A Little Consideration, Please!

Some of you will absolutely filet me for the following post and some of you may agree with me but I’ve reached a level of frustration that must be relieved. I mentioned when I started this blog that Tina and I are living with my parents while I return to school and take our lives in a new direction. This living arrangement allows me to go to school full-time without having to work, which helps me focus on school.
This arrangement is not without its share of annoyances though. My parents are totally different people than Tina and I, especially when it comes to food, eating habits and meal planning. Every Sunday Tina and I sit down and plan the weekly menu. This helps us save money since we only buy what we need at the grocery store instead of aimlessly wandering the aisles picking up random junk, which is what my mother does.
We are almost neurotic about our food. Like I said, we only buy what we need in order to prevent waste and save money. I get lunch meat at the deli for my school lunches and often only buy 12 slices—two sandwiches worth-- of whichever meat I want that week. Tina also buys a little extra of whatever she plans on making for dinner so she can have leftovers for lunch. Once again, this is how we plan our weekly meals in order to save money. Problem is, occasionally I will come home and find my lunchmeat gone or three or four slices missing and Tina has woken up on numerous times only to find her lunch eaten or missing. This isn’t a huge deal but it does cause us to have to buy our lunches at school or work on those days, which defeats the purpose of trying to cut costs.
We have tried to politely address the issue with my parents, explaining to them our efforts to plan meals in advance, purchase only what we need at the store, and not spend excessive money buying food court lunches. Honestly, Tina and I feel that if you didn’t buy it at the grocery store, you shouldn’t eat it when it’s in the fridge.
Our reasoning behind that thought process isn’t completely based on money either. Without going into too much detail, let me just say that Tina and I are very conscious about washing our hands and not licking our fingers or sticking them in our noses or ears before we touch food. Not everyone in the house shares our views on food preparation hygiene though. You can imagine our concern when we see that our food has been handled.
Now that I have given you some background, let’s get to this morning’s frustration. Last night before we went to bed, Tina took some sausage out of the freezer to thaw so she could get up and make sausage gravy this morning. Well, she and I slept in this morning and were awoken with the aroma of sausage floating throughout the house. This is when Tina told me of her intentions for that sausage and that she knew that my parents didn’t have any sausage. So now she is upset which naturally gets me upset.
I immediately got up and went to the kitchen and asked my mother if she was cooking with the sausage that Tina had taken out. She told me yes and I explained to her that Tina had planned to make gravy with that sausage. She replied that they were out of bacon so they made the sausage and that they already planned on going out to buy us more. OK, I’m not exactly fine with that but I’m not a total asshole so I left it at that.
Here’s where, in my opinion, the lack of consideration comes in. After my parents ate breakfast they sat around watching television and drinking coffee, knowing that Tina and I were waiting on them to replace our sausage so we could eat breakfast. Yes, we could have changed our plans and eaten something else but why should we have to alter our plans because of their inconsideration? The way I see it, if they didn't have what they needed for breakfast, they should have changed their plans, not infringed upon ours. Tina was looking forward to making that gravy. By the time they left for the grocery store it was a quarter past ten. By the time they got home it was noon, well past breakfast time. It turns out that while we were waiting for them to replace the food that we had planned for our breakfast, the same food that they ate because they never actually plan their meals and shop very randomly, they went and visited some friends, too. I am so happy you enjoyed your breakfast, can we eat today too?
I know that some of you may think I am overreacting and I would agree with you if this was the first, second or third time this has happened but it isn’t. We moved in last December and this is a weekly occurrence. They don’t buy the food that they need at the grocery store and when they run out they just start eating ours without any consideration to what we are going to eat. For example, my parents eat a total of three eggs a day: two for my stepfather and one for my mother. But when we go to the grocery store on Sunday, my mother only buys one dozen eggs. Guess whose eggs they eat once they run out. Tina and I only eat eggs on the weekends. Unfortunately, by the time the weekend comes, we usually don’t have any.
Making matters worse, although they will replace whatever food of ours they have eaten, they will take their time doing so, even if we are waiting. Also, they won’t replace like with like. Tina and I eat organic everything. We buy organic eggs, meats, milk, veggies, etc. When they drink our organic 2% milk, they replace it with regular whole milk, which we don’t drink, so we end up replacing it ourselves anyways. If they eat our free range organic eggs, they replace them with regular which, once again, we don’t eat. So we end up spending more money on replacing food that we never even got the opportunity to eat.
OK, I’ve ranted long enough. Now I leave the floor open to you. Tell me that I’m an overreacting, ungrateful bastard.