True Frugality is Just a Paintbrush Away | How Much Did I Spend Last Week? Sep 23-29, 2024
This week I painted an entire mural (above!) on Atlas’ bedroom wall and I’ll tell you for nothing that all that painting time really took from my spending time.
Of course, the painting wasn’t free – I paid about $220 in total for supplies and spent approximately 14 hours on it – so it may just be a false economy of sorts. And while I never want to even think about painting another thing in my house, the whole endeavour has made me realise that it would probably be a good thing if I took up some sort of time-consuming hobby that might distract me from my lesser urges (those urges being: buying crap I don’t need in order to give myself some shopping-related serotonin as a way of distracting from, well, the myriad distressing and serotonin-dampening things going on in the world) and help boost my happiness hormones in a more productive and less financially ruinous ways.
But I just can’t think of anything.
Monday
This morning, despite the fact that I want to immediately start into my mural – MY MURAL! I wail, to no one in particular – I have other, pressing matters to attend to: dropping Atlas to his babysitter’s, making breakfast (scrambled eggs, toast, bacon) and attending the breastfeeding prep course I signed up through Aeroflow, which offers online prenatal classes that are covered by my insurance.
The problem is, though, because insurance covers the cost of them, if you’re a no-show, you could possibly be charged – and as, this week, I’m somehow more conscious than usual of the hazardous state of both my credit cards and my current account, I am trying to avoid any avoidable penalty / late / overdraft fees.
So, I attend.
It’s actually a really decent class, and even though I feel like I gave birth yesterday (I didn’t – would you believe Atlas turns three this week?!), there are a lot of things I’d completely forgotten about the whole palaver, so I’m really grateful this resource is available, and end the session feeling a lot more positive about the half dozen or so further classes I’ve signed up for.
Once that’s done, I have beans on (more) toast, then head back to my desk to record an episode of the pod.
ONLY THEN can I submit to my heart’s desire and head in to my mural, to do the first of what I’m hoping will be two coats I get done today (of the lilac colour; I did the sun and the white cloud over the weekend).
Brandin picks Atlas up on his way home from work, and we have dinner with the boys (I can’t remember a thing about it, I think I was mostly distracted thinking about my mural, and having to explain to them over and over again why they couldn’t help me with the painting – mostly because I was getting very tense about the straightness of the lines and simply couldn’t face having to grin and bear it when, inevitably, they took a more relaxed approach to the project).
After dinner, I head straight back up to do coat number two, then we do bedtimes and put up laundry and tidy up the kitchen.
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