the decades has planned several group trips. (we went to Europe with his old timers hockey team 3 times; our friend wanted to do her 50th marathon in Athens. We said we’d join them and next thing we knew we had 25 people on a 2 week tour of Greece!) planning just for us is easy in comparison! I like to cook but get tired of deciding what to cook. If someone else could just suggest a meal plan I’d be so happy! We are now in Mexico for 3 months. The fridge is tiny, kitchen utensils very limited and the oven is terrible so meals get pretty simple with plenty of eating out filling the gaps.
We are the same, Pat!
25 people on a two week tour – whoa! That would be a LOT of planning!
I think deciding on the meal plan is much harder than the actual execution of the meal plan!
It’s so fun to read about how your house operates! My husband and I do our cooking and shopping together, which is really nice! I’m in charge of kitchen cleanup, as well as cleaning the house. He’s happy to help if I need it, but I actually love cleaning while listening to an audiobook. He’s the planner, so I happily let him make all the plans for travel, or anything we do. If I have input, I’ll let him know, and he’ll work it in.
I love envisioning you walking around with your buskers, Mike Vrabel, your chauffeur, and your personal holiday chef trailing along behind you! (Perhaps the chef could serve as a busker during the off-season?)
Michelle, I find cleaning to be quite satisfying too! When I took down the decorations and cleaned, I warned everyone to stay out of my way – I put my earbuds in and went for it. There is something so satisfying with that!
CHEF AS A BUSKER. This is such a smart idea! I need a chef who is also musically inclined!
Happy New Year to you, Nicole and your family!
I enjoyed reading this! Our division/chores are very similar in my house. I love to cook although I’m not as adventurous trying out new recipes as I used to be. My husband loves to cruise because he loves being in the middle of the ocean; he finds looking out to the sea very calming. For me, I think a big part of the enjoyment of a cruise is not worrying about what to eat or where to eat and the preparations that go along with it. It’s quite nice to not worry about that for one or 2 days, but to be in that situation for 2 weeks or more (5 weeks when we went to Hawaii and French Polynesia) was a nice treat for that break.
Prior to this year, I always planned trips and thoroughly enjoyed it….but I got burned out and now, I leave it all to my husband. It’s nice to just go and not be bogged down with research and details. We just came back from a cruise to Panama Canal with 3 of his friends from elementary-high school and spouses. It was very fun and I didn’t have to read up on anything — LOL!
I meant prior to last year. LOL The year is so new I still forget … Ha!
M, how you feel about cruises is how I feel about all-inclusive resorts – you mean I don’t have to think about what we are going to eat??? This is amazing! Particularly when the kids were teens it was the most incredible break. What a treat!
I love to cook but here’s my problem: I’ve got SO many cookbooks and I use almost none of them. I really should get better at trying new things but instead I just decide to wing it and here we are. I should also be more adventurous! We’ll see if that happens in 2026!
I used to be in charge of almost everything: finances, food, cleaning, and travel planning, while G did the home repairs and lawn mowing. He was away a lot, so I don’t think it would have worked any other way. Now I have offloaded a small section of our financials (I still had to remind him this year that he needed to do the bank reconciliation and allocation of expenses for that entity before sending it to our tax accountant, to reduce the amount of work we were paying the accountant for), plus he does most of the trips to the supermarket and maybe two thirds of the laundry. I cannot let him look after meal planning and cooking because he doesn’t care as much as me about what we eat and would not put the effort in. I love travel planning, so that is fun for me, although G always books flights.
Melissa, I think you’ve hit on something – it seems like the person who cares more takes on certain tasks, I am that way with eating as well. My husband will sometimes come with me to Costco, but it’s not like I’ve offloaded a chore, it’s more like he has come along for company!
Ooh I’ve been waiting to talk with someone about the Atwood autobiography! I listened to all 24 hours and loved it, especially all the early Canadian lit stories and poet gossip and how she wrote her books BUT I’m desperate to talk about what the heck she saw in Gibson! It must be the bird watching, because every time she told a story about them I was screaming “get out Peggy, get out!” Ha ha, obviously it worked for them, but I bet her girlfriends would have a bunch to say….
