Bye-bye, Panda Express! How Much Did I Spend Last Week? Nov 14-20, 2022

Monday

I have once again forgotten to cancel my Doordash subscription – despite the fact that I had set a reminder in my phone. “Cancel Dashpass.” Did I subconsciously ignore the reminder so that I could continue fooling myself into thinking I was somehow saving money on takeout?! (Probably yes.)

Anyway, I wake up and realise that my Dashpass subscription has come out and I am tied in to yet another stressful month of ordering takeout. ($9.99)

I’ve started to get myself into a morning routine of sorts: I get up when the baby does and make us both breakfast. He usually gets what I’m having, so today it’s some waffles and berries (full disclosure: I have bacon, but I draw the line at feeding the baby sodium-heavy nitrites). I heat up the coffee that Brandin made earlier this morning.

Then we head upstairs to do some “light housework”, as I’d describe it if I were placing an ad for babysitting: I make my bed and put up a load of laundry and put on another load, then we go back downstairs and watch Encanto.

Right now we’re on a steady rotation of Encanto, Moana and Baby Einstein, the only three things that seem to catch – and keep – his attention.

He starts to get sleepy usually around three hours after he gets up, so I nurse him to sleep and then make myself some fresh coffee before heading up to my “office” (my bedroom) to do some work. Today’s to-do list includes sending some invoices, writing a piece for Image (another full disclosure: this does not get done) and catching up on some Substack writing.

I order Taj Mahal for lunch for us both – he gets a lunch portion because he’s only a babser. (He eats about two tablespoons of sauce, with plain rice we had in the fridge, half a slice of toast and half an avocado, cut into chunks.) ($47.37)

Then we play in his ball pit for a bit in the afternoon. I make pizza dough for dinner and leave it to prove in the oven with the light on – in the summer it proves in the garage, which is always roasting, but right now the garage is like a walk-in freezer, so the oven it is – and then we watch Moana.

Atlas pays particular attention to the, “make waaaaay, make waaaay” bits and You’re Welcome, and kind of wanders in and out of the living area for the rest, playing with his activity table and trying to feed his toys to Vinny at every opportunity.

When the boys get home with Brandin it’s pizza time, followed by some jigsaw time (me) and Xbox time (them). Atlas is going to bed these days at around 7pm, which is great – but he’s still up at least three times, usually around 11pm, 1am and 3am, during the night.

Daily total: $57.36