This post is written through desperation. An overwhelming need to let things spew forth. It will ramble. It will make Jennie lose her grammer police shit. The spelling will no doubt suck also. I dont care.
I am about to indulge in the worst case of self pity you have ever seen. Be warned, it wont be pretty or necessarily make any sense but I need to get this crap out of my head and then easier to deal with and find a solution.
AS you may know if you have read any of my other blogs...
I have 4 kids. Two early teens and two little ones under 3. My husband works quite far away away, so he drives an hour or so in the morning and arvo . He needs to be up just before 4 to leave at 430 to work all day with only a15 min smoko so he can leave half an hour early to be back not longer after I go to work. Yes after I go to work. He comes home to 4 kids cooks tea and 4 nights a week drives around to some form of training etc with the two older ones before getting little ones into bed. It must suck and I mean that, its not sarcasm. My day is much the same starting with school drop off then house work etc and then the madness starts at 2 as I get ready for work.
At 2:45 my elder son gets home from school. I then bundle the babies into the car, set off for my elder daughter to pick her up around 3, drive home drop them all off and settle them in where they get given jobs like the dish washer unpack or hanging out the last load of washing while looking after the babies till Dad gets home about 15 mins later.
I drive a half hour to work to start at 4. I run nightfill for dept store. I walk in (usually 10 mins late) and hit the ground running as everyone bombards me with requests for tonight's work load and so on and so on. I work like a , well like a hard working person, until home time. Home time is meant to be 12:30 but just lately with big boss visits and wage cuts more like 1:30am. Its 2 am by the time I get home and 3 by the time I have "wound" down enough to sleep. I "should" have an assistant Manager under me. I don't. They couldnt afford one in the budget until the new financial year. Its now nearing the end of August and I am still doing a job where I used to have 3 department managers underneath me that the company scaled back to one assistant manager under me , on my own. I blame the late nights and doing the work of (at least) 2 people on why I have got sick with this cold/bubonic plague. I tried to call in sick at the end of the week, guess what? Turns out you cant call in sick when you have no one to cover you , you just have to come in "until you can't go on and then just lock up and go"
My husband no longer stirs when I crawl into bed and I am not disturbed by his exit of the bed at 3:45am. I am woken around 6am by the baby , who at nearly 18 months old still has his cot in our room as we just don't have the energy to take more than 4 steps should he wake during the night ( which he still does regularly) .I am lucky that the older two especially my daughter will feed the babies before school so I can hang onto to every last minute my head is on the pillow but still we are on the road by about 8:30. That means I average maybe 5 hours a night actually in my bed and around 4 hours a night sleep if i am lucky.
So what's the problem you ask? Well I just don't think we can do it much longer. Any of us, even the kids. I am here for them during the day so they don't go to day care (not an option anyway as it wouldn't be worth working with the cost) but I am not really there. I am dead tired. I am cranky. The house is a mess. The kids are never dressed before 2pm I don't see my husband 5 days a week and see my older kids about half an hour a day. I talk badly to them. I tell them to just go away, to leave me alone, to just please let me sleep. I know my husband is much the same , the kids have told me. Just plain cranky. I think he spends much of the evening yelling because he is so knackered.
Then there is me and him. Passing each other coming in and out of the house. We don't even pass each other coming in and out in the afternoon, in fact I hate to see him driving past me as I leave because rather than being happy to see him it simply means I am going to be really late for work today!.
If we keep going another year or so the house will be worth more. We could move to the country and have a small mortgage and I can stay home with the kids. ( plan needs some work ie, need to find husband a job and so on but you know, whatever, its still my plan) I don't think I can go another year can I ? Can he? Can the kids? Is it worth it to be better off financially , or am I sacrificing the kids childhood that I can never get back???
