Cranky Reason #1: Work and Caregiving Conflicts

So why do I get cranky in my caregiving role?

Reason #1: conflicts between work and caregiving. I work from home, my job is fairly demanding. Lots of conference calls and time-sensitive tasks to complete. When the demands between these two facets of my life conflict, crankiness is often the result. It can be through no fault of Skip's, if work is burning hot, simple requests from her can be enough to trigger it. Or, if I'm feeling like I'm being interrupted a lot for a steady stream of low-priority requests, that can be irking as well. Over all of this is the concern that I have of needing to accomplish as much at home as I'd get done in the office; I can't have too many caregiving interruptions during the day or my productivity is impacted.

De-crank strategy: when work is a pressure-cooker, I give Skip a heads up so she knows I may blow. She can be pretty understanding and try to ramp back the requests, but this only goes so far. Even on a normal day, when I feel there's too many requests, I can try to defuse my feelings of irritation by joking about it so she's aware of my frustrations without my lecturing.