[Originally written June 16th, 2010. Which means I'm mostly "over it" by now, but figured I'd post it anyway because all has not been a bed o' roses in the last couple of weeks.]

Just over a week until my exam. Thank goodness. It needs to be OVER already.

Right around the middle of this week I turned irritably irritable. There were a couple of days I just wanted to go back to bed and get up again to see if starting over would make a difference. I’m sure it’s a combination of hormones and pre-exam crankiness, so there isn’t much to do except ride it out. It just seems like nothing is going right…

To start with, Brandon’s overnight shifts at work were changed from Friday and Saturday to Wednesday and Thursday. Which means that instead of working one 16-hour overnight shift each weekend, he will be working (between the hospital and his job) two 18-hour overnight shifts each week with 4 hours of sleep in between. How much does that suck? He’s already wiped after the current 16-hour shift and often sleeps from when he gets home at 4pm on Sunday until he has to go to the hospital Monday morning at 7am. Now he’ll be working 7am-5pm at the hospital, coming home and napping for 4 hours, then working from 11pm-7am and heading back to the hospital from 7am to 5pm. But wait! We’re not done! He gets one more 4-hour nap before starting again at 11pm and working through until 5pm the next day.

Just typing that out exhausts me.

Right now he’s clocking in over 75 hours each week. And when does he have time to study/play with his dog/talk to me? Exactly. We’re not even in residency yet. Just wait till we both have 80-hour work week schedules. I can see how it will be a necessary evil later, but it would have been nice to take a little more time together in this first year of marriage.

And yet, how can I argue that I think it’s a bad idea (both for his health and our marital sanity)? We absolutely need the money and it’s not like I can just go out and get a part-time job waiting tables to give him a little breathing room with the bills. Friggity frig.

To top it off, this weekend is Father’s Day and I don’t have two dimes to rub together to get him anything. There are a couple of times each year where I’m given the opportunity to buy something for the man that never (and I do mean NEVER) buys anything for himself. And I can’t. Frig.

Back to the topic of Brandon having no time for his dog. Suh is a sweetheart, but is driving me a little nutty these days. Brandon got her back in September when he was home all day studying and could take care of her. Now I’m the one home all day and I don’t really want to take care of a young, untrained dog. When I’m home, I want to study. It’s hot out, so Maddy is content to sleep most of the day away under her favourite air conditioner vent. Suh needs to be in-and-out constantly and seems to think my sole purpose in life is to be her backdoor opener. I wouldn’t hesitate to leave her out there all day (yes, there is shade and a pool full of water), but she doesn’t want to be outside by herself. And Maddy doesn’t want to be anywhere but inside. Gah.

I’m also super nervous about some of the bad habits that the dogs have and how they’ll affect the baby. I used to like it when Maddy would bark at strangers outside (a great asset when you’re a single female living alone in a ground-floor apartment), but I have a feeling those spontaneous rampages at the mailman are going to interrupt precious sleep.

Also, I am covered in mosquito bites. One of my favourite relaxing things to do is spend a little time weeding the garden every other day or so. Because it’s so hot midday, I usually head to the backyard with the dogs in the morning or early evening. And so do the bug-repellent-immune mosquitoes. I hope they all fry once it dries up and regularly hits 110F!

Let’s see… What else is making me cranky? Brandon is never home, I have no money, the dogs and bugs are driving me crazy… oh, and studying is seriously dragging on. I need to take this exam and get all of this stuff out of my head and into a computer testing database SOON.

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.