She's Turning It All Around, Folks! | How Much Did I Spend Last Week? Jan 8-14, 2024
You know that expression, don’t count your chickens before they’ve hatched? I never liked that saying. I like to count my chickens way before the hatching stage. If there’s an egg, I say, there’s going to be a chicken – if there’s a sub-$1,000 week, I say, I’ve already made my transition into the frugal queen I always knew I could be.
I mean, it shouldn’t be all that much of a surprise. We’ve downloaded one of those snowball method get-out-of-debt spreadsheets, I’m already working on filing my taxes for 2023 (something I very well could have put off), and I’ve even opened a college savings account for Atlas. I am a responsible adult who knows the meaning of a shilling! Or something.
I mean, look: one of my… I’m not saying resolutions, exactly, because it’s not that, I’m not being absolutely firm about it, but, one of my plans for 2024 is to greatly reduce my purchasing of stuff, and while I definitely have already bought some stuff this New Year, having this in mind has really made me slow down and think twice before pressing purchase on a lot of things already.
So, you know, I feel like we’re off to a strong start.
Monday
It’s the first day back at school for our older two, and Atlas is at Robin’s today, so it’s back to the regular routine.
Brandin gets up early with the older two and their Mum picks them up at 6.30am, while I lounge around in bed pressing the snooze button approximately 34 times before Atlas finally starts complaining so much that I’m compelled to go and get him out of his crib.
I’m tempting fate by even saying this, but so far he has never so much as attempted to climb out himself, although he’s a dab hand at shoving his teddies out between the bars, and has even been known to pull in his giant giraffe teddy which usually sits next to the crib, watching over him adoringly (or creepily, I guess, depending on your outlook).
Anyway, once he’s up and I’ve attempted to interest him in eating some breakfast, we walk over to Robin’s which I enjoy marginally more than he does. I had originally thought we’d both walk over, hand in hand, but when he saw his buggy he insisted on being wheeled around the corner like a tiny prince, so his displeasure is actually ridiculous.
Anyway, once he’s been deposited safely I walk home and make myself breakfast of bacon and toast, which I eat at the kitchen table while reading one or other of my beloved smutty romances.
Once breakfast is done, I give the kitchen a quick tidy, because I make the mistake of doing an Instagram Story to camera and am mortified by the mess in the background.
Then I head upstairs to work, which means making the bed in our room (who can work from a desk in a bedroom with an unmade bed, I ask you?!) and putting up the basket of clean washing I had totally forgotten about before I sit down at my desk.
I’ve a podcast episode to edit and a piece of content to write for tonight, so I spend the day doing those, in between checking Instagram and Facebook, reading the news, attempting to do the “hard” New York Times Sudoku and texting Bea.
I sometimes think about the fact that, if I somehow got rid of all of the background “noise”, I could probably get my work done in about two hours per day. But then, sure, what would I do with the rest of my time?!
For lunch, I make some pasta with butter (the ultimate comfort food), followed by a cup of tea and three pieces of Terry’s Chocolate Orange (can you tell the Christmas stash is dwindling?!) and head back to work.
While I’m online, I buy a small birthday gift for Brandin ($29.99), and because I’m still working when he gets home with the boys, he and Finn go to pick Atlas up from Robin’s. It’s very irritating, let me tell you, to witness them come walking happily back, when I have yet to walk the full way there or back without him demanding to be picked up.
We have dinner together and then I go back to work – seriously, imagine if this just took me two hours – while Brandin does bathtime with Atlas, then I take over and put him down to bed.
My subscription to Zencastr, where Bea and I record our podcast, comes out. ($20)
It’s my Dad’s 76th birthday today, a fact we all totally forget – seeing as we celebrated with him in Bea’s last night. Still, I feel bad because it probably would’ve been nice for him to get a text.
Daily total: $49.99
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