Bad day yesterday

I had a bad day yesterday.

I was tired. I had a terrible headache. My back hurt. I have no idea why, but my back hurt. Badly. I was irritable and snippy beyond belief.

The kids weren't too crazy. I just felt like crap.

It took me two and a half hours to scrub out the ferret cage. I mean SCRUB. I took everything out, scrubbed it, scrubbed down the actual cage, took out the plexiglass bottoms and scrubbed them... it was a workout. And I'm really sick of these ferret crapping whereever they feel like it. There are 3 littlerboxes in that cage, there is no reason they should be backing into random corners. All of their bedding is falling apart and I really need to get them new hammocks and hideouts and everything but I can't afford to spend money on the ferrets this close to Christmas and when so much work needs to be done to my van.

Then my sister was late picking up her kids, so I was late picking up Holden and Dante. Which isn't a catastrophe, but it's freaking reallllly frustrating when she's late every single Tuesday, when she knows that every single Tuesday, if I watch her kids, I need her to pick them up by 345. I only get the boys for 3 hours on Tuesday... and every single week, without fail, I lose at *least* half an hour of that time because Linda is late, every single time. Ok, not every *single* time. We started this arrangement at the beginning of September. So out of 8 weeks, she was on time *once*. About 3 weeks ago. It's frustrating. And if it happens again I'm going to have to tell her that I'm not available to babysit on Tuesdays anymore.

Then I started dinner too late. I meant to put the roast in the crock pot in the morning and I didn't. I started it at 5 when I got home with the boys. Then Mom called right after I started browning it and told me it was too late, so I should do the pork roast on the grill. I didn't flipping feel like doing anything else. So I continued to cook what I was cooking and I ended up feeding the kids macaroni and cheese and sugar snap peas because the roast wasn't done in time.

When I dropped the boys off, they didn't wanna get out of the van. Which is typical for Holden. But Dante is always excited to go home, and for the last week, every time I drop him off he has a fit and says he wants to stay with me. Which is hard. I know Megan would let me keep them more if I asked. But I have soooo much going on and 5 rambunctious kids is a LOT of work, especially at bedtime when Rayce NEEDS to be to sleep by 8 or I'll have to drag him out of bed in the morning. I really feel like I'm doing all I can at this moment. If I wasn't babysitting Linda's kids, I could handle Holden and Dante more. But I can't handle both sets of kids at once, 7 kids age 5 and under is too many kids. And I have to babysit Linda's kids because it's the only thing I can do at home to make a little bit of money, which we really *need*.

I'm so stuck between a rock and a hard place. And it's frustrating. Very frustrating.