This has not been a very productive month thus far...

Started December with a severe case of vertigo. Had a couple of days of that. Then I ended up feeling emotionally overwhelmed the second weekend of December, just bogged down by everything and frustrated with not getting things caught up. And now, I'm sick again. Was hit this past Thursday with vertigo, sick all day on Friday, and Saturday the cold hits and I've been fighting that. I finally took all three of us to the doctor's on Tuesday after an awful night with Isabelle waking up and crying several times. Plus, we had to be out of the apartment for at least two hours for spraying (still trying to get rid of those bugs). Verdict: I have a sinus infection; Isabelle has an ear infection; and Natalie has a cold. Isabelle and I are both on antibiotics (joy). So HOPEFULLY soon we'll all be on the mend because seriously, I cannot stand being sick anymore. Of course, the way it stands I'll get better only to be housebound by the monster blizzard we're expecting to start tonight. *sigh* It's probably a good thing I don't seriously celebrate Christmas because this is shaping up to be a pretty crappy holiday.

I can't do it all anymore.

I've been trying to though and it's really starting to get to me. Natalie started her online classes back in the beginning of September and from the beginning, she's been fighting me. She's very intelligent, does very well with her work, WHEN she does it, but most of the time, she doesn't want to do it. She's hungry or she has to use the bathroom or she wants to go play with her friend, or she wants to play with her ponies or she wants to look up ponies online or insert any of several dozen excuses. She fell behind and we have been trying to catch up since. Part of the reason I went with to the feast was because I was hoping to get some of Natalie's lessons caught up and hopefully keep her from falling more behind. Nope, didn't work. She just kept fighting me. It's been more than THREE months of this. It's been more of three months of basically having to spend the ENTIRE day working on her with her lessons and trying to get a schedule figured out so that she's not falling even more behind but it doesn't seem to matter what I do, she just keeps falling behind because she will not do all of her lessons.

In the meantime, the apartment has been neglected. Laundry is always several weeks behind. I'm constantly running out of clean clothes. We've had the exterminator here a couple of times to deal with the bug problem we have in the complex and because of that, we still have a bunch of boxes in the living room packed up with stuff. I've been working in a non-fully stocked kitchen which drives me NUTS!

My office is a disaster. I keep trying to find time to clean it and there just isn't any. Anything that's mine ends up in here because if it's anywhere else in the apartment it gets lost or thrown out. And I'm constantly losing things in the office because it's not organized and I'm trying to homeschool Natalie in my office as well.

Because of the bugs, we no longer have a couch or a TV or a VCR. The girls broke the coffee table. The chairs that went with our dining room table are almost all broken so we have plastic deck chairs instead. We have ONE recliner in the living room, that's it. My husband's computer is on the dining room table. We almost never eat at the table all together.

Fridays and Saturdays are my husband's days off. Saturday is the sabbath so he does nothing and is gone at church with the girls all day. Friday I either try to get lessons done or I try and get errands done. I can't do both. If the one is done, the other is not. I'm the person who does pretty much ALL of the laundry and I do ALL of the shopping.

I...AM...BURNING...OUT. I ended up in psych last year for four days because I finally lost it. I went on meds and did a lot better than I was doing before but medication cannot do everything. There's too much going on, too little time for me to get things done, and I live with a man who makes MORE work for me instead of helping me. He can be as bad as a child sometimes. And yet, even though I'm doing all of the work, I have VERY little control over the finances. HE makes the large financial decisions and does it without even talking to me! He took out a pay day loan that we absolutely could not afford, he didn't even attempt to figure out a budget to see if we could afford it. He just took it out because he could and he needed to fund his trip to the feast. And yet, if I spend even $5 on the girls for Christmas, I'm a horrible and rebellious person because I'm celebrating that evil pagan holiday. And forget putting up a tree. Just forget it.

I walked out today. Just put socks and boots on, threw on my coat and walked out. Before that I was screaming at the girls, screaming at my husband on the phone, and just in general having a massive breakdown. Nineteen lessons overdue with the thread of a truancy violation if I don't get her down to ten lessons overdue by Tuesday. NOTHING got done on Friday because I went out to pay the RENT (which we're almost a month behind on) and get DIAPERS which we were almost out of, two things I cannot depend on my husband to do because he gets so distracted it takes him HOURS to get out the door to do ANYTHING. Which is why half the time Natalie's phy ed lessons don't get done because he doesn't have the time to do it before he leaves for work. So I walked out, walked out of the apartment where my two year old was screaming her head off, walked out and left them both alone while I went for a walk. And I think I even left the oven on. I walked to calm down because I just couldn't take it anymore. I walked in that white, snowy, winter wonderland that was forming (because we got our first snowstorm today) and wished that I wasn't in the middle of a town but back on the farm where I grew up, back where it would have been still and silent and white and peaceful.

I walked back home though. And fortunately my neighbor was there when I got back. My daughter went next door and got him. And my husband came home from work shortly after that (about three hours early). I went and took a nap and now, I just feel numb.

I don't how much more of this I can take though. I want out of my marriage; I want out of what I see as a prison sentence. And no, I don't see my children as part of that but it's SO hard to do EVERYTHING and not have ANY help or ANY say. I can't talk to my husband without him getting defensive and saying I'm attacking him. And then when he does the same thing, he gets mad when I get upset and says I'm being overly sensitive and taking it personally. I can't win. I can't get through to him. I'm getting to where I don't even want to try anymore. It's just not worth it.

So yeah, today I feel like a massive failure as a parent but that's nothing new. I always feel like I'm failing.