If I tally up my budget, food is our biggest expense. And I’m starting to get despondant about the fact I can buy a weeks worth of processed crap for less than the price of three days of fruit and veg.
It’s ridiculous.
And expensive.
Is it the same where you live? Or is fresh produce cheap?
Read the entire article at Money Circle.
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
This morning Hobart Mums’ Network asked what we resolved to do this year. I thought about it briefly, and flippantly replied:
Write more, daydream more, take notes for everything, smile lots, laugh, embrace irreverence, be silly often, tell stories every day, love well, live well.
As flippant as I felt, looking back on my comment this is exactly what I plan to do this year.
Christmas Night, when everyone had gone home, Evelyn was asleep, and the light was disappearing from the horizon, Nathan lit the bonfire. We sat there, watching the paper and wood burn, and my brother and I began telling stories.
Amy and Isaac curled up on the grass next to us, blankets around their shoulders, while Nathan listened. We sat there, and I recounted moments from my childhood for them. My brother added things I’d forgotten – although how I’d forgotten sliding down the dry grassy hill on a body board, I don’t know.
My children laughed, and snuggled, and begged for more.
There is power in telling stories to my children, especially stories from my childhood. Snippets they take into themselves, building connections between us as they imagine me as a child, hiding from my parents in an old cupboard, or sliding down a hill on my stomach.
This year, I resolve to tell more stories. Write more, and write often. To laugh. To embrace irreverance, and to not take myself seriously.
We can learn a lot from how our children approach life, and this year, I plan to emulate them.
Of course, bits of adulthood continue to sneak in around the edges, with a credit card disaster fresh in my memory, and a discovery that no matter how stable it feels like we are, it only takes a minor disaster to set off my financial disaster alarm bells.
But it’s all okay. It’s a New Year, all fresh and shiny, with the bubble wrap still caught around the edges.
I plan to take advantage of every second.
Of course, I’m also quitting sugar for January as part of a sponsored campaign that I’ll talk about in detail a little later in the month, so “taking advantage” may also equal “curling up in a ball with tea and a book”. Clearly I am insane as the house is still full of chocolates from Xmas. Twitch. Twitch.
—
You can read about my credit card disaster on Money Circle. It wasn’t the highlight of my Christmas period, that’s for sure.
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Gate leave, man, it’s awesome. Last night after a long day in hospital, Evelyn and I came home and slept in our own bed. Despite still being in hospital, getting to go home every evening is saving my sanity.
We’re still getting into the routine of things. Eve had lost weight at admittance yesterday, and the speechie has noted a few things going on with her mouth when she eats, so hopefully a plan is on the way.
We’re probably going to repeat her swallow study, this time looking for what is going on further down her oesophagus, rather than just her swallow. Right now, Eve is complicated and we’re still feeling our way forward.
She’s asleep right now, after I walked miles up and down the corridors, with her in her pram. She’d refused to sleep in her cot, and I was grateful, so grateful,for not being tied to the ward, for being allowed to walk, for our ability to leave the climate controlled paeds ward.
That’s really all that is happening right now. I’m tired, and not looking forward to the rest of the week, but I’m hopeful that this will be the beginning of getting her issues sorted.
And you know, this morning she smeared an entire tub of pureed apple and blackcurrant all over herself, so that was also a bonus.
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
I’m 25 today.
Nathan delivered me a doughnut complete with candle this morning, and a cup of tea I didn’t make myself.
So far, it’s a good day.
If I wanted to get all introspective, I would point out that I’m now in my mid-twenties, and I’ve been blogging here since I was eighteen and a mother to one almost-toddler who never slept. My almost-toddler is now seven, opinionated, and awesome. Long term readers have seen me have another two children, all of us growing up.
Years of writing, collected here.
Happy Birthday me!
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
I bought a new camera body, as a balm for my shattered soul.
Or more likely, I bought a new camera body because my old one was having a hard time actually focusing, or taking crisp images, or rendering the colours properly. I’d clicked it out, and it was slowing down, frustrating me. Once I got frustrated, I just stopped picking it up and hello, there goes my creativity down the drain.
There was a frost this morning and I wandered around, taking photos, reminded of the fact that it had been months since I tried to take a proper photo.
Hello, creativity.
I’m coming back.
I wrote my novel outline, mapping out each chapter. I sent it to two people, and then made Nathan read it. I’m working again, writing again, taking photos again.
Hello happiness.
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
