Working in the coal mine...

I have been asking myself the question does it really matter about my husband’s job for quite some time now… And I am at a loss about whether or not we are at an impasse, which will require me to just chuck the whole situation we are in right now and move on with life in hopes of forcing a change. Let me explain.

My husband works nights, about 1am to 8am every night. And, whether he will admit it or not he is always either working or sleeping. If he is not at work he is at home doing paperwork. His office is my dining table and we never eat there unless we have guests. I have made several attempts to remedy this and they only last about a week before he starts complaining about my “moving his stuff” when he is in the middle of something.

This is awful for me for several reasons. 1) Working nights means sleeping days, and my husband wakes up if there is a pair of jeans clinking in the dryer. You can imagine how hard it is to keep three kids from waking someone like that up in a ranch style house, right? 2) There are no vacations from his job, and he can’t take a day off if he is ill unless he is physically unable to come to work. 3) I have to help him with work all the time, which means we have less time for family things since if we are all awake he needs me to help him. 4) The flip side of #3 he thinks I NEVER help him because every new moon I have to say no or am distracted by the kids while helping him. 5) Between the work he brings home and my store I never have time to decompress and get things done around the house, so our house is a mess and I am a stressball. 6) The job is not glamorous, and I am always wishing that my kids could tell other kids that their father is an Engineer (which is what his masters and BS say) instead of this lengthy explanation I give to avoid saying he delivers newspapers. 7) He contends that we make more at this job, I contend that we would spend less if he had a regular job (right now we have 2 cars all the time for him complete with insurance and repairs plus tons of gas plus we pay for all our health care needs and $500 a month for insurance that will only be helpful in a big medical case) 8) I want to have a normal life where my husband comes home from work at 5 and we all have dinner, he has weekends off when we can do family things… I just want him to be around once in awhile so I can stop feeling like a single parent. 9) I think half his health concerns are due to not getting enough sleep, and if he could sleep at night (even if it meant taking a pill to do so) I think he would be a different man.

I am listing my store today, insha’Allah… And I want to focus on getting our lives in order. I just don’t know where to start! And I am wondering if I can start without my husband admitting what is going on with his job and making some changes. Please keep me in your duas sisters… I am afraid I am in for a long haul this month!