Dinner Drag

I love cooking...but I hate preparing meals. I truly love cooking. I love looking for an interesting recipe, getting all the ingredients, preparing it and presenting it to my family. But weeknight dinners? Ugh. It's getting really bad. My poor husband has been working insane hours to provide for our family and I can't even manage to cook him a decent dinner most nights. It's terrible of me, I know. I find myself starting to say I can't help it, but that's not really true. I also have a long list of excuses ready - really good excuses. Things like:

• I forgot to get the meat out to thaw.
  
• The meat I got out 3 days ago and kept putting off cooking has now spoiled.
  
• The produce that I needed has spoiled.
  
• One of the 10 ingredients I need for that dish has been used for something else.
  
• We just got home from (insert lesson here) and it's only 45 minutes until dinner.
  
• The kids won't eat it anyway.
  
• I think a migraine is coming on (happens about twice a month, but this one makes a more frequent appearance, I'm afraid!)
  
• I'd hate for my favorite local restaurants to go under due to the economy.
  
• (Nearest child) needs some "mommy time", and really, isn't that more important than a home cooked meal?
  
• The kitchen is too dirty - I need to clean it first and there simply isn't time
  

All valid excuses...right? Regardless of the reasonable nature of the excuses, the fact of the matter is that I really SHOULD be cooking dinner rather than making the poor man pick up dinner on his way home after a very long day or just throwing something together that the kids will possibly eat and he will definitely not enjoy. I tell myself it will get better when summer comes and we have the fresh produce and the grill available. What a shame June is such a long way off. For the sake of our health, our budget and most importantly, portraying to my husband how loved he is, I am now on a journey to improve my stats in the kitchen. I'd give some hard figures here, but I'm just too ashamed to admit the current state of affairs. :)