would you like cream with that?

So I thought I might put it here, seeing as not comfortable putting it on my blog or facebook, that after Fixit complained yesterday about my asking him to do the dishes despite the fact that he hadn't eaten any meals associated with those dishes on that day (he's on evening shift this week), I ended up having a discussion today about fair and equitable division of household duties.

Well, this is after I did the dishes last night because I'd been made to feel guilty about leaving them for him, plus I cleaned up the kitchen/family room including sweeping and mopping the floor because it had become far dirtier in my absence than would normally happen, particularly considering the Cleaning Lady had been through the day before Crarf Camp and the house had been spotless before I left.  And heaps of laundry stuff too.... And after I'd been grumpy all morning while I got everything ready for the day ahead, kids' breakfasts, kids' lunches, getting the boys to gather all their soccer stuff together because tonight is the night I teach an after-school class, then take the kids to soccer-training and then teach an evening class, and all the time my mind is ticking over trying to work out how to manage dinner at the tap hall and whether its okay to bring the kids to tap class tonight because I have no babysitter this week because she's doing VCE stuff.  And Fixit kept asking why was I grumpy?

And in the back of my mind came recall of those conversations at Crarf Camp.  And that helped me to see that all the extra stress I've felt since the evening shift roster started could be alleviated by more help and exacerbated by less help.  And that whining about dishes came under the heading of less help, and I said my piece.

He actually listened fairly well.  He did mention 3 years of study while having to mind the kids on his own for 3 out of the 7 nights, but I defended that with pointing out that he was never required to do any extra in that time, that he had all his meals cooked and washing done etc, food in the cupbarods, clean clothes, clean house, kids' homework and schoolwork supervised, and that as one of the adults in the family, he couldn't expect to not do any domestic work, study or no.

He's gone off to mow the lawn now, to think it though maybe?

But I wanted to say thank you to you all: I feel helped for having had these conversations with you lovely women at Sewjourn, and it really helped clarify stuff for me.  Especially Janet, who made some good clear comments about reasonable expectations.  We shall see where it goes from here. xx