Life Beneath the Surface
Meal Plan November 8-14 | Simple November meal ideas for busy moms and tired weeks
Dinner
Saturday: [daytime birthday party] Baked Mac N Cheese (from freezer stash) + bagged salad
Sunday: [rainy afternoon] Slow Cooker Salsa Verde Chicken
Monday Encheladas using leftover salsa verde chicken
Tuesday: [Daycare Closed, very cold] Slow Cooker Sausage, Spinach and White Bean Soup + sourdough toast
Wednesday [very cold] Halal Guys Inspired Chicken and Rice Skillet
Thursday Maple and Miso Sheet-Pan Salmon With Green Beans
Friday: [Mom out] Americanized Sweet & Sour Chicken with rice
Lunch
Miso Broiled Tofu + bagged salad
Snack
Snack formula: 1 Crunchy element, 1 chewy element, 1 sweet element, 1 salty element (carb, protein, fruit, veg, dried fruit).... Salty puffed edamame, prune, yogurt pouch, cucumber
Breakfast
Oatmeal
Bagels + cream cheese
Babyfood
I found myself sending voice notes this week that began with, “I don’t have the bandwidth for a call, but I wanted you to know I’m thinking of you.” I might need to offer the same sentiment here on Substack.
My mind has been split: planning this week’s menu while sketching out Thanksgiving, playing with my kids while coordinating holiday playdates and winter birthdays, writing case notes while trying to finish a few pieces for Katie Rose In The Office so I don’t have to think about work over the holidays. It feels like a real test of my commitment to the Three Selves philosophy of self-care.
It’s Friday and I’m exhausted. My son doesn’t watch much TV, but we’ve slipped into a tradition of letting him watch a movie on Friday nights. He has learned the days of the week quickly as he counts down to get to it. It’s very cute, and also a reminder of how easily screens and stimulation grab hold of our brains. I’m trying to write a piece about that for my professional Substack, but my own adult brain is too overstimulated to make sense of anything I’m trying to say. It’s just one of those weeks… again.
Even though I’m tired, overcommitted, and have received a few stern but loving warnings from my husband and two friends to stop signing myself up for extra projects, I think I’ll make stove-popped popcorn for movie night. I get a kick out of watching it work every time. I grew up on microwave popcorn, so the real thing still feels like magic. That’s the thing: even when I don’t feel like cooking, a kitchen project rarely feels like work. I don’t meditate but I do cook and that feels pretty close.
In sessions this week, I found myself repeatedly explaining changes in our attention as imagery for the idea that our lives mirror nature. We have seasons of bloom and vibrancy — spring, summer, even parts of autumn— and times of spareness that allow us to reflect and appreciate when the vibrancy returns. But winter isn’t a time of death. Trees drop their leaves and pull their energy inward, down their trunks and into their roots, where there is still life, still warmth, just out of sight.
I feel myself entering my own winter season. Literally, as the sun disappears by 4:30 PM, and figuratively, as my creativity and inspiration draw inward too. The signs of life are still there, just smaller: a menu planned, a case note finished, a big bowl of steaming stove-popped popcorn while my son watches his Friday movie.