And my family wonders why I am tired without “physically doing that much”

[saraha]

This morning dd20 responded to me asking what she had planned for today by rattling off a to do list she had thought up before getting out of bed.

Just now she walked into the room with a notebook and a pencil and said “Mom, you know that to do list I told you earlier, do remember anything on it?” After laughing really hard I said read me what you remember so far and she read off her list and said I’m missing something. I told her what she was missing and she stood there a little shocked and said “after we are all gone, you are probably going to become a nuclear physicist “ and walked away.

😆

Edited March 21 by saraha

[saraha]

Really though, I hadn’t ever thought about the mental load being a mother is until reading an article a few years ago illustrating the fact. The struggle is real friends. 
I do remember years ago shouting at my dh “I am tired of being everyone’s brain!”

Edited March 21 by saraha

[Faith-manor]

1 minute ago, saraha said:

This morning dd20 responded to me asking what she had planned for today by rattling off a to do list she had thought up before getting out of bed.

Just now she walked into the room with a notebook and a pencil and said “Mom, you know that to do list I told you earlier, do remember anything on it?” After laughing really hard I said read me what you remember so far and she read off her list and said I’m missing something. I told her she what she was missing and she stood there a little shocked and said “after we are all gone, you are probably going to become a nuclear physicist “ and walked away.

😆

😂😂😂 Awesome! It is so nice when an adult kid acknowledges their mother's unmistakable genius! 

[freesia]

It is indeed! I have two coming home from college this summer and I’m exhausted just thinking about it!

[Faith-manor]

My daughter is a very recent reminder for me of the trenches now that I am empty nested and generally only Mark's brain. She has three littles, 8, 4, and 1, homeschools, is generally her husband's brain (and he is a very good guy, don't get me wrong, she does not have a misogynistic prick type husband at all), and is trying to teach 3 classes at a homeschool co-op. I.do.not.miss.it.

There are days though when I get really exhausted from dealing with the constant short term memory issues of my mother and mother in law. They cannot remember anything for what seems like ten seconds. I try not to get frustrated. I will be old some day too. But with two at once, and them VERY emotionally dependent on me, it is rough. 

[BusyMom5]

This is me!  I found it easier when they were all little, but I currently have 2 in college, 2 in high school, 1 in middle school and 1 in elementary.   My brain hurts trying to jump from phase to phase!  Helping the college kid with travel and flight, next with job hunting- all 4 older ones with college course selection, etc.  Middle school one- ugh!  Least favorite phase- friends, hormones, weird body shapes to try to clothe, and the little one jumping all over and curious about everything.   I know I will miss this one day, but it's a lot of jumping back and forth.  I do teach co-op class and try to plan activities for the teens because no one else will and I know it's so important.  Managing friends and such with the middle schooler who would love for me to plan similar activities for her age- I'd happily attend, but I just cannot plan more.  Oh, and I'm also my DHs brain,  lol- great phrase!  I have to listen to all pros and cons- the sounding board.  

I do know my kids appreciate me.  The older two have both made several marks to the tune of Thank you, friends parents didn't help them as much with learning soft skills, I'm always there to listen and give advice or talk through options.  I'm also available to friends who need a listening ear ;)  

My kids and husband tell me I need to be a councilor,  lol!  

[Harriet Vane]

1 hour ago, saraha said:

Really though, I hadn’t ever thought about the mental load being a mother is until reading an article a few years ago illustrating the fact. The struggle is real friends. 
I do remember years ago shouting at my dh “I am tired of being everyone’s brain!”

I have shouted these exact words more than once. I feel your pain and I stand in solidarity with you.😎

[JustEm]

1 hour ago, saraha said:

Really though, I hadn’t ever thought about the mental load being a mother is until reading an article a few years ago illustrating the fact. The struggle is real friends. 
I do remember years ago shouting at my dh “I am tired of being everyone’s brain!”

I have said this as well.  But then I had to point it out to dh that it really was an issue because everyone in the family just asks mom instead of spending any amount of time pausing and thinking about xyz first to figure it out for themselves, dh included.  Nothing major, things like 'do we have batteries,' 'where is the charger,' 'is recycling being picked up this week?'  But with 7 people asking me these things all day long it is so tiring.  

Dh has stopped doing it but we're still working on the kids.

[SKL]

It's natural for me to try to be the repository of all family information, but I am trying to step back for my kids' sake.

Yesterday my 17yo went to two health appointments on her own.  (Vision therapy & chiropractor for concussion symptoms.)  I asked how it went.  Apparently the chiropractor says I need to come with her next time, because she couldn't answer questions about the vision exam she had last Thursday.  No recollection at all.  She also said she had no idea how to set up her next appointment (but she figured that out).  [It's possible her memory problem is concussion-related.  But I also think she doesn't consider it her job to listen and retain info at health appointments.]

