08/25/2010

 

 

Today has been very, very long.  It was second of two days off, but truthfully, my days off don’t feel like days of rest and relaxation anymore.  They feel more like work than the work does.

Lately, I feel so overwhelmed about all of the things I’m expected to do, both by myself and other people.  I work, lately almost 40 hours a week.  Then, I come home and fight a losing battle trying to keep the house clean.  (Seriously, some days my house looks like one of those crackhead flophouses on COPS….it’s disgusting and embarrassing, but I’m never here so I can only do so much about it.)  When I should be spending time with the kids, who have missed me through the week, instead I’m doing laundry or picking up trash or doing business stuff or just plain trying to keep up with everything.  Plus, Chloe starts preschool in two weeks, so naturally I’ve been planning that and trying to get her on some kind of a daily schedule in the hope it might alleviate some of the behavior problems we’re having.

Today, I finally got tired enough of my kitchen looking like a blown up science lab that I stuffed my headphones in my ears, cranked up my MP3 player and went on a cleaning binge.  I scrubbed my stove to within an inch of it’s life, cleaned off the table, swept up a bunch of junk, and made two lasagnas (one for dinner and one to freeze for later).  I felt much better after I was able to get even than little bit accomplished, because I never feel at home in a house that is messy.  Growing up, our house was always pretty clean, with the exception of my brother’s bedroom.  My mom was pretty OCD about keeping the house a certain way, and our house never really got so messy that you couldn’t have company over.  It used to be that a lot of those habits carried over with my into my adult life, but since I got married, they’ve slipped away because it feels like I’m fighting a losing battle, so why fight at all?  I do dishes, only to come home and find them piled up and dirtied again.  I clean the table to come home and find it piled up again.  Really, I wouldn’t mind cleaning so much if there was an indication that other people in the house (Aaron, obviously) were at least trying to pick up their messes throughout the day. 

Instead, I’ll come home to eggshells on the counter from where he made an omelet (and the garbage can is two feet away), or if he’s made some box dinner, all the little paper envelopes will be strung across the counter. Add that up over three or four days and it quickly becomes a huge pile of trash and filth, and it’s not wonder I don’t feel like cooking half the time, with a kitchen like that.

I try, really really hard on some days, to look past it, to do what little bit I can and move on.  Other days, it just feels like I’m putting in 75% of the work around here and paying the bills, too.  I don’t like that our "partnership" is so lopsided, because it makes me resentful.  And it makes me feel guilty because, on top of working and being away from the kids, I have to practically ignore them so I can get things done around the house that need doing.  Simple things that could have easily been done while I was working. 

I do plan on talking to Aaron about all this, because he’s a dense man and I’m not sure he’s entirely aware of just how stressed and burned out I am, but I really just needed to get it off my chest first. So that when we do talk, it isn’t the frustration and anger that come barreling out first. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My Stick Family from WiddlyTinks.com