The Perfect Chunky Runners Do Not Exi– | How Much Did I Spend Last Week? Jul 22-28, 2024

“Your money diaries give me anxiety,” a friend told me yesterday, revealing that she doesn’t have a credit card and lives, she says, entirely in her overdraft, coming back to black once a month when she gets paid and then sinking further into the red with each passing day until payday comes once more.

“I have five credit cards now!” I told her, but the words turned to ash on my tongue (figuratively – this conversation happened via WhatsApp, lest you think I actually use my phone to talk to humans with our human voices) as I, Carrie Bradshaw style, couldn’t help but wonder, should my money diaries be giving me anxiety, too?

I will admit that this week’s – after a few diaries that, honestly, I’ve thought were displaying a certain level of maturity and growth – did just that, full, as it is, of profligate spending, ridiculous purchasing decisions and, er, takeaway. Is it time, finally, for me to get a grip on myself?!

Monday

It’s occupational therapy morning, which of course means it’s coffee-and-croissants morning, as I drive the boys over to their mum’s before bringing Atlas to OT and then dropping him to his babysitter’s.

Today I lay down the law and tell the boys they can get two items – a drink and a food item – and they are horrified, truly seeming not to understand that, to quote my mother entirely faithfully, I’m not made of money! Still, it seems you’d want to be made of money when three croissants, a cake pop, a coffee and two disgusting foamy sweet cream-topped drinks are almost the same price as a meal for one in a mid-priced restaurant. ($34.45)

Occupational therapy almost goes off without a hitch, if you don’t count the fact that, when Atlas toddles off to follow his therapist McKinley in to the gym, I realise that he has what I think is a wet patch on his shorts. Spoiler alert: it’s not a wet patch.

Luckily, I have a spare pair of shorts in my enormous Free People bag (I love it now and am not returning it, wow that was a stressful time in my life as I debated whether to keep it or not let me tell you), so I change him and put him in a fresh pair of shorts before sending him off again with McKinley… and then I have to grapple with where to put the plastic bag of doom, finally deciding to put it in the car, because I figure it’s just not morally or ethically okay to put that in the bin inside the four walls of a reputable business.

There was, truly, no good place to put that bag; inside the hot car, where it sits for an hour, it does its best to turn our drive home into a 20-minute torture session and, when I get home, I’ve to park on the driveway instead of in the garage, with the car windows wide open, and hope to God it’s less foul-smelling when I’ve to go back out later (it’s not).

Anyway, while he’s being therapised, I call my OB’s office; all weekend, I’ve had a kind of dull pain in my abdomen that’s starting to worry me. I’m really reluctant to call, honestly, because of how I went to the ER for nothing last week, and I’m feeling like a bit of a hypochondriac… but then I remind myself I’m also really struggling with my mental health right now and feeling a lot of anxiety, and if it makes me feel better to be reassured, is that so wrong?! (Ask me when I get the bill…)

Anyway, I call and speak to a nurse and she gets me in for an ultrasound and a visit with their on-call doctor later this afternoon.

I drop Atlas to Robin’s after OT and then try to get some work done but mostly am just crying and feeling really worried and sick, so I try to take a nap instead, which also doesn’t really work.

I leave early so that at least I’ll have a better chance of getting in to my appointment on time, and while my punctuality doesn’t do much by way of speeding me through the process, the end result is that everything looks fine and the doctor thinks what I’m experiencing is round ligament pain. He’s very nice about it, and without being dismissive, tells me that this is something they see a lot in pregnancy. He suggests I “stay hydrated” (truly universal medical advice), and that, as my pregnancy advances, I might want to look into getting a belly band to offer some support and relief.

So… I guess I am reassured that it’s nothing serious, and that the baby is fine, but I’m also feeling quite glum at the idea of spending the next 22 weeks in pain I can pretty much do nothing about. PREGNANCY IS A GLORIOUS GIFT!

I go home via Bea’s house so I can drop in and feed her cats (she and the boys are in Michigan for a long weekend with Mum and Dad) and when I get home I’m feeling really wiped, but it’s time to get Atlas – and Brandin’s running late with the boys thanks to roadworks – so I walk around the corner in the sweltering heat (this is true suffering) to pick him up, and then get home and we cuddle on the couch for a bit before Brandin and the boys get in.

For dinner, we have pasta and bolognese, and then the boys go to play outside with the neighbours while we chill out with Atlas for a bit before it’s bath and bedtime for him.

The boys’ new Nikes arrived, and whaddya know, they’re both too small for them, so I re-order in bigger sizes and pack the too-small pairs up to send back (so that’ll require a trip to the UPS Store some day soon…). I also buy myself a pair of Blazers, thinking these might be the casual white runners I’ve been looking for that are comfortable on my slightly-swollen-but-just-getting-swollener feet. (Turns out, I was wrong.) ($152.41 less the $90.64 refund)

Our subscription for an enormous box of baby wipes – which we don’t need because we still have about 10 packs from our last order – comes through from Amazon. I remind myself to skip the next one (skipping it right this second!). ($29.47)

Daily total: $91.24