Tuesday, October 9, 2012

Dinner time


Dinner time is important to us. We all live such busy lives that it's the one time all four of us can sit down, share a meal and enjoy each other's companies.
I work full time, go to the Y about 3 to 4 times a week and about once a week or once every other week it's important that I get out with one of my friends.

My husband doesn't work outside of the home at the moment. However, he babysits our grand daughter full time, cooks about half our meals and does the majority of the cleaning ect. He is also home with the kids when I can't be.

Stephen goes to school full time. He comes home and has homework. He goes to the Y with me about once or twice a week. He goes to counseling every other week. His favorite thing to do is watch tv. He has little chores like unloading the dishwasher, setting the table. We have recently started involving him in helping feed the dogs and clean up after the animals boxes. That is basically him coming out with me and opening the doors and garbage can.

Alex works about 3 to 4 days a week. It's early mornings, afternoons and late nights. There really isn't much of a pattern to it. He gets paid weekly and we don't have a clue what he does with his money. We made him get his own phone due to him flying thru the minutes on the phone. He doesn't have any other bills. He has a new girlfriend and tends to spend a lot of time with his friends and also a neighbor of ours.

Between Alex's job, girlfriend and friends it seems as if he is never home to eat with us. We figure we should save him dinner if he is working but if we give a specific time on when we are sitting down to eat and he isn't working. We sort of expect him to grace us with his presence.

Last night, he was at work and we saved him dinner and he didn't eat. Today, we were pinching pennies and actually had to take out a small payday loan and grabbed us a couple cheap 5.00 pizzas since Stephen had a counseling appointment and it ran late.

Alex was told what told about what time we would eat and he even called me and I told him we were picking up pizza. I joked that we were going to eat it all if he wasn't home.

We had to get two pizzas compared to one if we knew Alex wasn't going to be home. We just find it very rude and been feeling like he is treating us like a hotel. He came home an hour after we ate and we wouldn't let him eat the leftover pizza. I notice if its a home cooked meal he is more likely not to ask about the leftovers unless we specifically show him it for him to eat.

We were not totally mean and didn't feed him. We let him make himself a couple PB and jelly sandwiches. If it was a matter of him working we would have allowed him the pizza. However, if he is going to ignore dinner time due to hanging out then he isn't going to come home and eat and run.

Maybe, we would feel different if we weren't not kind of broke. We have been struggling lately and it seems hard to catch up. My children's father didn't pay his child support and when I asked about the job name and address to send papers to for child support he asked for me to please let him handle it. I know my husband doesn't agree with it but I am going to at leave give him the chance. I can only wait another week or so though.

We plan on charging Alex rent but can't really agree to really go through with it at the moment since he is under 18 years of age. In November, he will be 18 and no longer going to be on child support ect. I know some people might not agree with charging rent but we are just not in a position to let him live here for free.

I really hope Alex comes around for dinner more often. It took me a while to get into the swing of things for cooking for 4 people compared to 3 and adult or not.. I think meal time is family time.

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