Alive

It turns out Brando was a single dad"ish" for the last three weeks before our (yes, I do mean our) meltdown Wednesday night, with my working on the weekends and going to class or studying four out of five evenings. Me being in the hot Texas sun from 8am-5pm on Monday-Wednesday this week helping out with the boys cub scout camp, then going to class or falling asleep, and being utterly exhausted didn't help matters. He was overwhelmed. I was overwhelmed. Fortunately I knew I was and went to a friends house to stay the night, which didn't help his cause, though it did help mine. He didn't know he was overwhelmed though, and sent a series of VERY mean texts the following day throughout the day. As I told Allison, it was the worst text day in all my texting life. His friend convinced him to come home if I agreed to not talk about it, and he did. Over the next day I had a realization about the single Dad thing that's been going on for him. Also that one of his love languages is acts of service, and while I was busy being extremely apalled and defensive of not becoming a Stepford wife when he was upset about me not helping around the house lately (read: exhauted), he was busy feeling VERY not loved. Especially when he asked the boys to do chores and I asked him if they could wait until the next day as they were tired from being at camp all day, then he asked me if I could help out and I said, "I'm not doing NOTHING!", which started it all. Granted while I was exhausted, he was busy being exhausted in the way only working full time, making dinner and putting the kids to bed every night and having them by yourself on the weekend can make one.

So, in a nutshell, that was our very, very sad last few days. Our pastor is going to talk with us if we are willing on Sunday (or today, but Sunday works better all around). While we have sorted through this one argument, I would really like to find out how to AVOID having major meltdowns in the future, or at least talk about strategies of how to deal with them. It's not like this is the last time our lives are going to be overly stressed. In fact, I'm taking off to work here in a few minutes and realized I'll be working on Father's Day tomorrow as well. Sorry, honey!

Thank you for all your sweet comments of concern! It means so much to me, feels like a big group hug, and a bunch of really sweet individual, supportive ones to boot. Let me know if you hear of that instruction book, will ya'?