A Tale Of Two Piccies

£5, Food Club

No potatoes this week thank you, I have plenty. I was a little bit sad because they had no bread, which was amazing last time. Nor the delicious pastries. But I was pleased with the peanuts and the yummy biscuits they had this week.

£11.30, Asda

There were several reasons that my Asda shop was unsatisfying, mainly that there were no tomatoes or bananas and no bread at a price I wanted to pay. But I did use a voucher for it so I'm calling it "free". Also, the custard slices (at the bottom, totally devoid of detail in the picture) were also totally devoid of any flavour except for "weird". The apple pie has been portioned up and put into my freezer. Not visible: the chopped onions are yellow-stickered and are also in my freezer. (Best way to deal with onion, imo.)

Invisible: the two portions of lasagne I got from work today for a pound each. My freezer and cupboards are now very nicely stocked indeed.

Bits and Pieces

Hmm. I'm currently making some kind of pasta concoction for lunch, while (still) playing that bingo game and doing surveys for cash. The money from council arrived and was very much appreciated. I did a bit of financial adulting today as well, paid some more onto my credit cards, and checked in on my Help To Save, which has entered its fourth and final year (wow, time really flies). In February next year I will get the final payout and withdraw the funds, so it feels a bit like the downhill run now.

Ratty has, predictably, fallen back into being her usual ratty self. It's really getting old, being told to do stupid and pointless things and having your head bitten off if you ask why. I think the reason it's so annoying is that she pretends to be your bestie at all other times.

Gifted: a mini greenhouse from a kind lady on Facebook, and a bunch of large plants and planter boxes, from my lovely neighbour. Including two conifers more than a meter tall! I have put them outside my window and look forward to all the flowers from the pots full of bulbs 😃

Dinner: A Potato

With tinned chicken curry. Also tinned vegetables (again) which, bizarrely, I'm not tired of despite having eaten them for a week now.

I haven't really shopped at a regular supermarket for a week, and since my bananas ran out I've been having tinned peaches with tinned custard instead. Which doubles as my dessert, since I didn't buy more yoghurt. My salad fixings will run out soon though so it looks like I'll be back to Old Favourite Supermarket next week, after Food Club. I'm taking a workmate with me who wants to check it out, someone who really needs it, so this is a Good Thing™ 👍

Currently wondering: when I'll get sick of only having potatoes and tins to choose from for dinner. I plan to mix it up a bit and opt for more omelettes, plus pasta or mash next week now and then. Also wondering when the car wash will be fixed. I might need to resort to a different one because poor Pronto is getting bird-pooped.

Employment: currently just-under subsistence levels of income. No news on the cleaning jobs I applied for. I had a really heavy day yesterday at work, everyone went above & beyond (yes it was one of those days from hell, including a hospital trip) and I feel like they gave me too much credit... I just did what seemed like the right thing to do but I think I have Been Mentioned again and am expecting another award next week. I won't feel like I deserve it. But it's nice to be held in high esteem, so to speak.

Spendy McSpenderson: I bought myself a £9 set of shelves with wheels, from work, to put in my kitchen. I was getting rather sick of piles of food taking over so much of my bench space and had no room in my cupboards either, and I had been resorting to bags on my floor. Things are now neatly stacked in my new trolley, tidy and easy to get to. 😊

It's Potato Week.

So I wasn't going to go to Food Club this week, but I needed something to go with my potatoes. Well 😂 And then the lovely man bagged me five more 😂 which are all sort of softening, so they need to be eaten fast. Not a problem considering how "potato topping-centric" today's shop is (the beans, the tuna, the curry, the chili, the stewed steak...)

Not pictured: the mini pizza that I demolished for my lunch.

Yes, more eggs again, I got chatting with some other shoppers about our endless omelettes and scrambled eggs, was funny to see us still taking more, as if we actually ever wanted to eat any more this century 😁 but really what it showed me is that people are not picky and will work with whatever they're given, and are grateful. 🙏

I donated eight bottles of unopened sunscreen which I'd gotten free from work at the end of summer. I have more than I need and there's more sunshine creeping into our days, so I'm sure someone can use it.

Amazed: I will be receiving a £200 award of Household Support. I really didn't think I would qualify, but now I'm really, really glad they told me to try.

Seesaw: I managed to have "money left over" this month and put £100 onto the most expensive credit card. While this should feel like a victory, I'm conscious that on the cheaper cards, the spending is still going up ↑↑↑ and by a lot more than £100, and the interest will skyrocket in August. So there is a sense of impending doom. Oh well, at least I'm rearranging the debt onto cheaper rates, that's something 💁 and I applied for more cleaning roles. We shall see.

Make Hay While The Sun Shines

My "hay" (a nine-egg omelette) is currently cooking in the microwave. I'm working hard to use up what I have, since I had to miss two days of work and of course will miss the corresponding pay. I will be looking out for more protein and vegies next time I visit the food club, that's for sure.

I reached payout on another survey site and have taken it as another £20 voucher for Old Favourite supermarket, and the aim is to not need to spend cash on groceries for a couple of weeks. It makes for some repetitive meals but I'm grateful for the chance to chip away at my bills instead.

I found another bingo game for cash on Swagbucks, this one is paying £30 and I quite enjoy these things, so why not? (Plus, it's got no time limit, which works for me.)

