I listened to a podcast this week that truly spoke to me – Virginia Sole-Smith’s podcast Burnt Toast, an episode titled ‘Budgeting is Diet Culture for your Money’.
I wasn’t paying full attention to it because, as I was listening to it, my new air fryer arrived (is there an irony there? Probably), but I did get the gist, being that budgeting doesn’t work and anyway is only possible for those of us who have money to begin with, and something about intentional spending.
Of course, I was hoping they’d touch on my own personal bug bear – the idea that there is some morality tied to how one spends one’s money, and that I should (imagine my Mum’s voice here) be ashamed of myself for how much I spend on takeaway, but somehow if I was spending it on wool for my avid knitting it would be… fine? (What if takeaway is my hobby? My skill? My raison d’etre!)
Anyway, it was good, and so I am entering the writing of this money diary in a spirit of intentionality. I intentionally spent all that money on food this week. I love food! It’s delicious! We need it to survive! Okay, possibly not the specific food I ordered and ate, but food in general!
Monday
The boys – ours, and Bea’s – are back to school this week. I will confess, I was counting down the days to the great school return, thinking about all of the free time I’d have once they went back, like I did last year!
I entirely forgot, however, that I now have a small baby who doesn’t go to school, and as it starts to dawn on me that I will just now be left at home with the baby, without the boys to help me – “watch him while I pee, will you?” – I begin to feel sad about it. And, I mean, they’re fun to have around sometimes too.
Anyway, as it is the last Monday before they go back to school (their school starts on Thursday), when they ask if we can go all the way across town to Sunrise Cafe for breakfast, I say yes, why not. (Also, this will shock you, but I don’t feel like cooking, so…)
We go pretty much the minute we’re all out of bed and dressed. Right now, Atlas is staying awake for around three hours at a stretch, but he gets very grumpy if he misses his naps so I want to go over there, get breakfast and then get home so that he can go down. As I’ve mentioned before, I had such high hopes that I would be a laid back mum…
The boys have pancakes and hot chocolate (in 30-degree weather, weird) and I have French toast with unlimited coffee top-ups (possibly also weird?). I order a fruit plate and some toast for the baby and try to feed him bits of mango and banana and strips of toast along with the puffs and baby food I brought with me, but he is more interested in staring at people in the cafe and eats barely anything. He does, however, leave an almighty mess behind him. ($53.29 including tip)
We head home then and he goes down for his nap, after which we head over to Bea and Don’s for the afternoon so the boys can hang out before school is back. It’s now a pretty gross day, overcast but very muggy, so they just hang out inside rather than going to the pool.
When Brandin finishes work he meets us there and we head home so Atlas can go down for his second nap and we can do dinner, home-made pizza I’d made the dough for earlier.
I also pay my first instalment to Lucy Cullen, an artist I follow on Instagram who did an oil painting of my pregnant self-portrait. It wasn’t a commission, per se; I’d sent her access to my Drive folder of all my pregnant selfies because she’d told me it was hard to get people to pose nude / nude photographs to work from.
Then, once I saw the painting, I loved it so much – and couldn’t really bear the idea of someone else owning it – that I decided to buy it, so I’m paying it off in instalments. This is one of four. ($245.36)
Daily total: $298.65
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