How the Hubz sees 30 Days

We're clippin' along on our 30 day exercise. I already fessed up to my failure, but my accomplice, Mr. Silly Pants, didn't dissuade me from our Chipotle boundary breaker. Still, he's on board. We had a little talk today about how he's faring with the 30 day program and it was good talk.

Generally, I perceive Silly Pants to be the 'spender' in our home. He disagrees with this characterization overall, and maintains he prefers fewer things and finer things. Me? Pack rat in his eyes. But I can say without reservation that I perceive the bitty daily spending is mostly his as he has historically regularly stopped for coffee and a scone, only occassionally packed his lunch, and is a total 'yes' man for picking up dinner on the way home. He works super hard, makes a good income, and is an extremely generous person. He feels like his life is bountiful, and a closed wallet isn't really an agenda item for him. Responsible, yes. Frugal. not really.

I thought 30 days would not have much appeal for Silly Pants, but I was wrong. He's been 'in' and reflective all along. Today he did our bi-monthly Costco run. This is something he enjoys and I would do without were it not for his williness to go and go WITH Blueberry. Good man! Today we broke through our planning malaise and he actually went with a grocery list built from a weekly meal plan. Woot for us! He stuck to the list. He mentioned that he didn't cruise the isles and passed on some items he thought were too bulk (we don't like to waste food and we are pretty particular about buying anything in 'bulk' unless we know we'll use it. Case in point, we love Amy Lu's Chicken sausages. Thumbs up to purchase these at Costco). He came home with good stuff and stuff we plan to eat. (Great steaks on the grill tonight, by the way!)  Then he went out and shoveled the driveway. We've had some snow sitting on the drive for a few days. I noticed he was shoveling with our snow scoop when in fact we have a tractor with a blade he typically likes to use. I watched him shovel for awhile and then drifted off to have a nice nap (yes, I'm a prima donna!). When he came in I asked why the scoop and he responded that he's not going to use the blade at all for these 30 days and he'll shovel instead. Yeah for Silly Pants! Finally, he mentioned that this is the month he's going to end his INSISTENCE on using super plush TP. Yep. OMG, THANK GOODNESS. He heard a green news piece on NPR about the ways in which the super squeezable toilet tissues cannot be made from recyclable materials because super soft requires "virgin" fiber lengths. Um...no comment! A little follow up on NRDC confirms that my man's need for squeezable softness has got to end. He's got me afterall, doesn't he?

I don't have a sense of how much we're actually saving on this program- not yet anyway. I'm not too concerned about that piece of the exercise. I'm much more interested in making the sorts of breakthroughs that Mr. Silly Pants and I talked about today. It felt good to make a solid and healthy weekly meal plan with attention to the demands of next week. Frankly, it felt good to pay attention. I'm going to blog about this topic, "attention," later. And, it was good conversation to talk to the hubz about how we are living. I do feel the reflective pieces of this practice are influencing our days, both individually and collectively. I like that. I like it a lot.

Here's to the simple things, like  puppet play with our little boy.