May 3, 2022 • 10M

Waving Farewell to the Three-Hour Nap | How Much Did I Spend Last Week? April 25-May 1, 2022

The chicken falls right off the bone, just like dust off a mantelpiece…

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Rosemary Mac Cabe
thoughts that should be private, shared
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It may not have escaped your notice that I have skipped an entire week of money diarying. Did I use that week to order Taj Mahal every single day for dinner, McDonald’s every single day for lunch and put a down payment on a Chanel 2.55 bag?! NO BUT I SHOULD HAVE!

In fact, I used last week to finish my book – it is finished! – an event that feels incredibly underwhelming, mostly because I am very (very) afraid that it is deeply bad and that no one I ask to preview it will tell me because they love me and I will think it is good and it will be deeply, deeply bad. I think this is probably how all writers feel. Except the male ones.

ANYWAY! You will probably be able to tell from this week’s diary that for the past two weeks I have not been quite as flush as I’d like to be.

In fact, Brandin and I sat down a few days ago and worked out how much money is coming in, how much is going out and what debts we have and I hate to speak too soon but I think there may be a frugal couple of months coming. (Or, at least, there should be.) Things are not looking as healthy, financially speaking, as they should!

Will this be the last week of random midweek takeaways? Will future money diaries see me spending hours and hours darning socks and fashioning myself stylish T-shirts out of old rope?! Probably not but stranger things have happened.

Monday

Today – although I don’t know it at the time – will mark the last day of Atlas’ three-hour naps for the rest of the week. It’s funny how you just start to assume that things are now in some kind of routine when something has happened for two weeks in a row, but today I get up, feed and play with Atlas and then put him down for what I think is his regular morning three-hour nap! BLISS.

I get to working on my book. I have written myself a to-do list of the three chapters I have left to finish this week and am hoping to get them done by Friday. Even if they’re not perfect, I honestly do feel like the hardest hump to get over (for me, anyway) is to get the thing written.

From there, I find edits and rewrites a lot easier and less intimidating than the actual starting. I guess it’s nicer to work with something than it is to have to create that something from nothing.

I get one of my three chapters finished and reward myself by ordering Chipotle for lunch. ($28.59)

[If there’s anyone out there who, like me, likes elaborate meals that are delicious and high-calorie but doesn’t love cooking, can they please suggest things to make and have in the fridge in advance, that I could potentially then make a meal from?!]

In the afternoon, when Atlas wakes up, I change and feed him and we head over to Bea and Don’s to hang out for a few hours while she’s working from home. I get Starbucks on the way, topping up my card. ($15)

When I get there, Don has just left to get the boys so we have a blissful few minutes’ silence until it’s all whooping and hollering (and fighting, let’s be real about it).

I had planned to leave Atlas at Bea and Don’s while I went to get my hair cut, but my appointment is pushed back 20 minutes so Brandin actually gets there to pick him up before I’ve even left. I could have stayed at home! (I’m glad I didn’t, I really need to get out of the house and be around other people every now and then!)

My appointment is with Olive the Hairapist, about a 10-minute drive from home. I hadn’t been to them before but I’d been looking for a stylist in Fort Wayne who could cut curly hair dry, so that they can work with the curl pattern rather than cutting it wet (when it looks straight), and Olive is the person for the job!

They give me a great style – their Instagram page is very mullet-heavy so I had been a bit nervous – and then also reveal that they don’t take tips because they like the price to just be the price! A brilliant result as I would have had to put the tip (embarrassingly) on a different card. ($150)

When I get home it’s around 7pm; I feed the baby and then have leftover chicken and vegetables that Brandin made for him and the boys for dinner.

Daily total: $193.59

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