Just need a moan

[ThomasRichard]

I had a really stressful day and just needed to vent. I'm on my own with 6yo DS and 4yo DD. I have someone staying with me for what was supposed to be 2 weeks but is actually 6 . This means DD isn't sleeping well because she's sharing a room with DS and keeps waking up in the night and then waking me up to settle her. I have a demanding full-time job in a management position. Four new people joined my team a couple of weeks ago, so I'm spending a lot of time training and supporting them as well as trying to get on with my own projects, all of which are high-profile and under time pressure. I'm in the third year of an OU degree, with an assignment due in next week for which I've done literally no work. ExH has the DC every other weekend and 4 weeknights a month. I have a church role (not the sort of voluntary role that's easy to get out of) that takes up 3 of those free nights and practically all day on Sundays. This month I'm on a cleaning rota that means that I also need to be there on the 4th night or a Saturday morning. Not doing any of those things means other people can't get places/do things/have to pick up the slack. On top of it all, exH took the DC to visit a relative (not old or unwell, just a social visit) on Sunday and brought them home so late that they were unfit for school & nursery the next morning. DS hasn't missed a day of school ever, for anything, before now. So I had to drop everything and work from home. ExH said they were ill so it wasn't until he dropped them to me on Monday that I found out the truth. He then called me on Tuesday to ask what I was feeding the children for dinner (why?!), demanded to know why I was on a conference call outside of my normal working hours and then had the gall to suggest that DD might need an early night. Then someone else called to check that I'd be giving someone a lift as usual on Wednesday. At which point, I lost it, put the DC infront of a DVD and went upstairs to cry and have a short nap to get myself together before bathing them and putting them to bed at a decent hour.

I'm exhausted, stressed and overwhelmed. I don't have enough mental bandwidth to do everything that's being demanded of me and to allocate all my free time to doing things for other people and run a house and be a decent parent and not go completely insane. But I will, because if I don't do it then no one else will :(

[GoldenMama]

I really feel for you and understand how hard all of these things alone can be, let alone all together as a mass lump of responsibility and stress.
When I feel this way I try to remember that everything is constantly changing, not that you see it some days. Nothing stays the same for too long and there will be bad days which is ok, there will also be amazing days that make you cry for completely opposite reasons.
You are doing a fantastic job, and you are not alone.