I know that feeling. in A New Beginning

A very dear older lady friend, whom I admire very much, wrote recently that she feels overwhelmed. She is a great deal older than I am, nearly always in some degree of pain, and has no energy for doing anything about the housework that needs doing in her house. As I read her words, I instantly recognized that feeling. I am not quite sixty though. Right now I’m doing GREAT, pain-wise, but I’ve been dealing with pain for the past few years. The job I work at is damn physically exhausting! If I didn’t at least get the summers off, I am sure I wouldn’t have stayed with it, but having summers off and never having to work evenings are GREAT benefits. But.....how exactly CAN I put this?? My husband is a kind of pain. :oO !! Oh, I love him, sure. He loves me. His being a pain has nothing to do with how he treats me at all....it’s just that he is a hyperactive, ADHD individual TO THE MAX, and he is also this “Great American Hero” sort who’s always helping out everywhere that someone asks for his help, but then stuff HERE goes for YEARS without getting done. Plus he’s a “collector” and fills the house full of STUFF that he just brings in and dumps in the living room or on the dining room table until I tell him “GET UP AND MOVE THIS STUFF TO THE SPARE ROOM RIGHT NOW.”

Yea, I’m bitchy about it, but if I just say “Hey Joe, will you please do thus-and-such ‘sometime?,” he will say yes but then never EVER do it.

Consequently our house is a fuckin’ mess. I have seen worse. And it’s not like a hoarder’s house. But just looking around at it irritates the hell out of me. And I will be damn if I’m going to be one of these women who just gives up and does EVERYTHING. I know damn well that this was NOT my reason for being put on this earth. I do enough. He is a busy man, too....just not helping out with house chores or maintenance HERE. (or outdoor HERE chores either, for that matter!! I mow!! I like to, so I’m not complaining, but I guarantee you, he seldom does dishes or laundry for me while I mow!)

So, yea, I often feel overwhelmed by this crap. I’m not a neat freak at all, but hell, when there IS something I’d like him to do, I wish he’d DO IT without me practically having to threaten his life over it (after two years of asking!). THE MAN WEARS ME OUT.

And Guinness wears me out.

When the kids were kids, they were rambunctious and messy (because they were happy and imaginative and they didn’t sit in front of electronic devices all the time), and they wore me out.

And usually I fall asleep quickly and sleep like a log all night. But for the past week, I’ve been sleepy shitty. My cervical spinal stenosis is riled up, I guess. There’s no pain, but whichever side I try to sleep on, that arm falls asleep. (This is caused by the herniated neck disks.) So it’s frickin’ toss and turn, toss and turn, trying the hell to be comfortable. I haven’t had this problem in years. I don’t recall hoping for it to come back. I hope it goes away SOON. I need to sleep, dammit. It’s hard to be pleasant ‘round here without getting much SLEEP!