Last week, I couldn’t decide what to eat for lunch until I looked at the weather forecast. It wasn’t even as simple as needing to know what the current weather conditions were. No, I needed a forecast.
On the weekend, we had discussed going to a swanky restaurant near our place on Tuesday night. But on Monday, the weatherman forecasted a nice, warm, sunny Tuesday. Prime opportunity to put up the Christmas lights when Hubby got home from work.
No, not so he could put up the Christmas lights; so he could hold the ladder while I put up the lights. I’m taller than he is, and he’s afraid of heights. I’m okay with heights, but I’m afraid of ladders unless he’s holding them. We’re a team.
So I decided to cook a pot of stew Tuesday night so we wouldn’t have to run around trying to get the lights up before rushing off to our dinner reservation. We agreed to go out Wednesday night instead.
But Tuesday’s forecast was wrong. The temperature dropped steadily, a bone-cutting wind blew in from the east, and snow sifted down. We lost interest in putting up the lights, but we ate at home and stuck with our plans for Wednesday.
Until evening, when we discovered it was supposed to dump snow overnight. So we decided to wait and see what Wednesday morning was like before making the final decision on dinner. Neither of us has any particular fear of driving in the snow; after all, we’re Canadian. We’d have to confine our outings to ten minutes in August if we were afraid of driving in the snow.
But it’s annoying to fight the idiot drivers, so we tend not to actively seek out snow-driving.
Fast-forward (or, in the case of this blog post, “drag agonizingly toward an obscure but hopefully imminent conclusion”) to Wednesday noon.
I went downstairs for lunch, opened the fridge door, and realized that the only thing worth eating was the leftover stew. Fine… except that there was enough stew for two.
So if we weren’t going out, it would make more sense for me to make something else and save the leftover stew for supper. But if we were going out, I could eat the stew for lunch, go out for dinner1, and then eat stew again for Thursday’s lunch.
Only one catch: It was snowing lightly. If it was going to dump snow, we’d probably want to stay home. If it was going to hold off until after supper, we’d probably go. Time to check the weather forecast.
Heavy snowfall warning.
Guess I’ll make something for lunch…
Phone rings.
Hubby says, “Let’s go out tonight. It’s going to snow, so the restaurant won’t be too busy.”
*facepalm*
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1Note: I grew up in the country. ‘Breakfast’ was in the morning, ‘dinner’ was at noon, ‘lunch’ was at four o’clock, and ‘supper’ was at six. Then I got out into the big world and discovered that urbanites referred to the noon meal as ‘lunch’, the six o’clock meal as ‘dinner’, and there was no four o’clock meal! City dwellers are sick bastards. So now I usually call ‘dinner’ ‘lunch’, and ‘supper’ ‘supper’, unless I’m going out for ‘dinner’…
Have I confused you yet? What do you call your meals? (And why are you trying to slap me?)
Author Diane Henders 
This is great. I get it! I normally end up having brunch (about sometime between 11am and 3ish). I don’t do mornings. (On which point, you scare me. Most of your blogs are posted before 9:00 am. This is the first one I’ve found that is posted at 9. The earliest was about 7:30 (I think) that’s insane! How?!?)
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LOL! I admit it: I’m one of those sicko morning people. But you’re probably just picking up speed at 10 PM, when I’m starting to drag my sorry ass in the direction of the bedroom.
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Farm kid here, too. Same meals as you. In the city it was lunch and dinner. Here in Ukraine it is dinner and supper (translated from the Russian).
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Interesting – I wonder how much of Europe uses that. Maybe my terminology isn’t as unusual as I thought. 🙂
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I only know about the whole dinner/supper confusion because I read Little House on the Prairie and Little Women when I was a kid. I had to explain it to Dimples the other day and she looked at me like I was from outer space.
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I admit it… I’m a freak. 🙂
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Snow, snow…that’s the white stuff that used to cover Wisconsin for like half the year, right?
Yeah, haven’t seen any of that lately. I guess it decided to stay in Canada this year. Can’t blame it, really.
