Quarantine Journals - Work Meltdown, Family Drama

I'm sad to say that the last week or two have been drenched in family drama, bullying, and stress. Debbie started pressuring Richard to come into the office once a week.  She is blaming him for the fact that business is losing money.  She will not accept that the business is losing money because of a PANDEMIC.  She does not care that Oliver and I (and my dad) are all high risk. She doesn't care that we won't be able to see my dad and he is out there alone, struggling.  She doesn't care about the cases rising and rising and rising. She just keeps telling him covid isn't a big deal; we are being dumb and not any safer with all our effort; he is doing a bad job; it's time to get back to business; I only want him here because he's helping me throughout the day; etc.

Richard tried to push back and tried to reason with her, but she's not having any of it.  She started getting pretty abusive about it.  Again.  Almost every night she was texting him mean messages, some of which seemed very bipolar.  She told him if he wanted to work from home, he could find a job that isn't with DMCA.  After 15 years of running this company and making her money, this is her behavior toward her own nephew during a pandemic, and it makes me sick.

She has made it abundantly clear that this is a powerplay and she will not be compromising in any way. And thus drowned my hopes of spending the holidays with my dad.  She doesn't care, she says we already got 3 months with him.  Richard did say that he would tell her that he was taking time off for Christmas so that he could go down and stay with my dad.  She told him he could use his vacation for that.  Even though he's still working from home. So that's more bullshit there.  He also told her that he would go in on Fridays so he could do checks, and she told him no. She wants him there on Wednesday, for no real reason, and now he will still have to go back into the office on Saturdays to sign checks.  This is really disappointing because he had already said that he would not be going in on the weekends if he had to go in during the week.

This all started with a lot of fighting between him and I until Debbie escalated to the point that we were on the same side.  We are trying to be a team about this, but it is really scary and disappointing. I am scared for my health, and I am scared for Oliver's health, and I am depressed because I wanted to go see my dad next week.  But he just had his dentist appointment last week, so I can't even go over there before Richard goes into work.  I am trapped.  And she has no qualms about the strife and stress and abuse and everything else she has caused over the last several weeks.

So Richard goes into the office tomorrow.  I bought him an N99 mask with valve covers and I hope that he will be safe and vigilant in his activities there. I will try not to have a nervous breakdown tomorrow when he gets home and our house is finally exposed to the outside world.

Maybe these posts are becoming less for the kids and more as a journal for me. I apologize if these get too real for you, kiddos.