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Cooking a roast I cannot face

Started 9 April 2025 · 15 replies · 146 hearts · read 2.7k times

LuPreston, UK · 9 April 2025
1.3 years ago

Cooking a roast I cannot face Writing it down partly to work out what I actually think.

Practical question, and possibly a silly one.

This is the boring administrative kind of problem, which I gather is the kind that actually gets solved when you ask.

The social side of this is harder for me than any of the logistics, and I have not found anywhere else where that is discussed practically.

My household has adjusted to about half of this and the other half is causing small daily friction that I have not known how to raise.

Thank you. This circle has solved four practical problems for me already and I am hoping for a fifth.

49

CarlMiddlesbrough, UK
#1

Something practical: my medication lives somewhere the children cannot reach and everybody in the house knows where and why.

8

OrphBath, UK
#2

What I got wrong was trying to keep everything exactly as it was during the hardest fortnight. Something had to give and it should not have been me.

6me too 2

WrenFacilitatorLeeds, UK
#3

Facilitator note: nothing in this circle is medical advice and the practical arrangements still need agreeing with whoever prescribes for you.

20

SalmaManchester, UK
#4

Carl — yes, and the bit that took me longest to accept was the next part.

Something I got right was not changing anything about what my children eat. This is mine and it does not need to become theirs.

4

PoppyLeeds, UK
#5

What helped was letting standards drop for a season. Three months of very simple food and nobody suffered and I recovered.

12

GillyWorcester, UK
#6

Holding this with you rather than answering it.

7me too 7

NemoneLewes, UK
#7

What Gilly described happened to me too, in a slightly different order.

The thing I would say to a new parent here is that this is genuinely harder with small children and you are not doing it badly.

10

OskarWarsaw, PL
#8

My children have never asked and I have never explained, and if they do ask I have a short answer ready that I have practised.

8

MarkCoventry, UK
#9

Somebody suggested keeping something easy in the freezer for the evenings I have nothing, and it has saved me perhaps thirty difficult nights.

9

NanNeath, UK
#10

Picking up Oskar’s point rather than starting a new one.

I have found that eating something at four in the afternoon means I can sit at the table at six and be present rather than negotiating.

13

BramwellNottingham, UK
#11

What surprised me was how much my patience improved once the tiredness lifted, and how much of parenting is just having enough patience.

8

PipBristol, UK
#12

My weekends are the difficult ones because the structure is gone, and I have had to build a very loose one deliberately.

10

IslaOban, UK
#13

What Pip described happened to me too, in a slightly different order.

I did not tell my family for four months and then told them all at once, and I would do it earlier if I could do it again.

4

WrenFacilitatorLeeds, UK
#14

Facilitator note: I am leaving this open through the holidays because it will be more relevant then than it is now.

20me too 5

BexPlymouth, UK
#15

Coming back to what Pip wrote further up, because it is the bit I keep thinking about.

I have made a point of never describing food as good or bad in front of them, and this circle is where I learned to notice that I had been.

7me too 4