A big mental load here is worrying about everyone getting places on time.  I have finally stopped getting up in the morning with my kids, who attend public school (12th grade).  Now my younger 17yo has the burden of figuring out how to get her 17yo sister to leave the house on time ... or deal with the fallout if she decides to drive away without her sister.  It's a lot for my youngest.  But imagine dealing with that daily for 16 years.

One thing I've successfully handed off is food decisions.  My kids have everything it takes to choose and prepare any menu they want.  But a lot of it requires planning (surprise!).  Not only does one need to work back from mealtime to grocery shopping, one needs to work all of it into one's busy schedule without letting other balls drop.  Who knew?  😛  There's always PBJ if one isn't up to the task.

And the laundry ... I still do the washing, drying, folding, and putting away, because otherwise, my kids will just leave the clothes folded on the floor until they mysteriously make their way back into the laundry pile.  😕  But I only wash what they put in the hall on the weekend.  Of course this means that come Wednesday, someone is looking for leggings that never got washed.  Oh well!  Not my problem.  Yay!

We really have a long way to go before my kids are thinking of all the things they should be thinking about.  It's disappointing.

[dsmith]

2 hours ago, saraha said:

I do remember years ago shouting at my dh “I am tired of being everyone’s brain!”

I've turned the tables and now dh is my brain! 🤣

[Terabith]

Honestly, my husband DOES far more around the house than I do, for various reasons.  But I am the executive functioning for everyone in the family, and it is genuinely a job.  I keep track of who needs to be where when, what needs to be ordered, what appointments need to be made, when the car needs inspection, and what not.  I mean, I also do things around the house, but probably not as many as my husband.  

[saraha]

Im glad dh was within earshot of this conversation, but that doesn’t mean he actually heard it. 🙄

I have had grown dds call me at work to ask me questions like if there was more mayonnaise. My response? Did you look on the top shelf left side in the fridge? Did you look in the pantry? Then I guess not??? 🤦‍♀️ Or when putting groceries away, where do you want this? And this? And this? NOTHING has changed about stuff placement in my kitchen on 15 years

[freesia]

3 minutes ago, saraha said:

Im glad dh was within earshot of this conversation, but that doesn’t mean he actually heard it. 🙄

I have had grown dds call me at work to ask me questions like if there was more mayonnaise. My response? Did you look on the top shelf left side in the fridge? Did you look in the pantry? Then I guess not??? 🤦‍♀️ Or when putting groceries away, where do you want this? And this? And this? NOTHING has changed about stuff placement in my kitchen on 15 years

This has been the on going irritant in my marriage. In general we get along great but he thinks I’m rude if I object to questions like the above and I think it’s rude that he won’t just look! When we got married he didn’t want an answer like in the cupboard by the sink. He thought it was reasonable to expect—middle shelf, on the left. ( yes, that’s how his mother answers such questions!) Tb fair he asks less often now but still!

[JustEm]

56 minutes ago, saraha said:

Im glad dh was within earshot of this conversation, but that doesn’t mean he actually heard it. 🙄

I have had grown dds call me at work to ask me questions like if there was more mayonnaise. My response? Did you look on the top shelf left side in the fridge? Did you look in the pantry? Then I guess not??? 🤦‍♀️ Or when putting groceries away, where do you want this? And this? And this? NOTHING has changed about stuff placement in my kitchen on 15 years

Man, I'd be ticked off at anyone who called me at wor to ask about mayo. To the point that I'd likely hang up on them and I do not hang up on people ever.

[Halftime Hope]

I'm still working, dh is retired, and yes, he really does work a lot! Big, important projects. And I thank and respect him.

But I'm in the middle of huge changes at work, trying to half-way meet an absolutely impossible deadline -- absolutely no way to meet it, so I'm trying to at least make progress on it while I tend to all the other forest fires.  There are four big processes (the yearly institutional budget is one of them) that are similarly being changed, and one small process that took two hours of my time today to prepare my student workers for. (The small change begins tomorrow, and the details finally arrived in an email at 2PM. And I had to translate it into 'student' so no one would panic when they couldn't clock in tomorrow morning.)

Today he emailed me during work hours, "How's that electrical contract renewal coming?" I panicked, went and found the original email he sent a week ago, and looked at the attachment. The &^%$ contract is up for renewal on May 15th. May.15th.  Oh, my gosh.

The nicest thing I did all day was to blinking ignore that email.

 

[JustEm]

I can only laugh at this, but even our tenant uses me as me as brain power. He has lived with us since August and knows where everything goes in the kitchen. Today he was bringing in a big grocery haul he made and put everything away except the booze he bought. That he asked me where I wanted that to go. My response, 'um the liquor cabinet if it fits.' Which it did. 

[Harriet Vane]

3 hours ago, hjffkj said:

Man, I'd be ticked off at anyone who called me at wor to ask about mayo. To the point that I'd likely hang up on them and I do not hang up on people ever.

