This is what I was originally going to post—the epic novel of complaint.
I know this isn’t necessary for the purpose of the thread, but I really do need to get this bitching off my chest.
DH and I have full time jobs. I also do freelance work. We make about the same amount of money, if that matters.
Yesterday, he was working a rare night shift, so he was on kid duty in the morning.
We both got up about 7AM.
I got Linus up, got his clothes ready, and left for work at 8AM.
DH made Linus’ lunch, gave Linus breakfast, and took Linus to school.
Then DH came home, got Deirdre up, dressed, fed and ready, and took her to preschool at 12:30.
Then he went to work, starting his shift at 1PM.
I got home at 6PM.
I fed the kids dinner, hung out with them for a while, and told them I needed to get some work done on a freelance project.
I worked on the dining room table; Deirdre watched some TV in the connected living room, and Linus played on his computer at the table with me.
DH got home at 9PM.
I asked him to get the kids ready for bed so I could keep working.
He took them upstairs, told them to put on their pajamas, and then announced he was going to bed himself, but that “Mum will be up soon.”
I yelled up the stairs, “They have to brush their teeth!” and I heard him say, “Okay, go brush your teeth.”
Five minutes later I went upstairs and they hadn’t brushed their teeth. DH said, “Oh, I couldn’t find their toothbrushes.”

The toothbrushes were not where they belonged, but they were in the cabinet under the sink (in an organizer box with the extra soap & extra toothpaste).
I gave DH the side-eye, gave the kids their toothbrushes, and realized they had grubby faces.
I said, “Did you wash your hands and faces yet?” and gave DH another side-eye.
DH said, “You didn’t tell me to do that.”
No more side-eye, I gave him a ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME??? face, and he actually did the huffy middle school noise at me, like I am so unreasonable to expect him to read minds.
Then he went to bed, while I took over all the bedtime hygiene, the bedtime stories, the tucking in, and the various stalling shenanigans.
Then I went downstairs to work some more.
I went to bed three hours after he did.
I got up to deal with Deirdre in the middle of the night, as I always do. I slept in her bed with her, partly because that settles her faster, and partly because DH is a lighter sleeper and hates when she is in our bed.
I got up an hour after he did, got Linus up, got his breakfast and lunch and school stuff ready, and left for work as the babysitter was arriving.
This weekend, the little kids will be within arms’ reach of me almost continually as I will:
- do the grocery shopping (which I’ve already organized into lists for different stores, but which lists will be revised when I look at the sale flyers & my coupons)
- Do all the laundry. Including putting away the baskets of clean folded laundry in our room that DH has been walking past since I put them there last weekend, after I put away all the rest of last week’s laundry.
- Scrub the bathroom. I clean up the bathroom every day, but only give it a good scrub on the weekends---when I “have time” LOLOLOLOLOL
Last weekend I didn’t have time and I let the big scrubbing go. I have told DH, my 21 year old son, and my 18 year old son, “This needs to be done every weekend. I shouldn’t have to do it every weekend. Do not wait for me to ask you to do this.”
…So right now it’s unbearably gross because of course no one did it.
- Vacuum properly, as in move the furniture & get the crevice tool out for the couch & chair cushions, which only I do. Maybe once a week, DH will vacuum around things, and at least a couple of times a week—I aim for every day, but sometimes I just can’t-- I do too. But it’s half-assed and only just barely “good enough.” I will also empty the vacuum canister, since that will not have been done since I did it last. And wash the vacuum filters.
- Do whatever other big cleaning projects I can’t stand to let slide. The bedroom doors & hallway walls really need to be washed down & magic-earasered for fingerprints & sneaky preschool “art.” I will try to sort, organize, and deal with the piles of mail & household paperwork all over the dining room table. That rarely actually gets finished. Sometimes it gets moved to a file box to be dealt with elsewhere, so at least the table is clear. But eventually I have to put some of it back on the table, to sort it—I keep paperwork in sideboard drawers in the dining room.
- That reminds me: I have to do the taxes, because when I finally told DH to quit asking me when I was going to do them, and he did them, we both feel it’s likely that he did something wrong. He has never done our taxes.
- Bake and cook a bunch of things for lunches & snacks for everyone for the coming week.
- Get the kids up and dressed each morning, get the kids dressed, washed, and read to each night. Give them their baths.
- Go through their school stuff: homework, parent paperwork, library books, etc.
- Help the big kids with whatever. Spencer is going to a friend’s for the weekend, so he won’t be here, but James will. So I will be talking James through job applications and his English assignments.
- Finish, finally (O GOD PLEASE) one freelance project so I can then finish the other freelance project on time (O GOD PLEASE).
DH will probably cook dinner Friday Saturday and Sunday. (I will do the dishes and clean the kitchen, or else ask/tell one of the big kids to do those jobs (which they will do poorly, with ill grace, or not at all) at least two of those nights, if not all of them.)
DH will also take at least one nap, sleep at least a few hours more than I do (probably at least 2 hours more each night, if not longer than that), and watch a lot of TV. He might, or might not, take the kids to the park across the street for an hour. Like, one hour out of the weekend.
He will ask me what resumes I’ve sent out today/recently, since I want to leave my job. I will remind him that I haven’t had a lot of time for job hunting, resume tweaking, and cover letter writing lately. If I am on FB while I eat lunch or something, he will ask me if I’m job hunting then, and I will not be sure if he is being passive aggressive about me wasting my time or not.
He will absolutely “ask me if I mind” if he goes to a cigar bar to have a cigar and a beer. He will probably go for this cigar while I am grocery shopping at a store he doesn’t like—he will come with me to the store he does like, but he won’t go to the other stores—but he might also “think I might go while we’re home
not doing anything.” As in, when he has helped put the groceries away and I am multi-tasking on three floors of the house. He will promise he’ll only be gone two hours (he will keep this promise).
If I say No, please don’t go out, he won’t, and he won’t pout. If I say, please do these things, he will, and he won’t pout.
But several times this weekend, he will remind me in some detail what time he got up every morning for work (most days he is up & out the door by 6AM, home at 3:30 PM). That’s why he is tired, he says. He DOES work really hard, at a draining job (he’s a store manager, and he often works well over 40 hours).
He sometimes alludes to his ill health, but that’s crap—his heart surgery last year corrected an acute condition, and although he had nerve damage to one hand, he is totally healthy heart/lungs/bloodwork-wise. He recovered from surgery much faster than his doctors expected him to, because he was in otherwise EXCELLENT health and physical condition. I am, let us say, not in excellent health. I have been hospitalized in 2014 already.
He’s old, he says. And he is 11 years older than I am—I’m 44 and he will be 55 next month.
But STILL, OMG. This is SUCH bullshit.