Struggling

Homeschooling is coming along. The kids are doing labs, taking tests (the completion of each Apologia science test is a celebration), writing reports, giving oral reports, and even learning Russian. The school year is going reasonably well.

But I'm a mess. Working a 40-hour-per-week job and teaching stretch me to the utmost. I'm completely, utterly inundated with work just juggling those two tasks because, after all, I still cook and do some housework. But my mother's sudden hospitalization has driven me to the very edge of the precipice. I have moments of losing it.

In a few days she'll be released from the hospital, but if she goes home, my father's demands could kill her. He thinks only about himself, and whether she is able to serve him or not, he will expect it. And she is so used to that role of servant that she would probably fetch or clean or do whatever just to get him to stop pestering her. So we kids have to either find some place that will take in my mother while she convalesces or find daily help at home. And even if we do find a place for Mom, we still need to find a person to at least come in daily and feed Dad lunch and do some laundry. I can't possibly take time off daily at lunchtime, drive to Dad's, fix him a meal, and go back to work, not even if I work from home. It just tears up the day. If all goes well, Mom will be healing for two to three months! I'd lose my mind.

If Dad was a pleasant person, appreciative of our efforts, flexible – perhaps we could do it. But he is not. He has very particular demands. He eats specific foods prepared a certain way. He cuts tomatoes with a specific knife, as my sister-in-law found out when she gave him THE WRONG KNIFE. But the worst thing is that he so often puts us down that none of us want to be around him. He's close to 90 years old, frail, dependent – but so critical and unpleasant that all of us kids are really struggling with serving him.