Had a pretty miserable existence this year with stress levels so high I sort of expect a stroke or heart attack to topple me. Last night I volunteered to oversee 16 teams of micro soccer (boys 5-6) as a coaching aid to assist many of the first time coaches who had no idea what to do with a team full of kindergartners. It was mayhem from the start trying to assign everybody enough space on the field, direct frantic parents to the right coach, help out coaches who had the deer in the headlight look and keep organized chaos from erupting. I volunteered for this largely because I'm on the board and they asked for help, but also because I am desperate to find excuses to be out of the house. In an ideal world, I would be watching the opening game of the NFL season with a large beer on my new giant TV in my refinished basement/media room. But this #### ain't ideal at all. It's a house full of unhappiness. As bad as I thought it was going to be with twins, it is much worse. So bad, in fact, that I look at my job in a turbulent stock market where I've lost my largest two partners this past month as a vacation when in fact, it's panic inducing currently. My wife is a sleep deprived mess. When I come home, I immediately take one of the fussy twins into the ultra femme Baby Bjorn and pace around like an elephant until I calm him down. Then I pass him off or lay him down and grab the other fussy twin. When I'm not doing that, I'm either helping with dinner or doing the dishes. I also need to make myself available for my needy 3 year old daughter who equal parts princess and satan. Then there's my older sons who - god bless them - are cognizant of the situation and help out where and when they can, but I just don't have the bandwidth to interact with them the way I used to and love to (outside of coaching their soccer team, which I'll give up when I'm dead). And that sucks because they are in middle school now and that time period of my life was almost as bad as what I'm muddling through now. Soon enough, my MIL - who has been a saint and a tremendous help - will need to go back home and it will only get worse. The things my wife and I promised each other we wouldn't do we're doing now - keeping score over who does what in this house. And we can't even really talk about it because either her mom or a child is omnipresent. I've given away all my Ducks tickets this year in an effort to show I'm serious about helping out on weekends, but it like everything else I feel like I do to help goes unnoticed. Which is understandable considering how much of a toll this has taken on my wife. Part of being a dad is making giant sacrifices and being okay without appreciation. I'm sure my wife could write the same exact thing. It just sucks so bad right now and I want to hit the fast forward button on a remote and get to the part where the infants are settled and calm and happy and not waking up furious at the world and making noises that make me want to jump out of a window. All that bull#### about "Cherish these moments, they go by so fast!"....#### that noise. Give me some pleasant 7 year olds now and you can keep the cute little ####### infant angel crap. I know, I know...point to the shirt. My bad. On me. I know it will get better. I need to work on some internal behaviors to make it less stressful. This is venting and it helps to get it off my chest. I don't get the luxury of spending time with friends anymore to talk to them about my life, so this is really all I've got for an outlet right now. My parents are in Europe, my sister has the attention span Super Happy Fun Ball and my wife is and has been my most trusted companion for support has no interest in tales of woe because her tales are much much woer.