I'm finally home after a twelve hour day. Ten clients, payroll submitted, last gifts to the therapists given out. The boys arrive from their dad's tomorrow am (he gets them Thursdays), and the Christmas shopping is not done. My husband and pee are at a wrestling match, probably won't be home til midnight. I lug my work bag up to our room, pick up the remote for big dumb louie's shock collar and find myself here instead of working.

There have been more days lately than not when I get in the car to drive home that I question myself. Am I safe to drive? The exhaustion feels like drunkenness and there are moments of pure surreal and focused efforts to stay oriented to the road. Avoid Minnesota roads during my commute time, ha ha.

I noticed on Tuesday that I could not remember the last time I properly shaved my legs. I've been too busy.

I think I'm too tired to work. Tomorrow we again will be graced with princess's presence. Last weekend we were blessed with an extra night before she left. My husband had once again very specifically instructed her there would be NO DRAMA. She was here a matter of hours before I encountered her in the kitchen. She was about to go downstairs with a plate of fries. She appeared a bit disoriented and I realized immediately that she was high. Dilemma. Do I involve myself by reporting it to my husband? Most certainly, pee was high, too. So I did tell him, and we had the pleasure of going down to her room to confront the situation. pee admits it when he's busted, but not princess. Deny, deny, deny. "Search my coat, search my room, I'll take a drug test!" I said "No, why should we go through the work? Hand over your stuff." "I don't have any, I'm not high!" Whatever. I noticed she did not suggest we search her truck. Hmmm, wonder why. So then the talks, the bs, whatever.

I stayed in our room the rest of the weekend. I am sick of the drama. Her stupid monster truck is registered to my husband, it will be put in her name now, and she will pay to have it ensured. Can't pay for it, princess? Get a job like the rest of us. Or, it could sit with her at college and I wouldn't have to deal with her coming here, that would be a nice Christmas gift.

It's been 15-18 hour work days dealing with intense drama down at the clinic caused by my staff psychiatrist, ending with our hiring yet another attorney (that's four in our fleet now) to protect the clinic from damage she did with one of the insurance companies (long, long story), orienting an intern, day to day administrative tasks, seeing clients, etc. I began therapy with a 14 yr old boy who is destined to manifest paranoid schizophrenia (his mother has it). Right now he has schizoaffective disorder but I see the writing on the wall, heartwrenching. I have a couple featuring a truly evil stepmother (after 14 months of being with her, the husband is nearly finished with the process of allowing the stepfather to legally adopt his children because SHE DOESN"T LIKE THEM. I spent an hour with another couple discussing with the extremely immature husband why it wasn't a good idea to try to manipulate his wife into a threesome, and why even though her sex drive is lower right now because she's dealing with her thoughts and feeligs about his recent infidelities, that it was also not a good idea that he try to make an agreement with her that while she deals with her 'stuff' that he go out and satify his 'lusts.' And on and on). But these are the headaches that come with owning the clinic, and I've dealt with a variety of them over the years.

I'm back on ulcer medication and can't eat much of the time. For some reason, what I can eat is pretty limited, eggs and toast. Which is ok because my hens produce some fine and tasty eggs.

Yesterday I flew through the grocery store and loaded up over 200.00 of groceries in twenty minutes and made it home to get my kids off the bus.

When princess left Monday morning, she opted to leave a dishwasher load's worth of plates, cups, the damn plate of fries, rotting food, etc. in her room. My choices: leave it to fester or keep my house clean. She's enough of a pig that the toilet downstairs was clogged for a few months before I discovered it (this was before I took the basement back). Now, this is embarrassing because I keep a clean house. It gets disorganized and messy sometimes, but it is clean. Last month before I discovered the toilet downstairs, which only princess and pee use now, my husband and I had noticed a few flies. We were puzzled. We do live in the country where the insects are rampant, but hell, this was November. Why were we seeing flies? We hadn't seen any since August or September. Yes, you guessed it. The feces in the toilet made a nice breeding ground. I got rid of them but the disgust lives on. So I make multiple trips down and up the stairs with her royal dishes and clean the food off them and wash them, put them away.

There was no time to send out Christmas cards again this year. We were married in June and have yet to send out thank you's to our guests. Normally I come up with gift ideas for my husband that he fully sees and appreciates, whether it's birthday, Valentine's Day, Christmas, whatever. Each time I have tried to allow my mind to think about something that would resonate with him, I'm distracted by someone needing something. Due to child care schedules, my time to shop has passed. I feel awful about that. He will not be home until midnight and then up at 4:30am to get down to the clinic to manage a software upgrade which must occur before January 1st or the therapists won't get paid because of changes in federal law designed to add protection to electronically submitted information from providers to insurance companies.

The idea I had I was unable to do. My husband and I realize full well we need a break, some time away. The only idea I had that I like was two nights over New Year's weekend at a high end bed and breakfast. I was ready to order it, and realized princess has her knee surger on the 30th of this month. She injured her knee showing off to her college dance team during the fall, was supposed to have the surgery over the Thanksgiving holiday, freaked out and my husband calmed her down and rescheduled it to the 3th of this month. My ex spouse has my kids that weekend, I thought it would have been so nice. But she'll be immobile, and his family does a New Year's Day brunch at noon. She won't be able to drive her stupid monster truck and it would not have been possible to drive back from the bed and breakfast and then to restaurant in time. Ah, well. As long as we can serve her . . . .

Last night I had the pleasure of pee asking me for a cigarette. That was a super cool moment.

I just found out via text from him that I will miss Christmas Eve with his family due to the time his family is getting together and the time my ex will return my children Christmas Eve. I love his family, I'm bummed. It can't be helped and maybe I'm being over sensitive, but did he need to text, "We would want to go without you." Referring to, he, princess and pee will go, and my parenting time agreement is not in accord with the schedule of the gathering. A bit of a sting there. I told him ok, I'll make sure the gifts are wrapped.

I'm tired, tired of it all.