Cracking Up

I seriously feel like I'm cracking up. SO stressed! Let's start off with the fact that my schedule after work every day this week has been INSANE and looks like it will be that way until the end of the month. Not a second to myself except late at night when I'm exhausted.

I'm venting here ok?

How is a working Mom with 2 little kids at home supposed to get a minute alone? When are we supposed to get recreation time either alone or as a family? My life seems to be full of "have tos" and I'm totally beyond FED UP. It's either the work week or Friday/Shabbat which isn't restful by any stretch of the imagination. It's one long marathon. Something to be "got through". When do we have time to go as a family and visit friends during the week? When do we have time to take a day trip up north or down south? In the lunch room at work on Sunday I am regaled with stories of what everyone did over the weekend: "Oh we went hiking in Nachal X with the kids on Shabbat and the spring flowers were so beautiful!" one woman gushes. Another woman, "We took the kids to Zoo Such and Such!" or "We went scuba diving in Eilat!" I also would like to be able to come back with stories about the adventures we had over the weekend. Nobody wants to hear, "Well, we went to shul. Again. We had friends over for lunch. Again. I took a nap. Again." Boooooorrring!

This Friday I just. could. not. deal. and said to hell with the cooking and cleaning. Just........NO! I ain't doin' it. After I dropped the kids off at gan and school, I went to the beach for 2 1/2 hours until I had to pick E up from gan. It was sorely needed and far too short and just left me feeling resentful that these moments of recreation are taken on stolen time and are so rushed and that Shabbat impinges on them. HAVE TO rush back to get the cleaning and cooking done. HAVE TO rush back because Shabbat is coming. I'm ashamed to say it but I'm really having a hard time with this right now. I came home and told DH, "This Shabbat thing is NOT NORMAL. It's either work or Shabbat, Shabbat or work. No Sunday even where we can take a deep breath - where I can do something FOR MYSELF - and recover from Shabbat before jumping back into the work week. Work isn't about ME. It's about me jumping through hoops for someone else. Shabbat isn't about me. It's about Hashem. The I, the ME, has nowhere to express itself and just be, just do something purely for enjoyment's sake."

For an adventurous, creative person like me, the monotony of the Friday routine is just a killer. A KILLER.

Then there's work......

I'm losing my motivation at work fast.  Lately I've been very involved in the translation process (Hebrew to English ) of no less than 130 documents. I'm the contact person for the person who actually does the translation. I send them to him, he translates, sends them back to me, I have to check the English translation against the original Hebrew, mark any corrections or mistakes I find with "track changes" in WORD and send them back to him to either accept my corrections or not. If he doesn't then we have this back-and-forth by phone or email about it until we agree. Fine. So yesterday I sent him 9 WORD documents with small corrections marked with tracking that I wanted him to accept. Today he sends me back those exact same 9 files which the tracked changes still marked in red. When I expressed surprise, he said, "Oh yeah. I had a teleconference about it with Orly and Tamar in your company and this is what was agreed." I wrote him back and ccd those two women he'd referred to and I said to him, "No one informed me as to what was agreed in the conference call." This Orly jumped all over me about "airing the company's dirty laundry" and that if I have questions or need a clarification I need to inquire internally. OK. Fair enough. I said ok and apologized to her. I did tell her that it really bothers me that I have to hear from her THROUGH HIM what the outcome of the conference call was. Like, until now all my dealings with him have been handled one way and then all of a sudden he's telling me, "Noooooo, your people told me that now it has to be done THIS way." He sounded shocked - and rightly so - that I wasn't in the loop. I felt like such an idiot. I told this Orly that I have NO problem switching my modus operandi with our translation people but I just need to know what the new rules are and NOT hear it from someone outside the company. So that set me off to a bad start today. I was ticked.

Then, for a different study I'm responsible for administering, there are these bi-weekly T/Cs that are recorded and then the next day I listen to the recording and transcribe the meeting minutes. It's a PAIN IN THE BUTT but hopefully this won't be going on much longer. Not sure. Anyway, I spent TWO HOURS on Thursday transcribing, every minute of it is torture and then another girl came into my office and asked me to quickly help her edit a document of hers and in doing so she shut down my document with the meeting minutes that I'd worked on for two hours. I lost the whole thing. It's my fault for not saving it before starting to type. But still. I hate when people come in and help themselves to my computer even if I'm sitting right here. I wanted to STRANGLE her but I had to be nice and say, "Don't worry about it. It doesn't matter. I'll just spend ANOTHER TWO HOURS on Sunday redoing the WHOLE BLOODY THING!" I was this close to crying. Especially after  the thing about the translator. I feel like I got NOTHING done at work Thursday. Just one of those awful, awful days.
Don't get me wrong. It's a good company - a lot going for it - and good people but like I've been saying for a few weeks now, someone is starting to make some really bad management decisions and it's affecting not just me badly. It's really hard to keep the motivation up long-term under these conditions. I wish I could quit. I have to close my eyes a few times a day and grit my teeth and just say thank you that I even have a job. I spent 2 years at home under atomic financial pressure and that was enough to last me the rest of my life.

Y has an end of year school party to go to for which the kids have to wear ALL black from head to toe which means I have to rush out and buy her black everything - more stress - which she'll never wear again. (I do NOT dress my kids in black! Why? Who died?)

Y has been taking gynmastics two times a week this year. Then recently she said she's bored with it and wants to try soccer. So we stupidly signed her up for soccer in addition to gymnastics through the end of this month. Which means she has an after-school activity that she has to be schlepped to FOUR nights a week! WHAT were we thinking???

Then on the 28th she has an end of year party for her gynmastics class AND the end of year party for soccer was also scheduled for the same night so we told her she has to go to the gymnastics party since she's invested a lot more time in gymnastics this year.

But wait. It gets better. DH popped me a message on Skype today that we have been invited to his sister's house, also on the evening of the 28th, to help her celebrate her birthday! I nearly lost it. You've GOT to be joking! I desperately need to clear my schedule, not double book on the same night! 

T's cousin is having his Bar Mitzvah next Shabbat so she wants to go out to buy a new outfit for it. I seriously have ZERO time to go shopping with her and the thought of dragging E with us while we do it doesn't bear thinking about. I told her last night she should go shopping with a girlfriend, find something nice and ask the store to hold it for her and I will go in a pay for it. I told her to take a picture of whatever it is she finds to show me when she gets home. We'll see if she remembers that bit.

I feel like crying just thinking how frazzling these next two weeks are going to be..........I haven't even told you the half of it but.......duty calls.