Oh Husband, wherefore art thou?

Darling works very hard to provide all that we need around here. He has a decent job with awesome pay and amazing benefits. Except when it comes to therapy for autism-related services, but I digress. Darling typically leaves at 7 am and returns home about 5 or so. Not too shabby.

Recently his job has gone through some major restructuring. They changed the name of his department and are now under a slightly different umbrella, although owned by the same parent company, J&J. He still works in the same building at the same desk, with the same people, but with a different E-mail address and a different business card. It is a little strange.

Since the "reorganization" occurred it became apparent that layoffs were imminent and outsourcing was in the near future. He had been working on it for five years and had no idea. He also slowly climbed the ladder into management by that time. And recently when the restructuring commenced, the management was squashed sort of horizontally and vertically, meaning that the five managers became three (and he had to reapply for his OWN JOB) and the associate directors were also cut down, some directors above that were removed entirely and the main director given more responsibility. Still with me? Basically they were trying to give more responsibility to less people for more accountability less pay and more stress. Ha.

Darling retained his position. No, he did better than that, he received yet another promotion, bringing him over three figures. His promotion was more money than I could get back at teaching. But the extra money comes at a price.

Darling is now gone from 7 to 7 at minimum. His laptop comes home with him seven days a week. Most evenings and a good part of the weekend is spent with his laptop out, snapping at the kids for bothering him, with me getting absolutely no break from the kids. The household chores are piling up and we are stressed out and exhausted. Add in the extra stress of two very active boys with special needs and we are about at the end of our proverbial ropes. It is making for a difficult time at Chez Happy Family.

And, if you thought things were at their worst for us, add in Bugaboo's newer health and feeding issues, Darling's recent return to depression, Bug Boy's newly reformed bathrooming difficulties and anxiety and momma's lack of sleep and there is a (metaphorically speaking) time bomb about to go off.

I know it is only a matter of time before things crash and come to a grinding halt. It will happen, I am bracing myself for it. The only way things will change around here is if it all explodes. For some reason we tend to be on the dramatic side and need the drama in our lives. It will, believe it or not, make things better around here. It happens every year at this time. Darling has some issues from childhood that I SWARE have everything to do with it. Swear, too.

I almost want to toss our vacation out the window and just stay home and focus on getting walls painted, sleeping in, getting the kids ready for school. But I think Darling needs to go to the camp to get back to nature and simplify his life. No TV or phone. No cable modem. No washer and dryer, no dishwasher. Dirt roads, no traffic, creamery ice cream. YUM! A few days of that and he will be much more capable of dealing with the day-to-day grind. Either that or he will start looking for jobs up there (again) and driving us around to look at houses in the area.