Food Shopping (or advanced project management for domestic engineers))

As I am currently not in the 'real world' but wallowing in what my husband refers to as 'leisure time' (you can imagine how that goes down with yours truely..).I thought that I would share the advanced skills that the domestic engineer is required to have when planning the weekly shop for a family of four. Having been a senior project manager in a big PLC, I know the pressures behind any project. The three limiting factors: time, money (or budget) and scope creep. The latter is when as the project begins, requirements start to increase, which then puts pressure on the other two limiting factors.

So initially, one needs to see what resources already exist within the area covered by the project (which we will refer from now on as WS project - Weekly Shop) This requires a look within cupboards, fridge, freezer, and treat cupboard. Now if you are of a certain type of managment style, (a 'reflector' or team player) you might make of note of what is missing and what you need more of. However, if you are of the 'shaper', or risk-taker ilk, you will not bother to take a note and rely on your amazing ability to retain only the information that you think is a priority. So for an example, remember there is no chocolate for you, or cereals for the kids, forget the corned beef for the husband. If you are a 'plant' or a creative, you wont bother to take a look at all, as you will be looking for inspiration once you get your shopping destination. If you are a born entrepreneur, then you have no time to think about shopping and have already either ordered it online, or got someone else to do it for you. Life is too short to worry about such trivialities when you have the world to conquer. Having had my management style assessed several times over the years, I have been red, green and yellow, a shaper, chairman with plant tendencies and the latest was a working-dog crossed with guard-dog. So I apply what I know of my personal strengths and weaknesses in a quick SWOT analysis in my head, and decide what is required. This does mean sometimes that I do forget things. The big win, is, that it saves time and I can head out of the door preety sharpish (therefore on time). Of course, like with any project, there are left-fielders that come in. This morning it was youngest son saying he had run out of toothpaste, and husband after some beers, as I never remember to buy him any drink. (I always remember my wine, though..)

The next thing is to think about budget. Now last week, was record-breaking. I was under budget by £30 and have no idea how I managed that, but at the management meeting (dinner, Monday night) I shared the good news with the Non-exec but nosey director of our domestic establishment (my husband). "Well, perhaps", (his response was,)"we could be under-budget every week". Of course, these statements are meaningless. It was the end of the month, and I was hiding the turnover figures of the last 4 weeks, so I did cut down...

Now, if you shop online, or scan your shopping, you have a pretty good idea of how close you are to budget, but I am a 'risk-taker' and I enjoy the thrill of taking a bet, once its uploaded onto the conveyor, of how much I have spent. Of course to get to this point I have gone through numerous permutations, calculations, the recipe book in my head, the social committments for the family that week, and the latest fads and dislikes of my two children. Of course, there does tend to be scope creep when thinking about what meals you are to plan. Sometimes a good piece of fish, or meat can turn my plans on their head, or there is an offer and I can't refuse it. I obviously do shop for four, and as we don't eat out and the kids have sandwiches, that does mean that I am responsible for providing nutritious meals with some choice three times a day, seven days a week. It works out at eighty-four meals. The dog and cat are easy, they eat the same thing all the time. Now, you may say, that if I cooked the same thing for everybody, then I could cut down my meal variations. Yes, two or three times a week, we eat as a family and have the same food. However, my children's palates are not as evolved as mine, and occasionally I want food that is not boring and has taste. My husband would live on nursery food, if he was allowed a choice, but he isn't as I do the shopping and the cooking, so he has to indulge me with eating healthy, Low GI, tasty concoctions and not just pie and mash every night. Breakfasts are good at the moment, eldest son eats the same thing every morning, and for a change so is younger son. This is novel, as when he was little, he hated breakfast. Under pressure as a mother, he then got the biggest choice of breakfast delights, so that he would just eat something, and so, like all habits, they are fixed and I have to keep a smorgasbord of delights so that he will eat something. Yes, I am the fool, but sometimes, life is just too short to be perfect mother all the time.

Scope creep does kick in around the drinks aisle. There, I have said it. A lovely fizz on offer, gets my vote, as does a really good pinot noir. Sometimes an extra bottle gets put in, in case we have guests who pop over. The worst type of scope creep is when you are dawdling around the aisles and you remember that you are out of dishwasher tablets or washing powder. Its expensive, it eats into wine and nice meals budget, but it needs to be done. Having tried cheap dishwasher tablets, they are a false economy, so like any project I have been involved with, if you pay peanuts, or go for cheaper quality, you end up paying the price somewhere down the line.

Anyway, having just read what I have written, I am going to stop here and get a life (well walk the dog) Perhaps I am obsessing too much? Or perhaps, all us domestic engineers just need a rant now and then so that those in the 'real world' realise that our skills are not wasted or dormant and if given the chance, we could run a PLC or INC as good as anyone who is in the job at the moment!!!

