A Single Parent

 For some reason or another I have taken over many more duties of being a parent.  In fact for the last several weeks I have almost felt like a single parent.  

I have always been negative on being a single parent.  A. It is definitely  not good for the kids and B.  it is tough on the single parent too.  

Kids need both parents.  At different times they may need one parent more than the other. But two is always better than one.  That has been my philosophy.  The weak points in one parent might be the strong in the other.   

Anyway, several weeks ago, my wife got sick and was in bed for a week.  I had to take care of pretty much everything all week. And the whole time I was still working.  It meant doing the shopping on my free mornings Monday and Thursday.  Then preparing the meals in the evening to put in the refrigerator for the preparation quickly when I came home at 7.30 pm.  Then getting people in bed by a decent hour (these days it is getting a bit later 10.30 pm) and then cleaning up in the kitchen or making more meals from that time after they went to bed till about mid night.  

Not me

It worked. It s just that I was too tired after that to do anything else like get on my computer and write, although it seems I still did as I have some posts here. 

Now as I write this, the end of March, I have been again single parenting.  

The workload is strenuous and stressful, but I have managed . In another post I talk about how many evening meals I needed to have in order to "survive" the summer.  This single parent time has helped me increase my repertoire to about ten meals.  Some of them dont work for my younger daughter as she doesnt like peas or curry, but all the same I think I have added three more meals and I have about ten meals I can do.  Unfortunately, if I did this single parenting for an extended period I would need twenty meals ... which I dont have.   

I should mention that luckily both my girls are old enough so that they dont need a parent to go with them to appointments such as doctors or dentists and afernoon activities, so they can take care of themselves in that department. And we live in the city so everything is close enough so that they dont need a car to get someplace.   But I think that other single parents could not take the workload that I have.  It used to be six days, but now I have mostly gotten it to five days a week in retail.   Or single parents would need a relative like a grandmother or close friend to take care of the kids if it were much more, which I dont have here.  

While I have been getting through it, I wonder if I would go crazy after a while or just get used to the workload.  That said, I still maintain that two parents is much better and saner for everyone involved.  But maybe that was the problem that has caused this situation, that I wasnt keeping my end up in the parenting?  Maybe.  

Thank you for reading, send me your prayers.