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Yes, I’m pretty sure we’re getting somebody else’s share this year.
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Mimosa, Bloody Mary, Beer, Beer, Gin and Tonic, Jack Daniels — that is the proper order for meals. Then, a nice ride in the country on my Fatboy. Funeral will be next week. HF
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Ah, that’s the difference between me and a person of culture such as yourself. I never did develop a taste for mimosas. I shall, however, remember to write a touching eulogy for your liver. May I have your Fatboy when you’re done with it? 🙂
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My liver fled the territory long ago!
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Ah, Diane… decisions and curve balls. Always tricky when food and the weather become connected.
We call lunch dinner here, and dinner tea. And a later meal, or snack, is supper. Things get very complicated at times…
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Aha – I learn something new every day. I’d heard “tea” used before, but I had always (obviously incorrectly) assumed it was my beloved four o’clock meal. It’s okay, though, as long as one can still squeeze in three meals between noon and bedtime. 🙂
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My family was/is a breakfast/lunch/dinner crew. I never heard the term “supper” except on television. I always assumed it was just a synonym for “dinner,” until it was explained to me that in some households, dinner and supper are two entirely different things. I make sure I keep my bases covered by eating all of those meals. It’s just good manners.
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Very wise and gracious indeed. I shall strive to adopt your selfless attitude. 🙂
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Glad to see mine isn’t the only family that does this.
I grew up calling dinner ‘supper,’ but now I get funny looks when I say that, so I try to remember to say ‘dinner.’ Though lunch is still ‘lunch.’ 🙂
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Was “lunch” always “lunch” when you were growing up? Or is that a recent adaptation, too?
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No–it was always lunch, even my few years in Saskatchewan. 🙂
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you actaully explained the exact reason why I would starve to death if my wife wasn’t around.lol she is my life support. I take out the trash and fix anything broken and she feeds me, we are a team 🙂
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Sounds like a good deal to me. But then, I’m easily influenced if food is involved. 🙂
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Just thinking about all the horrible memory as a single guy when I couldn’t figure out what to eat for dinner. and how it always defaulted to some cheetos, munchos, and coke if nothing got resolved by midnight. That was some real rough time
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In my next life, I want to be a weatherperson.
In what other job can you be wrong most of the time and still get paid for it?
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Too right. Here in Calgary the weather is so changeable, they only manage 40% accuracy (yes, apparently there is somebody who measures those sorts of things). I suspect the weather people know they haven’t got a hope of getting it right, so they just tell us what they think we want to hear. 🙂
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As a native of Western New York, and having grown up in the snow-belt, I understand how a sudden three feet of snow can alter your plans.
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Funny how that happens…
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Let’s not forget lupper and / or lunner. For the undecided, there’s supner or dinper. And for the really adventurous, supfast and dinfast. Go back in time and you get lunfast, breakner, and / or breakper, dinunch, and supunch.
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I feel like a just took a supunch to the head…
Maybe I’ll just resurrect an old Low-German term, “faspa” (“light meal”). That tradition came from my mom’s side of the family, and it usually involved homemade buns, meat, cheese, pickles, and copious amounts of baked goodies. We ate faspa anytime after noon and before six (but not to the exclusion of lunch/dinner and supper). That won’t confuse anybody, will it?
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Ohhh . . thanks for telling me about faspa. I love pickles, and I’m pretty sure I’m a Low-“Something.” 😀
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Breakfast, lunch, dinner. Or (if I’m honest about my eating habits) breakfast, brunch, lunch, snack, supper, dinner, snack.
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I think I love you…
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I don’t want to slap you,I want to hug you. I thought I was the only one that had this problem. Ok I grew up in Oregon, breakfast lunch dinner. THEN I move to Alabama, Breakfast dinner and supper. Ahh the great grand confusion of it all. Now I just say: ” You know,the next meal” 🙂
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Oh, good, I’m glad I’m not the only one! I guess as long as there’s a meal coming up in the near future, it’s all good. But I still mourn the loss of the four o’clock meal. 🙂
Thanks for visiting and commenting!
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