Overcomplicators Anonymous

Making Black Beans and Learning to Let Go - a memoir by me, and maybe you, too

potentially overcomplicated black beans and rice

There’s a scene in the movie Julie and Julia (an almost too charming Norah Ephron film adaptation, of the book by the same name, following Julie Powell as she cooks her way through Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking) where Julie is cooking in her tiny kitchen and nothing is turning out quite right and all the (life) frustrations are crescendoing  and she just falls to the floor crying “everything is falling down.” That’s very much the mood over here this week, it’s all falling down: the world is weird, the kids just ended the longest summer break of all time, 3 month old baby has been uncharacteristically fussy, I’m covered in spit-up and yesterday I had more meltdowns than all three kids combined.

During last night’s check-in (where we tiredly try to access our deeply repressed emotions of the day after the kids go to bed and before the doom scrolling begins) my partner gently reminded me— You don’t have to make every meal…