I Can't Believe It's Not Butter

     I’m not sure when my obsession over the butter started. My guess is it was lurking when I went to the grocery store Friday, and just came to full light Sunday evening.
     It was one of those weeks when bills overtook my paycheck, so there wasn’t as much left as usual for groceries. It wasn’t a major thing, it happens from time to time, so I’m used to it. And it’s not like we had no food in the house. We had a little of this and a little of that, enough I could make do with till next payday. I planned the supper menus carefully...finish the chicken one night, biscuit and gravy another night; how many nights we could have mashed potatoes and which nights I would have to fry them. Just enough eggs, butter, cornmeal. You’ve probably been there.
     Then Sunday night my wonderful husband decided to fix everybody a flitter for supper. That would have been great, but his gesture was lost on me because all I could focus on was the fact that he used almost all the butter! The butter that was supposed to last me all week! I griped and growled, and didn’t get my flitter. I ate a nice bowl of Rice Krispies when I got home from church. No butter needed thank goodness.
     Then Monday night, he decides he wants spaghetti for supper (which we had to eat with no meat because that wasn’t on my menu so I hadn’t bought any ground beef). When I asked him if he wanted cheese toast with that, I "politely" pointed out that I couldn’t make our usual toasted bread because...we had no butter! "But I left a little." "I had to use that little bit to make [my son’s] grilled cheese because he doesn’t like spaghetti with no meat, and he’s eating chili and grilled cheese."
     "I’m sorry your sandwich is not as buttery as you’d like, son, but Daddy used all the butter."
     "I can’t help it if you don’t want fried potatoes tonight, dear, but I can’t make mashed potatoes because I have no butter."
     "We would have more beans to go with the fried potatoes if you hadn’t used one can with your flitter." (Don’t look at me like that, you know you’ve opened a can before!)
     "Mama, you didn’t make the macaroni right. You didn’t put any butter in it." "Daddy used it all."
     As a matter of fact, those bad hair days...he used all the butter. That fender-bender I was in Monday...he used all the butter. That argument I had with a client...I’m pretty sure is somehow tied to him using all the butter. The declining economy, the unrest in the Middle East... OK, so maybe not those last ones, but you get the idea. Even I was realizing I had a problem.
     But why was I so stuck on this?! Why couldn’t I just go get more butter?! I think it was because my plans had been shot. I had things worked out and scheduled just the way I wanted them. And he didn’t even ask me about the butter. He just wanted what he wanted and used whatever he needed and didn’t seem to care that I might have plans for the butter.
     Aww, man...spiritual lesson! No, Lord, I don’t hear you whining when I don’t ask you about your plans. And, no, Lord, I don’t see you carrying on when you have to rework your schedule around my wants. Yes, Lord. I’ll just suck it up and go get more butter. And I’ll get more milk too, because we might run out before the end of the week.