Entries Tagged 'daily drama' ↓

This weekend, Zoë’s been at another sleepover with her grandmother. I’ve missed her. Instead of the usual sigh of relief and enjoyment in the silence – revelry, really – I’ve been lonely. Usually when she’s gone, I play catch up, getting done all of the work I’ve let pile up, cleaning, shopping, socializing.

Honestly, I spend most of my time on twitter or masturbating.

Oops.

But this weekend is different.

As soon as I found out that my Internet service would be entirely dependant on me going outside to a coffee shop, where I’d have to spend money to use their free wifi, I prepared. I got everything done at home that I could, walked to the coffeeshop, sat down, took a sip of tea, and email my editors.

So, online work is done.

The new apartment is still clean, so there goes that idea.

I don’t have money for extraneous shopping, and everything we have/will need until payday is already spread out in too-big cupboards or chilling in the fridge.

Basically, I’m aimless, wondering where all of those long-term to-do items that usually plague me with under-efficiency-flavoured guilt are.

I’ve been reading. A lot. Because insomnia isn’t cured by simple fact of not having anything pressing to do.

I’ve read two and a half new books in the past two days, and re-read four. I’ve thought a lot, and schemed, and mentally manipulated some things. My brain buzzing, giving the following results:

I’m going vegan, as soon as the meat/dairy runs out. After reading Skinny Bitch, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, In Defense of Food, Vegan in 30 Days and Food Inc., there’s little way that my synapses will allow me to ingest animal products, knowing everything the animal went through, and everything that might be in the food.

***

We’ll be following a basic curriculum for Zoë’s education, but it won’t be coercively taught. She’ll get to decide what subject and how to learn – if we’re learning about numbers via counting cotton balls or numbers on a page in a grassy field – but we’ll attempt to follow the basic subject guidelines for math, linguistics and sciences. And then we’ll expand upon them. Curriculum doesn’t have to be set in stone lessons – they can be a launching pad for where to start. And we’re going to try to get her into this school, once she’s five.

***

I’m quitting my psychiatrist.

The last session with him was a clusterfuck of epic proportions, involving him telling me first that I need to accept that The Ex is a ‘drinking man’ and get back together with him so that Zoë can have a father figure in her life full time. Because I’m damaging her by being so stubborn. Then later, he said that I should restrict Zoë from seeing him at all, going against our current court-filed agreement. Then later, he told me that I should be dating, with an aim to find Zoë a new father.

Added to this that he recommended group therapy so as to talk me out of homeschooling, and suggested that I meet with a social worker so that they could convince me how permanently damaging homeschooling will be to her psyche.

***

I have nearly all of our reno plans for the new apartment mentally mapped. I’ve ripped pages out of magazines to create story boards. Paint tones have been chosen. Where shelves will go, planned. Window treatments, pictured. A way to attractively fit working, living, sleeping and dining spaces within one living room: nailed.

I just need more than $15 to my name.

Dramatics aside, that was quite the title, eh? Something I can picture Zoë delivering, wrapped up in a box, decorated with I hate you-themed wrapping paper and topped with a shiny you never let me do anything bow.

Really, everything’s fine, though there is a minor issue that I want to address: Telus, in their infinite wisdom, decided that even though Wednesday was deemed the day to switch my telephone and Internet service, they would switch the phone on Wednesday, and hold the Internet off until February 5th. I don’t know if I can handle that, really.

But really, I learned something with this move, already.

I have too many kitchen cupboards

I don’t know what to put into all of these spaces. So much of our food is bought as we need it, fresh and usually from the produce stand, and has been for so long, that I have at least two cupboards not being used at all.

Seriously. What should I put in those things? Extra dishes I don’t need or use? Appliances I have no reason to plug in?

I’m going to be broke as fuck forever

They say that the key to money management is to plan ahead and pay yourself first. Fuck that.

I budget like I invented it, and I have a really fancy, beautiful, self-design spreadsheet to show for it.

And every single month, I spend everything extra that we could have, so that by the  end of the month, I’ve overspent again. Then, we still don’t have any of the extras that I actually do care about us having – like, bookcases for all of our books, or the money to redecorate the new apartment. Or a $0-balance with cable-television providers, just in case we actually did want to get cable. Not that we do.

This month, I had to take on an extra $500 bill, to cover the new apartment’s deposit.

That’s $500 that would usually disappear in chai, cigarettes and dinners out. There was still chai, cigarettes and a dinner or two out, but for the most part, I didn’t overspend because I already felt like I had. I was looking at the barrel end of the minimum amount of money we’d need to eat til the end of the month, having to stock up on apple sauce and flour and fruits and toilet paper and next months medications, while I still had the cash.

So I did. And then I didn’t have the cash. And now it’s a few days before the end of the month, and here I sit with $60 or so for the month.

Being broke as fuck kept me in line cuz if there’s anyone I can’t trust, it’s myself.

So, I have a new plan. Every month, I will pre-spend everything but rent and groceries. I will panic that I won’t be able to pull off both through to the end of the month, and then I will. And in the process, that pre-spending will go toward paying off old debts (mostly accrued when I lived with The Ex), redecorating the entire apartment, and hell, even locking into a savings account that I won’t have a bank card for.

So, lesson of the day: trust no ISP, buy more stuff to put in the empty cupboards and spend all of my money, so I’m not tempted to spend it frivolously.

It’s a plan, Stan.