I work p/t and care for my mum as well as DC with SEN.
Things on my mind that my DH literally never, ever, ever thinks about:
- booking & attending all dentist, dr, OT appointments for DC & accompanying my mum to all of her dr / physio / dentist appts (approx 2 a week for DM)
- renewing and picking up everyone’s prescriptions (including DH’s because he just fucking forgets)
- organising all house repairs / replacing appliances for our house and my mum’s
- making sure my mum takes her meds (correctly!) every morning & evening, and setting them out in pill sorters each week
- fighting 2 elderly cats to get their thyroid meds down them every day & doing their monthly injections
- all care (vet appts, grooming, walks) for my mum’s dog she can’t look after properly anymore
- getting rid of outgrown toys / clothes so we don’t run out of room in the house
- any kind of financial management - changing mortgages, saving for retirement, monthly family budgeting, taxes (including my mum’s and DH’s because DH has over the years proven himself incapable of doing his in a timely fashion and then puts his head in the sand and waits for the problem to go away)
- housework - cleaning, laundry, changing cat litter for 3 cats & changing bedding across two households
- sorting childcare for school hols and half terms
- planning any holidays or days out (including all research, budgeting, planning all transport, packing for everyone)
- keeping abreast of school WhatsApp & various school info newsletters and portals
- all car maintenance - oil changes, air in tyres, renewing insurance, MOT etc - for 2 cars
- meal planning & budgeting, food shopping, cooking, packed lunches every day for DC
- new clothes when DC outgrows them
- booking teacher conferences
- making sure DC has what they need (money, bake sale stuff, permission forms & waivers, costumes) to participate in school activities - concerts, field trips, etc
- arranging birthday parties / play dates / DC martial arts classes
- secondary school applications (knowing key dates and deadlines, researching schools)
- vet appts & regular flea treatments for cats
- we all have dual citizenship so there are 8 passports in our household that need renewing at different intervals, involving trips to embassies in different cities
- we’re currently in a country with private health insurance, so with all our various medical stuff I need to keep on top of what is covered by everyone’s policies and which claims need to be submitted where / followed up for reimbursement
DH is autistic - which we only realised after DC was diagnosed but it made sense of a lot of things. He has terrible problems with working memory and executive dysfunction, which is why I do ALL the stuff, and he can barely function holding down a WFH job.
I am basically doing all the tasks of living for 3 other people besides myself (and some animals as well), and part of the difficulty of how neurodiversity presents in my family is that everyone’s convinced they are perfectly functional and capable and it’s the rest of the world and its ridiculous expectations that’s the problem.
Their thinking goes: if renewing my prescriptions is a complicated ball ache, I can’t reasonably be expected to do it, can I? If they want people to renew their prescriptions, they need to make it easier! There’s literally no understanding that they’re the ones who will suffer the consequences of not having their regular meds for asthma, blood pressure, heart failure, etc.
Plus, nobody in my family has the capacity to be interested in anyone’s experience but their own, so nobody sees what I’m doing to keep us all afloat, or recognises that any of it needs doing. So DH imagines I’m just swanning about putting my feet up after my 20-hour work week is done.
DH seems to feel it is a huge sacrifice on his part to have to work in a job that doesn’t fulfil him artistically, and thus it’s only right that he shouldn’t have to make his own food or buy his own clothes or order his own contact lenses or basically wipe his own arse. Any and all non-working time is reserved for the pursuit of his special interests.