I’m in my last year of grad school and I’m feeling super unmotivated. Life is just too lifey right now to focus on assignments I don’t care about. I feel like doing the bare minimum to skate by is the best I can muster.

I don’t think I’m depressed right now, but I am definitely sensory overloaded and mentally exhausted.

To top that off, we added a dog to our family–she’s a mixed breed. Mixed with what? Dunno, but I’m betting some type of horse. She’s enormous, she’s still a puppy, and she’s an absolute pain in the ass.

Example: Today I decided I would push back my usual study time to replace the leaky faucet on our laundry room utility sink. Why me? Because I’m the one in the house who fixes things CORRECTLY. Simple task, except all the attachments are corroded and I have to remove the entire sink to access the nuts holding the faucet onto the tub. I detach the drain from the tub and the ENTIRE pvc pipe leading to the wall behind the washing mashing just falls out–it was just sitting loosely in the attachment with no adhesive, plumber’s tape, tightened washer, nothing. I go to stick it back in and my thumb literally punches through the only piece of the ghetto-rigged pipe that was NOT made of pvc– the J-channel. This metal thing disintegrated in my hand. Now a simple, amateur plumbing task has turned into a more complicated plumbing issue. We still have a leaky faucet, but now we have no drain pipe!

So, now the house water line is shut off because there’s no shut-off for just the sink alone. I plugged the sink, and put a bucket to catch any drips. Off to the hardware store–but first we put the dog in her crate, because yesterday, after weeks of behaving herself while alone, she decided to rip one of my sheer curtain panels in half. Now she’s in the crate.

We get a new utility tub, request a plumber through Home Depot, and head home… to find that the dog had shit all over the inside of the crate and stomped through it. The house reeked. My husband is melting down. My autistic son is complaining that it stinks and he wants us to spray air freshener. The dog is too stupid and hyped up to go straight to the door to be let outside. My son is still bitching that it stinks. I turned the water back on for the house.

I tell my husband I’ll take care of the crate if he hoses down the dog. I tell my son to hang out in my room until the mess is cleaned up and the smell is dealt with. Put on disposable gloves, slide out the tray of the crate, carry it to the front yard. All the while DH wants to know if I should bring the tray to the back yard–No, you wash the dog in the back. I’ll wash the tray with the front yard hose. Next he wants to know where the dog’s shampoo is. Under the bathroom sink. Next I’M washing the damn dog because he can’t get her to sit still. She’s running laps around our yard covered in dog shampoo, while DH bitches and moans and blasts at  her with the hose set to Jet.

I gently call the dog over, hold her by the collar and tell him to set the hose to the Shower setting. Sweet-talked the dog to keep her calm, when I really felt like dropping her off the edge of the Grand Canyon. It’s not her fault. She’s just a dog, but still… No dogs were dropped from the Grand Canyon today.

All is calm 4 hours later, and I could go to the library to work on late homework, and yet… Here I am. If If I leave, and my husband has to deal with ANYTHING going wrong in my absence… Yeah, no.

Couple of weeks ago I left for two hours to get my hair cut and came home to him melting down because the dog peed on our bed. He really thought he was going to get in his car and go fishing–leaving me to take care of it–because he was mad. I told him this was BOTH our house and BOTH our responsibility, and he needed to help me strip the bed and load the washer before he set foot out the door. Just because I wasn’t there to prevent it didn’t make it MY fault.

Husbands are nothing but an extra source of stress. I’m tired of thinking for everyone in this house. I’m tired of fixing everything. I have no more critical thinking left over for homework.