Busywork: going through all my boxes of Stuff and sorting out my shelves. Conclusion: I have too much stuff. Disappointment: I haven't managed to throw out much stuff, although it is now slightly tidier than before.

Stuff and Things

I took myself off to Old Favourite this morning to buy a few "missing bits" with the last of my gift card. I should have known better, because I ended up having to pay another £7. I wanted yoghurt, ham and salad stuff, but I also came home with hummous, and some yellow stickers: a trifle, two chicken chow mein meals, a large shepherd's pie, chopped onions and a packet of sausage rolls. I'm going to make a really big omelette with bacon, cheese and onion, and use up some more eggs, especially since my work has another huge pile of them for sale at 9p per packet 😂

I also went to the pharmacy for an essential medicine, which was eye-wateringly expensive, but still far cheaper than the last pharmacy I bought it from. Ah well, I suppose that makes it a win-lose.

And then I paid a Horrific Bill (which I've been dreading) but since it can't be helped, at least I have a vague sense of accomplishment to have done the banking admin for it. I managed to save about £50 by doing it with my Revolut card, so yet again I'm grateful that I'm with them.

What else? I can tell I'm coming down with a cold. I'm shivering right now with the heat turned up. Thanks, workmates.

Humbling

Today I went to the food club for the first time. I arrived right on time (I was worried that I might have to queue). To my surprise, I was their very first customer, ever. I paid my £5 joining fee up front.

The people were incredibly welcoming, they gave me a tip on a council payment that I might qualify for, and to my absolute surprise, told me that the food is mostly funded by the council (so not, as I thought, all from donations). I felt slightly better about that, but it was still an odd experience, and one lady was intent on following me around carrying the basket, to "help"... which made me so self-conscious that I completely forgot a couple of things I'd really been hoping to get.

Even so, what they gave me for such a small amount of money was wonderful. This whole lot was £5 (although the eggs are free because they were donated by a local supermarket - I picked up one pack and he told me to take three).

Guess who had scrambled eggs for dinner? 😁

The "kick myself" was that I should have picked up some baked beans and tuna, since I have a half a bag of potatoes here at home. You'd think I would remember that around the time where I said "no thank you, I've got potatoes at home" but I'm blaming helpy-lady for being so attentive that I lost my brain.

Very pleased right now. I told them I didn't think I'd need to come next week; but we'll see.

Thwarted

When I walked into work today (on an overtime shift that I cheekily picked up half an hour before it started) I was greeted by Good Boss laughing and calling me a "sneaky little rat". 😂 And then he said he'd missed me. As I left, I told him I'll sneak in again tomorrow, and he laughed and said it's fine, but then he told me I can't have overtime the day after that. 😔 I will still get 41h pay for this week but it's frustrating to know that it's going to be a battle to get the extra hours.

I've been accepted for the food club (I think?) and just need to show my bank statement on my first day. There's also another one closer to home that's starting up and I've asked for details for that. I managed to use one of my vouchers for Old Favourite supermarket and got some fresh fruit and vegetables into the house. I managed to resist getting a bunch of stuff that I actually need, hoping that I can get some of it from the food club later this week. As a result, I'm having fish fingers for dinner that I completely am not in the mood for at all 😂

I put three balls of yarn aside at work for Workmate Baby #3's blanket and then managed to forget to buy them, so here's hoping they are still there tomorrow. I also didn't eat my salad at work today (I opted to have the extra pay instead of taking a break) so it'll be there waiting for tomorrow. I tried to get a carwash, but it was out of order. I could pretend these were all money-saving hacks, but I also threw some pancakes and some chocolate muffins into my shopping today really, today has been an adulting- and health-fail overall.

Unicorn, one of my colleagues from Hell Supermarket, is coming for an interview this week and I am really crossing my fingers they take her on. 👌 Quite simply because she is fun, positive and works really hard. We can do with that kind of energy!

Uncomfortableness

I have had a few days of mehhhhh-ness, essentially too much time on my hands and not enough money to sort out my bill situation. Quite a few paid surveys have been done, I've applied for one metric quadzillion market research projects, and I've sent my CV off to employers, and still, I will (in March) reach a situation where the "In" doesn't cover the "Out". As I've noted in the past I will need something like 10-12 hours of overtime each week, which is... possibly doable. But thanks to the unpredictable nature of my work, some weeks there will be 0, so I'll need to work 50 hours when the hours are there, or even ten days straight at times.

I have resisted, furiously, the idea of a food bank, mainly because my situation is both self-inflicted and partly a choice (here's me thinking of going into further debt to fly across the world). If I were purely selfish, I just wouldn't go, but honestly, my mum needs me, so it's something I need to do.

Anyway, there's a new project opening, a social supermarket run by volunteers. I struggled hugely with this because there is no question it's partly stocked by donations. But in the end, I have applied and I hope to be successful. It isn't free, there's a membership fee and also the items aren't free, but it's much cheaper. I suppose I got to the point where I reasoned that having to work seven days a week isn't normal or acceptable, even for someone as stubborn and self-reliant as me, especially when I would still be struggling even if I do that.

And so, touch wood, I will do both. I will shop at this food group and also work seven days a week, and hope like hell that I can gradually get out of this hole.

Wish me luck.