Deja Vu

This has been a week a deja vu. Do you ever get the feeling in your relationships that you have the same conversations over and over again? They go away for a while. You think they're resolved. Everything is going along smoothly...then these same issues manage to bubble their way back up to the surface. And I'm not talking about big, weighty, life-changing issues. I am talking about trivial, everyday matters.

This year, we received a rather large tax return...those kids come in handy exactly one (and only one) time per year. When we received our return, Ruanita and I sat down and decided where we would spend that money. On Tuesday of this week, I updated our checkbook and paid this month's bills. In the process, I found that we had dipped into some of that money that had been put aside for other expenses. Looking back through the month, we discovered that most of that money had gone toward eating out. So....our eating out conversation has resurfaced. Here we go again. Are we never going to get this right?

Yes, we spend entirely too much money eating out. We're exhausted all the time with the schedules we keep and we never want to cook. One of us does not do it more often than the other...we are equally guilty. So I can't blame it all on Ruanita...dammit! It's something we have to change. It is draining our bank account and quite frankly, it is making us fat. I firmly believe that, left to my own cooking devices, I would have the body of a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model if I stopped eating out. (Perhaps that is overly optimistic, but I am going with it.) All of that food is killing us. However, we've said this at least a hundred times before. We have had this exact conversation more times than I can count. It all sounds well and good in theory. We do great for a day or two. We write out meal plans. We buy the things we need to cook. I find some delicious-looking recipes. We're all set and ready to go. Then the weekend hits...we're tired...Chinese take-out calls to us...and we're done. It's all over. So how do you change a habit that is firmly ingrained in a 12-year relationship? We've been having this conversation for 12 years....that's 4380 days! You would think we would be out of breath by now.