Same. I do think kids and others need to be trained on appropriate boundaries sometimes.

[Laura Corin]

8 hours ago, Halftime Hope said:

I'm still working, dh is retired, and yes, he really does work a lot! Big, important projects. And I thank and respect him.

But I'm in the middle of huge changes at work, trying to half-way meet an absolutely impossible deadline -- absolutely no way to meet it, so I'm trying to at least make progress on it while I tend to all the other forest fires.  There are four big processes (the yearly institutional budget is one of them) that are similarly being changed, and one small process that took two hours of my time today to prepare my student workers for. (The small change begins tomorrow, and the details finally arrived in an email at 2PM. And I had to translate it into 'student' so no one would panic when they couldn't clock in tomorrow morning.)

Today he emailed me during work hours, "How's that electrical contract renewal coming?" I panicked, went and found the original email he sent a week ago, and looked at the attachment. The &^%$ contract is up for renewal on May 15th. May.15th.  Oh, my gosh.

The nicest thing I did all day was to blinking ignore that email.

 

I'd ask him to do it. My husband has mostly taken over the household now he is retired. 

[SKL]

As far as boundaries over being disturbed at work ...

To be fair, I don't think I ever "laid boundaries" with my kids about this.  I chose my work situation when I adopted my kids (as babies), with the understanding that I'd have "flexibility" to "be there for my kids" when it made sense.  But I do have very busy times and plenty of work stress, and my 17yos aren't unaware of this.

So my youngest will send a rapid series of texts from school, and I'm thinking she's dying or something.  My brain emerges from deep in a project to read her texts, and sometimes they're about "Mom, mom, my hair looks horrible today.  Help me."  "Mom, I need to change my shirt, I spilled clay in art class. [photo attached]"  I think she's just trying to be cute, and I don't want to be a hag about it, but it's not always a good time.

This is in addition to the times she sends more legitimate texts about having bad concussion symptoms and wanting to come home.  Or the times they've forgotten to bring an essential item and want me to save them.  To be fair, the school rules do make it impossible for kids to make any decisions for themselves.  But hair?  Do we need a stated boundary about hair angst?

I guess I should tell my kids to keep it to 1 text unless it's an emergency.

Oh, and this reminds me.  We recently missed the deadline to sign up (with late fees) for AP tests.  My kids simply trusted me to take care of this.  I got an email from their principal saying that the deadline was 3/15, but when I went to do it on 3/15 (a work deadline for me), I got a notification that the actual deadline was 3/1.  Then my kid told me that she'd heard from a classmate that the deadline was 3/1.  Why didn't she tell me?  "I just assumed you were on top of it."  I was pretty put out as I'd spent a fair amount of time trying to figure out the tedious process when I had several urgent work items looming.  And as for "mental load," the stupid AP test signup was lurking in the back of my mind for months.  (The reason we didn't apply last fall was because my kids said they didn't want to take any of the exams, but then they changed their minds.)  Part of the problem was that my system for tracking my kids' passwords failed me ... which is a whole other category of Mom mental load.  Passwords, ID #s, due dates / expiration dates ....

Other texts I receive from my kids:  "Mom, how much money do I have in my bank account?"  "Mom, have I had xyz vaccination [for a job document]?"

And a peeve of mine ... when I make my kids come and sit with me to take care of stuff like this, they get impatient.  Clearly they are doing me a favor by participating in their own life essentials.

[Arctic Bunny]

4 hours ago, Laura Corin said:

I'd ask him to do it. My husband has mostly taken over the household now he is retired. 

Where did he start? And was it gradual, or just “here you go?”

[Laura Corin]

28 minutes ago, Arctic Bunny said:

Where did he start? And was it gradual, or just “here you go?”

I gradually took on more work outside the home and he gradually retired. In the middle of that we decided to stop hiring cleaners so we discussed how to get the cleaning done. We share an electronic shopping list and he has more time, so it became natural for him to shop.  Then I just would ask him to take over areas of household management and he would.

He enjoys cooking and would be happy to cook every night, but I cook about half of the evening meals because I prefer more plant-based food.

So gradually,  based on mutual recognition of workload 

 

[Halftime Hope]

17 hours ago, Laura Corin said:

I'd ask him to do it. My husband has mostly taken over the household now he is retired. 

I will, but not until tomorrow. If I had responded in the moment, it would have been really ugly, and he doesn't deserve that.

The rollout of the new time card software went horribly today. Next week, I'll get to input all the time card in/outs by hand for 34 people, for as many days as it take hr to figure things out. Many of the employees clock in and out at least twice, often three times daily. Gee, thanks, A Doofus corPoration.

this too shall pass this too shall pass this too shall pass

I'll spend tomorrow in the garden to regain some equanimity. 🙂 Dirt and earthworms are good for mental health.