KYLA THANK YOU!!! And I just reread Moral Disorder and I was like “What is she getting out of this relationship?” Because it sure didn’t seem like much. ESPECIALLY SINCE SHE BOUGHT HIS EX-WIFE A HOUSE TO LIVE IN WHAT IS HAPPENING. I was the same way! I know everyone has a different relationship and they were together so long that clearly SOMETHING worked, but WHAT THE WHAT. I was also “NO NO NO THIS IS A RED FLAG GET OUT GET OUT!” I am so glad you thought that too. It didn’t feel like a love story for the ages. Seriously, what was she getting out of it? She said he made her laugh but…is that really enough to counteract literally everything else?
This is SO validating thank youuuuuuu!! I thought I was alone :))))))
Naked will always be my favorite Sedaris book, but I should reread Calypso sometime. I had such a bad run of books at the end of the year, that I need light, light, light right now.
I’m with you on wanting to be in charge of the meal planning because of the same reasons. My husband enjoys cooking (and did most of it on Christmas Day) but omg on the salt I saw him throwing into everything. I just have to bite my tongue. It was crazy here, with my son and their 2 YO staying with us. They were trying to be helpful in the kitchen, but between them questioning why I don’t have a kitchen scale (it’s like my son never grew up in our household) and not understanding why I don’t have random ingredients like oyster sauce, it was a lot! The Millennial generation and their food . . .
Anyhoo, Happy New Year!
My son and his wife (not the 2 YO helping in the kitchen!)
Bijoux, I also had a heavy run of books and thought that I needed a little Calypso in my life – Stepping Out will always make me laugh hysterically.
Ai-yi-yi, a kitchen scale and oyster sauce. Well, I am with you in that I have neither of those things in my kitchen either.
Happy New Year!
I am definitely the meal
planner and usually do all the food shopping and cooking, with my husband stepping in on the weekends. He is also very good at dishes and all the ‘BLUE’ jobs. 🙂 I mostly do the travel planning as well, but when it comes to figuring out any sort of driving or train routes he’s on it. I would be so lost! The Margaret Atwood memoir sounds very intriguing, she’s such an icon!
Anna, there is definitely a “blue job” division around here, most notably with anything to do with machinery, particularly the cars!
Ooooh you will LOVE the memoir I’m sure!
Oh wow. I want that Jane Austen book! But first I want to reread all her novels (except for P&P and S&S, both of which I’ve reread fairly recently). Do I smell a 2026 reading project???? Ooooohhh…
YES YES YES!!! She is the best and this book really really REALLY gets in the weeds. I loved it!
The division of labor in my household is NOT equal. I make all the meals, do all the cleaning, make all the money! My cats do NOTHING but look cute and demand pets. I ask them to do things like put away groceries, but they don’t listen. SIGH.
I am definitely the planner when it comes to trips with my mom and me. She is happy to cede all control to me, and I LOVE IT. She doesn’t mind that I make the MOST DETAILED ITINERARIES ever (like, we will wake up at this time, we will go to this restaurant at this time for breakfast, etc). It soothes my anxious brain to have all the logistics worked out, hah.
Hahaha those girls are such freeloaders!!! They think that all they have to do is lie around looking cute. WELL I NEVER.
I love a detailed itinerary!!! It takes the guesswork out of things.
Is Calypso the one where he talks a lot about his Dad? I get my Sedaris books confused, but I know that the last couple have been more recent stories, whereas his other ones were often stories from way back. Like how they named the beach house. I also recall some of the later ones he talked a lot about picking up trash during the pandemic. I went to see him and dragged my brother and his partner to it and they had not read any of his books and they enjoyed it, thankfully!
I am in the same boat as Stephany; I do all of the work, cooking, cleaning and planning. However, I don’t mind!
K, Calypso is the one where he talks about getting his steps on his Fitbit while picking up trash, and also buying and naming the beach house. There is also a chilling essay about his sister Tiffany who died by suicide. I think the one you’re thinking of is Happy Go Lucky which is…not happy.
It sounds like the division of labor works very well in your house. I am happy to say that Jon engages in the meal planning, but he does not shopping or cooking, but will again help to clean up the kitchen. That works for me.
I wish he was better at trip planning. That is, if anything, all in my jurisdiction LOL
It does work well! I took on so much more (all) of the household stuff before R retired – but now that he is retired, he’s really stepped up the game!
