Saturday, August 13, 2011

ARGHHHH!

I am mad, and I need to sleep, therefore I need to blog.

Before I begin to spill my guts, let me say once again for the record that I married an amazing man. The only problem with that is that everyone knows it, and everyone wants a piece of him. That last sentence makes this post sound a lot more scandalous, it's not.

If you are the wife/partner/girlfriend of a medical student/resident/doctor you know that they don't have a lot of free time. That's just the way it is. I've resigned myself to that fact that his job will take up the better part of our life. What is rather unique about this particular doctor is that he also has quite heavy leadership responsibilities associated with our church that require more of him than I am able to freely give. I don't know what they were thinking when they asked, and I don't know what we were thinking when we said yes. He has been involved in this particular role for the last 16 months, and for the most part it hasn't been too bad. Inconvenient, yes - particularly on Sundays.

The bishop in our ward is out of state with the boy scouts during the same week that the girls are at camp. My husband, as one of the bishops counselors, was asked to take his place this evening at a fireside at their camp 2 hours away and spend the night.

He thought he would be leaving around 3:00. I called him at 4:30 pm to ask him at what point will it be too late to go. He was scrubbed in, so I understand it might not have been a good time to talk, but I was trying to help him and myself. See I was planning on going to my girlfriends birthday dinner and movie. I had already contacted a babysitter (that was no small feat) who was coming over at 5:30, and if he wasn't going to make the fireside (which I didn't think he was) I wanted to know so I could tell the babysitter she might be finished earlier than later.

My question to him was "at what point is it going to be too late to go"? I thought that was a logical question. In my mind if you finish your case too late to make it to the fireside is there any point in going? He didn't see it that way. To his credit, he sees it as an assignment and if he finished his case at midnight he was still going to go because he said he would.

That irritates me. One, being late annoys me. If you aren't able to make it to the part you have been requested to attend, why go at all?  Two, why would you commit to going when you cannot guarantee that you will be able to be there when they need you? I would never do that.

So the babysitter shows up, I take the baby with me out to dinner with my friends and we go to a movie. The movie started at 8:20 and was a 2 hour plus movie. What was I thinking taking my 7 week old out for that long? I am crazy. Then I realized. I haven't had a date, dinner and movie with my husband since probably last year, maybe even longer ago than that. And today, I just took myself out and it wasn't cheap. Dinner $14, movie $8.50, and babysitter $40. So for the low price of $64.50 I got to be upset at my husband, and spent the better part of the movie walking with the baby in the hall so she wouldn't disrupt the normal people who left their little babies at home.

I talked to my husband on the drive to the movie theater (I wish I wouldn't have) and he didn't get out of his case until 7:00, putting him at the camp site sometime around 9:00. I am fairly certain that he missed the fireside but I can't even bring myself to ask him about it. In fact I don't want to hear about. I don't want to talk about it. I don't know when I will be answering the phone again.

I am mad. Not at any one thing in particular. Because I am mad my mind starts turning things over and before I knew it I had narrowed it down to this: my life revolves around my husband and our children, his life doesn't revolve around us. Anytime I want to do anything I have to coordinate with his availability. He on the other hand can accept assignments and make plans without the same need for consultation with us. If only we had an endless supply of money it wouldn't be such a big deal, but we rarely get a babysitter.  This is the first time EVER that I have paid a babysitter to watch my children so I could go and do something without my husband. And I probably won't do it again soon. It is an ordeal. Then I start feeling resentment towards my friends who saved themselves $40 by having a husband who is home to watch their kids and I wish I would have just stayed home.

And now here it is the early morning hours and I am watching QVC and blogging while the baby is crying because she has been kept out late and is having a hard time falling asleep. I don't blame her, I want to cry to. Actually I want to scream. Just let it all out in one loud scream, but the girls are asleep.

4 comments:

  1. I wish I could give you a hug. It is SO HARD being married to someone whose first priority is the job. Truly. And I don't even have kids - I can't even imagine what strength and independence it takes to go through this journey with children to care for.

    Hang in there. You guys will find a balance. The job will always be a priority (believe me - my parents have been married 40 years and the job is still a top priority for my dad), but you will figure it out.

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  2. Good luck! We're on the earlier end of things. My husband is a MS3. But we have 2 kids already, and I know a bit of what you're feeling. And the rest is prepping me for days to come. Hopefully you were able to sleep it off. And cut yourself some slack :)

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  3. I loved this post! I hope writing it was as therapeutic to you as reading it was to me :) Even though my situation is extremely different in some ways, I share a lot of your same frustrations and appreciate your talent in sharing them in an articulate and humorous way.

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  4. I am so so sorry! I don't know what having kids is like among all this craziness, but I do know that eventually, everything works out.

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