To want my tea on the table when I get home from work?

[FrameyMcFrame]

I make the tea five days a week, including on the two weekdays I work and finish at three. Dp makes it on the weekend when I'm at work all day.

When I get home I'm starving, the kids are starving and DP is bimbling around in the kitchen drinking wine and listening to music. This goes on for about an hour usually until I get so pissed off I go in and finish it off for him and get it served out.
There's just no urgency for him to get food on the table and feed us all. I get pissed off when I'm hungry.
When he's at work I manage to get the tea ready on time before all hell breaks loose with hungry children going up the wall.
Grrr.

What does he say when you ask him if he can do this?

One word of advice: Serve the dinner before he arrives, then sit with a glass of wine and the music of your choice when he arrives. Don't offer to re heat the food or anything unless he gets fed up and do it himself.

bimbling. Stealing that. Sounds like what a bee does when it's pissed.

YANBU ask him to please start cooking a bit before you're due to get home. Hanging around waiting ages for food is a pain in the ass.

Chandra gives excellent advice! Do that!

Tell him you and the kids need it an hour earlier than you really do?

My OH is also crap - spends 3x as long getting a dinner ready than I do and it's always about an hour late so I get overhungry...

He always says sorry in a rather exasperated way but then the same thing happens again the next time he makes tea....

at Chandras idea!

So feed the kids, eat yourself but don't have his ready. Get round to it after an hour or so. If he says anything, say well, since you always prepare my food to be served at this time, naturally I assumed this is your preferred time for eating.

or maybe not. Perhaps I'm a bitch.

Does he know what time you'd like dinner? You have to tell them (gross generalisation ) explicitly and unquestionably clear instructions.

Hecate, he probably wouldn't notice the irony! He's a lovely bloke really, he just sees cooking the tea as a fun relaxing activity not one that has to be performed with maximum efficiency as hungry people are waiting.

I'm just that your DP even makes the dinner. I make the dinner the days DP works and on his days off I usually get 2so what were you thinking of doing for dinner?"

BUT I work one day a week and if DP is off on this day (kids still usually in nursery) he'll pick up the kids and if I'm lucky he'll feed them but NEVER has dinner ready for us, he says oh I thought we could get something later, I'm usually starving! Things will change in January when my mat leave finishes!

He's off for a week this week so will be interesting to see if he offers to cook at least once!

My DP must be a clone of yours Framey. He can bimble for England. The kids have finally got used to the fact that Dads dinner will be hours later than their hunger, so they have a little snack about 5 to keep them going.
However, his cooking is great, so we tend to put up with the delays.

dh drinks coffee, listens to music and is probably also bimbling, though he may be faffing around and not prioritising what is important. depends on the exact definition of bimbling

suggest you tell him that the children need to be fed at....(1 hour before they need to be fed)
or you grab a snack for yourself and the children. if he complains that they did't eat the tea he cooked tell him they may have done if they had been fed at the proper time. it will have the double advantage of stopping you getting so pissed off when you are hungry. know that feeling!

This is my life too. Dh is world class at bimbling. On a school night if dd1 isn't fed and in bed by 8 she'll more than likely get a migraine the next day (she's 9). Drives me mad.

i don't agree with all the posters saying to try on some passive aggressive shit - just explain to DH at an appropriate time (i.e. not in front of the kids, not whilst he's making tea, not whilst you're starving) that he needs to get tea done for you getting in, so that you can all eat at the normal time. I.e. as if you'd made it.

I really don't think you need to decend to the level of making everyone's tea but his, letting it get cold etc - just explain in a non-confrontational way that you need him to realise this is a problem for you in an adult
manner.

Perhaps he's geneuinely just a slower cook than you - if so, you'll need to have a chat and give him some ideas on quicker teas that he can do. And make sure all the ingredients are in for him.

I'm quite at poeople praising your DH for getting tea ready as well on here. Or the idea that DHs wouldn't make tea if they're in first/etc. Frankly, the idea that DH would be off work for a week and I'd be grateful for him making tea once or twice whilst I'm at work? Fuck that shite, I don't know how some of you put up with it.

bimbling is listed as made-up-word though i note there is a MNer called \BImble too whos name predates taht usage.

not from Cornwall are you?

that's where DH is from and he uses the word bimble plentifully.

it seems a Cornish thing to do, what wiht all the fresh air and lack of urgency you get from living many hours drive from civilisation.

"to bimble" - it's got to make the new edition of the Oxford English dictionary. Def. describes my DH too.

Have you ever told him how hungry you are when you get home? Have you tried phoning an hour or so before you leave to say you'll be leaving soon and would love to be able to walk in to a cooked meal on the table?

Agree with frgr. I have a DH who isn't good at getting dinner done on time, but he damn well pulls his weight.

Tip for the OP: ring him at 4 and remind him to start prepping now! Works for us!

To be honest my DH has cooked for me the grand total of 5 times in our entire relationship - I am including cheese on toast in my classification of him cooking. It took him 45 mins to create...

Really there are better hills to die on than this. Just get something cold which sits in the fridge or something you can zap in the microwave. Or insist that he takes you out to dinner.

Were you not starving hungry watching DH bimbling round the kitchen drinking wine and bopping along to CDs might be quite fun.

Get him a slow cooker plus recipe book for Xmas. Buy all the ingredients for a specific meal b4 hand - explain that it needs to be in the pot after breakfast and leave him to it.

Give him an exact time to feed the kids and put a reminder on the fridge. Set an alarm clock to remind him.

My Dh is very slow at getting the kids to bed and struggles with time keeping. I think he is being a bit selfish to be honest in not thinking about the needs of others. They find it hard to cope the next day after a late night - and I'm the one who deals with it.

See, I hate to eat as soon as I come in. I need to unwind a bit first. Make sure he knows you like it as soon as you get in.
Give him a call/text as you leave work with expected eta.

Well... I don't think my suggestion is passive aggressive, I was just suggesting for her to put her feet up after her hard work at work and with the children, and after ensuring the children well were fed.

I am sure that the OP has discussed in every sort of manners, from politely asking her husband not to starve the children on the day she is working late to take over from him when he is not able to do it.

IMO she is getting all worked up because she keeps to her part of the agreement, while he doesn't. My suggestion is, if you can't get him to keep to the agreement, take it easy on yourself too.

I don't buy that rubbish that men will be men, that they do far more and get more exhausted by working full time than women do, and that men are unable to pull their weight with regards to household shores (thousands of sinlge men are able to do the ironing, washing and to ensure they don't starve themselves, if he doesn't pull his weight she is not supposed to take over on yet another of his few responsibilities.)