Venting

I'm so, so angry right now. Ben's boss is on vacation for two weeks, and instead of working days on Thursdays so he could be home with me in the evening, Ben took split days (working in the morning and the evening with the afternoon off) so that A) my mom would only have to come out for a half day since she finds looking after Tyler so tiring, and B) so that we (alternatively) don't have to pay Sheila $50 each day for a full day of daycare. So, I get screwed. He KNOWS how I feel about being home on my own while pregnant, and I've underlined it for him since. Tyler is throwing tantrums now and crying for no reason (terrrible-two's-pms) and I'm terribly fatigued. I put up with Ben working 4 nights a week plus Saturdays while I was puking 2-3 times a day, and now I'm fatigued and really not handling the tears well (I end up in tears myself), and soon enough I will have a newborn at my breast, and still I will have to do it on my own 3 nights a week plus Saturdays. Gawd. And it's not enough to say that the main library staffing decisions are leaving the Maze branch dangerously low in staff, while true. I discussed on this blog a couple months ago what that does to the library safety issues. That's not what I'm focusing on today. These two Thursdays this and next week represent my overall problem. Are we too poor to afford one more day of daycare a week? I don't believe so. Can I prove it? No, not without creating a full budget, not at the moment. Is Tyler too much for my mom for full days twice a week? Maybe. Sensitive issue. And Sheila, who has two jobs and went down by one child recently who switched to pre-school and is needing more income, is impossibly and generously holding a spot for our next baby. And as long as Tyler is part-time, there is a full-time spot for another child. While she was interviewing for another child last year, she actually told us "no" some times when we asked for extra days because if she took the other child she would need Tyler to stay part-time. So it's a possibility that she could lock us out of full-time if she fills up with other children, and then where would we be? This is a very serious issue to me. Ben works at a LIBRARY for criminy sake, not a night-shift factory or nursing job. It is not my intention to sacrifice my family life for his work. And yet he feels most valuable to the staff as an evening manager, and it's true, his boss really likes that about him. She depends on him. And it seems the more I kick and scream about this the more I just make him feel guilty about it, or defensive, which does me no good. I can't go down to the library director at the main and demand more employees. I can't force anything to change, and it just makes me scream in frustration. Where does all my anger go? At Ben, unfortunately, deservedly or undeservedly.

(Addendum: Friends and family, please don't call and yell at Ben about this. The blog is like a shared diary, about me and not meant to spread dirty laundry. This is the closest I've come to that, and I don't want to start a fight!)