 

Posted with Blogsy

'The Dog's B******s'

'The Dog's B******s' is a funny phrase. In colloquial English, it means something is fantastic, the best it could be, it's 'pukka' or 'kosher'. Its easy to see where the last two descriptive words came from, and how they relate easily to something that is excellent or as good as it could be, but how could something, that as humans we value so little, can be considered the same? According to the Urban Dictionary

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Dog's%20Bollocks

It has the meaning of 'creme de la creme' (another adopted foreign phrase) because as dogs spend so long licking their testicles, they must be very tasty. Ummmmm. Well anyway, as you can tell from the picture above, my puppy no longer has that pleasure. They were removed yesterday at my command. This got me thinking about hypocracy. There I am, espousing sex being the most basic human instinct and we ignore it at our peril, but at the same time I am denying my dog his most basic instinct and urge because it doesn't suit my lifestyle. How can I justify my decision? Well, I turn to the expert in dogs, Caesar Milan, the 'dog whisperer' whose excellent book, "How to raise the Perfect Dog through puppyhood and beyond" (Hodder, 2010) gives some excellent context on this procedure. Where he grew up in Mexico, dogs were everywhere, and were 'at it' all the time, so there was a real problem with the numbers of stray dogs. However, when considering their behaviour, they were never agressive (on the whole) and were mostly laid back and lazy, when not 'on the job'. These dogs were fufulling their natural urges and were sated and happy. However, the results of their lifestyle choices were too many stray dogs, spread of canine disease and a public nuisence, in terms of excrement, scavaging and noise.

In Western culture, we don't encourage our dogs to procreate at random. In fact we actively stop any behaviours associated with it, 'humping' legs, tables, toys, you name it! According to Caesar, in sexually mature dogs, denying this natural urge through behavioural methods means that their natural urges are then redirected in other unwanted behaviours. In some dogs this can be pent up agression. In others, its running off. In others its plain hyper-activity. In his view, the earlier that you neuter a dog the better, as then they have less chance of developing these unwanted behaviours and the dog does not miss the hormonal rush that comes from sexual maturity. In fact, according to him, it is much crueller to keep a dog who is sexually mature but not allowed to procreate than it is to neuter him, so he doesn't know what he is missing. Caesar is all about training dogs by working with their natural instincts, and having read several books on the matter and regularly attending Kennel Club approved training, his advice and insights have been by far the most true.

So, considering my puppy is living in a human setting and is a domesticated animal, he will, in the end be a happy more contented animal living in a non-natural environment, than if I kept him 'intact' where his sexual urges completely dominate his every waking thought and behaviour. (According to Caesar, their urge to procreate takes over their urge to hunt once they reach sexual maturity, especially if they don't have to hunt for their food.)

So my mind is salved, my conscience is clear. Whether I will get over the guilt I feel about putting a cone on his head, I don't know but it is something that I will have to live with.

Just as an interesting criminlogical aside. There was in a the past, an experiment of castrating male violent prisoners, to remove their agressive tendencies and also to assist them (or more likely their gaolers) to cope with being cooped up. Unfortunately, forced human castration has far more reaching effects on the personality of males, and was ultimately considered an abbuse of human rights. Of course, in history, castrated males have held symbolic roles and positions. In the Chinese Han Dynasties, they were an essential part of court and would carry their testicles around with them, as a symbol of their position and purity. Castrato singers achieved their unique voices through being castrated before sexual maturity. The last castrato was Alessandro Moreschi born in 1858. There is a recording of his voice on You tube.

One thing, though which is a truth, male testicles are directly linked with their sexuality and their personality and although as women, sometimes we think we would all be better off if they were chopped off, would we really like the results? Once they are gone.. they can never be replaced!!

 

Posted with Blogsy

Coffee, Liqueur Chocolates and Guilt?

It's that time of the morning, near 11 o'clock. My feet automatically hot foot it to the coffee machine. There is something comforting about being middle-aged and having these small rituals every day. When you complete the ritual, then all the world is at peace but sometimes, when work or activities interfere with that ritual, there is a feeling of something jarring, something not quite right. I have the same thing about listening to 'Women's hour on BBC Radio 4'. I love knowing that at 10 o'clock, I will be able to switch it on and get on with housework, or writing, or some such nonsense. When I miss it, or only start listening, at, say, 10.20 am, I feel cheated. Sad but true. Thank goodness for iplayer!! So this morning, to shake things up a bit and not get too complacent, I decided to live a little and have a liqueur chocolate with my coffee. There was an initial thought of 'liqueur chocolates are just for Christmas' but then I silenced this voice by saying to myself, "well at £1.19 for a packet of them, it can be Christmas every day". It was a Whiskey cream one, so by shoving that in my mouth and then a sip of coffee, it was like liqueur coffee heaven! It was naughty, but it was so very definitely nice. Sometimes, you have to force yourself to get out of the rut. The older you get, and the more comfortable the rut gets, the more difficult it is. In my book, I say that sex needs to be a two-way street. Comfortable with the status-quo is fine, but eventually, comfortable can become boring. One or the other starts looking for the 'treat' for the liqueur chocolate, something a little bit special, something perhaps like making love on a school night, and not just Sunday morning when the kids are downstairs watching TV..... I wont be having a liqueur chocolate every day... but Monday morning was certainly more special because of it.

 

Posted with Blogsy