I Swear I've Changed My Ways | How Much Did I Spend Last Week? Mar 17-23, 2025

Back to (un)reality...

dahlias by Bokenkotter Blooms

Hello! It’s been a while! Roman is now three months (and four days, but who’s counting?) old and though it does not feel like enough time has passed for me to come back to work… I also know I must come back to work. (FYI the podcast has been back for a while! Our timekeeping is slightly shoddy — we’re in the postpartum phase, okay?! — but episodes are dropping, if slightly sporadically. Consider it a kind of surprise schedule! You never know what you’ll get!)

You’d think that being away from the money diaries and the small sliver of shame that shivers through me every time I commit to writing something else ridiculous that I’ve bought would have freed me up to buy millions of Nordic mugs, but on the contrary, this maternity leave time has coincided with our acceptance (finally!) that we simply cannot continue as we have been (that is to say, putting everything on credit cards and hoping for the best) and I’ve had to seriously curb my spending.

This is a bit ridiculous to tell you now, as I recount yet another $1,000 spend week (how are other people managing to keep theirs under $500?!? I’ll never understand it), but I swear to God I have had a very frugal few months! I didn’t buy any dahlia tubers in the recent Meadows Flowers & Finds drop! I’ve avoided buying these leopard print Adidas trousers I REALLY, REALLY WANT! I have cooked many, many meals, some of which have been actually edible! (Several of which have not, but the less said…)

Anyway, I guess you’ll just have to believe me…

Monday

Beatrice has today off, so we had planned to have breakfast at a new cafe that’s opened up near both of our houses, Dreaming Tree Cafe, owned by Beatrice’s hair stylist, Malory, and her husband. (Sadly, this means Beatrice is now looking for a new brilliant hair stylist, so Fort Wayne locals, please, come through!)

Of course, the path to true love and pastries never did run smoothly, so Bea has decided this morning is the perfect opportunity for her to go and get bloods drawn for some tests her doctors are running. WTF!

The reason this is in any way stressful (I swear, ordinarily I could delay breakfast a bit no problem!) is that Atlas is at school this morning and, having been picked up by the bus at 8.45am, I’ve to go get him at school at 11.45am, so there’s a limited window within which to be ladies of leisure.

As it happens, she gets seen before 10am and texts me to meet her at Dreaming Tree afterwards, so Roman and I head off. We arrive at pretty much the same time and order together; I get a drip coffee and a sausage, cheese and egg sandwich, while Bea has a flat white and a croissant.

I also get two croissants to bring home to Atlas, which is cheeky because… Bea pays. I offer to Venmo her for Atlas’ pastries, but she simply rolls her eyes at me. She’s the best!

Dreaming Tree is very cute. The interior is very Parisian cafe vibes and my sandwich is delicious. My one complaint is that the food is served on metal trays, which I don’t think they’d go for in Paris. Why does no one like good old-fashioned plates any more?!

We even bump in to our friend, K, and her friend, L, who we’ve never met before but who is — you’ll never believe this — a forensic pathologist! I start to tell her, in detail, about the latest episode of Will Trent, while she — and this is how I know we’re going to be besties — feigns interest. (Imagine if, every time I told anyone I was a writer, they started asking me if I was the Irish Carrie Bradshaw…)

After breakfast, Bea and I head back to her house via, in my case, the school, where I pick my very delighted toddler up. He’s less delighted when he realises we’re not going home (I swear to God, this child is such a hermit), but calms down when he hears we’re going to Bea’s, his second-favourite place to rot on the couch.

Bea and I had planned to be productive, go through her wardrobes, or clear out her basement, or something, but we hadn’t quite factored in the presence of these two other little humans, one of whom simply cannot be put down or moved away from for even a moment, so instead we sit and chat while drinking mug after mug of tea.

While at Bea’s, I’m scrolling through Facebook Marketplace when I see an adorable activity table I think Atlas would love — anything to distract from the TV, honestly, although now that I type this he never asks to watch TV at Bea’s and I think it’s because all of the Lego is out and easy to play with, so maybe I should rethink my “Lego gets tidied up and put over here” attitude — for $25, but then I realise it’s only $35 new from Target, and Bea offers to buy it for Atlas because, “come on, I feel like I never buy him anything!” (Her feeling is incorrect.)

I also order a new baby / toddler swing for our swing set, and a pair of cushioning shoulder pad things for Roman’s car seat, because we can’t seem to find the ones that came with it. ($43.08)

At around 2pm I decide to head home; while I was considering trying to put Atlas down for his nap at Bea’s, I can’t see him staying in a bed without sides (his own little pirate bed seems to have a kind of imprisoning effect, and except for one time, he has never got out of it without an adult or sibling coming up to tell him he can — and I swear, it’s not like we’ve told him he can’t! He just doesn’t!), so I bring him home and put him down straight away. He does very little complaining, which is how I know he’s wrecked.

The heavens are smiling on me, because Roman manages to stay asleep in the car seat while I assemble dinner. It’s a chicken and veggies recipe from Rukmini Iyer’s book, The Roasting Tin, and though it is, in fact, a proper one-tin dinner (almost no washing up to do afterwards), and turns out quite well, it is not what I would call child-friendly, something I should have realised when I read “three handfuls of fresh spinach” and “whole shiitake mushrooms” on the ingredients list. They do eat the chicken though!

After dinner, we get sucked into the vortex of baths and bedtime and, before we know it, it’s time for us to go to bed, too.

Daily total: $43.08