Prayer request for me

I am very stressed out lately and could use some prayer.

(The rant below is an excerpt of an email I sent to my BFF a little while ago. I probably wouldn't even post this, except that I am very tired and stressed, and my judgement is always very suspect in the middle of the night... although even during the day when my judgement is more reserved, am not sure what to do except ask people for prayers... If you don't want to read the rant, you can stop here. If you do read below, everybody I mention could probably also use your prayers...)

I am at my wit's end and then some with my vampire-hours-keeping brother, who recently stopped being any help at all around the house, also recently decided he was no longer going to work on the basement unless I paid him. Like living in my house and keeping my kids from having their room, his smoking excursions keeping us from being able to use our alarm system, eating our food and using our electricity and water, stinking up my house, not cleaning up after himself half the time, taking my still-damp clothes out of the dryer so he can do his own laundry, etc. is not enough!

I've had some kind of pinched nerve thing going on for the last 3-4 weeks (I guess in my back) that is manifesting itself as my arm going to sleep whenever I pick it up to use it (like cutting/prepping food. Or typing. Or sleeping in any position whatsoever). I've been going to the chiro twice a week instead of once and it is helping a very little. But barely enough to even notice improvement. I went for a prenatal massage Tuesday and she said my back was like a bunch of steel cables. (It occurred to me yesterday that this whole condition may be a result of all the stress. I cry every time I think about what all this stress is doing to my poor helpless baby.)

I wake up at the slightest noise after 1 a.m. (like my game-addicted husband coming to bed at 2:30 or my brother bumbling around the kitchen at all hours of the night) and can't get back to sleep until it is time for the kids to wake up.

I am getting more and more stressed every day about the basement not being finished and my belly being on the verge of too big to unpack now, much less by the time it is finished. If it EVER gets finished. I _need_ my shelves down there so I can move my books, unpack my boxes, etc. I know from experience there will be no getting anything done with a small baby in the mix, for at least the first 9 months. So it's now or never, looking more and more like never. And I am so tired of all the boxes everywhere, and not being able to park in my own garage, use my dining room, etc. Oh, and before the shelves can go in, they need painted (if the pieces are even all built) and of course I can't do it because everything smells 100x more intense/makes you physically ill when you're pregnant. (Like my brother's clothes/breath after coming in from polluting his lungs and the air outside my house.) My husband wants nothing to do with finishing the basement, other than paying for it. (I never ever thought I'd even see *that* day, so don't take me as complaining about him. Just know that him helping is not an option.). My brother, even when he was helping, said from the get-go he wasn't a painter. So I am at the mercy of helpful friends' busy schedules being able to converge with my own. There is a bunch of big heavy stuff that needs to go down there like Mawmaw's blue chair, the TV, the drawers for the built-in in the bedroom... but nobody around here who can actually lift things who will actually be helpful and carry them down.

Oh, and my MIL is doing very poorly, got off chemo and into hospice care several weeks ago and nobody even bothered to call and tell us.

</rant. !-- Thanks for your prayers -->