Burnout

Sometimes I seriously wish I could just keep my mouth shut. Out in public, I never speak my mind enough. At home with my husband, I don't know when to stop and just shut it. This morning he made a wisecrack about how now that we have a Little Brother, he's going to have to buy the new Madden football game for his Playstation. And without thinking I immediately responded, "I love how you're using our Little Brother as a an excuse to spend a bunch of money." Argh. Of course I tried to soften it by adding that I was just kidding, but we all know that doesn't work. It was farking six o'clock in the morning, why? Why could I not have just kept that to myself?

One video game is not a big deal so I imagine I look like a psycho to my husband when I say such things. But of course, what happened was he just tapped into an anxiety that I've been fretting about secretly for days, and I had a knee-jerk reaction.

I am excited about spending time with Little B, but we are on a pretty tight budget and I was hoping that we would not start spending extra money on entertainment because of the mentoring. The program rules state that he is supposed to pay his own way when we do things, and at our first meeting his mom told us that she's only working part time right now and supporting six kids, so she can't just send him out with spending money all the time. I thought that was great, since we can't do that either. But then the next day, Mr. Ibis's new idea was that we can have Little B do some chores or yardwork and pay him for it, to earn money to go out and do things with us. While this is a sensible solution, because I am always anxious about spending, I see this as Mr. Ibis "finding ways" to spend more instead of being content with just not spending money and doing things that cost nothing.

So all that is simmering in my mind, he mentions buying a video game, and I bubble over.

This is the endlessly repeating pattern with us. I swear I am working on it, but it's a work in progress. I just sometimes feel like I am the only person manning the brakes. Or like we are locked into these roles whether we like it or not: I'm always tightening the purse, he's always finding ways to loosen it. I hate my role. I'm tired of it. I would love to just not care. Eff it all, let's just spend it. If he wants to save anything, fine, I'll go along with it. But I hate playing the Budget Nazi - I am just too scared to stop. At the same time, I know that it isn't working. That the more I clamp down, the more pushback he'll give me, because there has to be balance.

So this is the push-pull. I try to let it go. He says one thing, like how we can pay Little B to do yard work. I let it go. He says anothing thing, like instead of bringing food from home to the baseball game this weekend as I suggested, we can buy snacks. I let it go. He says one more thing, that he wants to buy a video game, and I explode.

I'm worn out. I'm so exhausted. I'm tired of being the household executive, daily operations manager, and CFO. I want to quit! To be fair, Mr. I does plenty around the house. He does his share of the housework for sure. I just feel like I always have to the brain center - the person with all the to-do lists, shopping lists, who remembers when the bills are due, who remembers birthdays, who tracks ovulation (ha), who has to make the phone calls and do the taxes. Plus I have my business to run. I am just flaming out mentally.

We actually got into a little argument last night and when we went to bed, Mr. Ibis initiated a reconciliation so we wouldn't go to sleep mad. It was nice. He said this is a hard time and we shouldn't turn on each other, which is so true. I agree. Sometimes it just seems easier said than done.