Out the Window

The previous post was written in the past. Everything except for "one foot in front of the other" has been binned for the past few weeks. I am currently sat, ill and exhausted, at home, in the clothes I wore on my 26h flight back home from Australia. It has been a gruelling time. I got the call nobody ever wants and had to move heaven & earth to get Little X and I onto a plane, to be in time to say goodbye to my lovely mum. ❤️😭

What nobody ever seems to talk about in regards to death, is how hard all the "other" things are, and it seems so sad that our sorrow over losing a precious person is overshadowed by the absolute shit that comes along with it. Financial, familial, logistical nightmares. 

Right now I am grateful for the kindness of strangers and the help from my dear family.

Oscillation

Sometimes it strikes me how incredible it is that certain things are true. I have been in budget deficit for two years now but have still, never once, been unable to meet a required debt repayment. At the moment I went on maternity leave, I was sat on the edge of the well. Since then, I'm in it, sometimes hanging onto the edge by my fingers and sometimes only by my fingernails. But somehow, my feet are still dry.

Obviously there are things I've put off paying that should have been paid (two tax bills and a maintenance bill) but there are no red letters coming through the mail and I am very grateful.

The investment work does bring in steady tax free money but not the amount everyone throws around. I pull in around £150 a month by sticking to the comfortable options. This is an hour or two of work every night though so around £5 an hour - but I am ok with that since I'd otherwise just be watching YouTube.

Dreaming: of being able to change my situation. I think I may have to return to work sooner than planned, for reasons of mental health. 

Crack. Crack.

I am a bending branch. The wood is splintering. Crack, crack, as each shred of wood succumbs to the forces that it can't withstand, one after the next they split free from the others and jump upright. Somehow, the bough hasn't yet fallen, but it is broken. In all but the final snap, it is broken, changed, undone.

My lovely, kind, warm-hearted Mum is leaving me. Fate stole the expected decade of cognitive decline and served her departure up on a shitty silver tray covered in a tureen, the kind that says, hurry, I'm waiting, you don't have long. She is comfortable, and can hear us, but the massive bleed in her brain has robbed me of any chance to get there "in time". Instead, I navigate the burden of dragging her grandchild across the world, of fighting with travel bureaucracy, hearing my family sob at her bedside, and of trying to find the right words over video chat.

I think, I hope, that even after the final goodbye, I will be the branch that still hangs on, clearly changed and damaged, bent the wrong way, but not severed. I hope. 

Heads I Win, Tails You Lose

Job #2, which apparently messed up my "offboarding", has surprisingly promised to pay what's owing on their next pay run and I have received the payslip! £300 which is definitely needed. I keep having to pinch myself because so many things have gone unexpectedly right this month, a month where I fully expected to need to smash the piggy bank. Instead, I have managed to put £150 extra onto Poison Ivy Credit Card and all my bills are paid for at least the next six weeks.

Financially floating (still) but now it is just thanks to grace and good luck. I've said for ages this can't continue, there will come a time where some unexpected bill comes up which I simply cannot cover even by all the tricks in the world. I am currently chasing up childcare for Little X one day a week. I am choosing to remember that the stimulation and socialising will be good for her.

Spendy McSpenderson: £10 oversized fluffy fleece hoodie. The heating now goes off as soon as Little X is in bed. So far, so good.

Spendy Spenderella: I started a £7.99 membership for Revolut Premium. With the savings on fees plus perks, this should pay for itself four times over.

Spendy Spendthrift: My mobile phone contract, which has crept up over the years to more than double the cost of the competition... expires tomorrow. Hallelujah. I have signed up to a competitor and the switch is in progress. 🖁 I will be saving £18 a month.

Win-ish: I did a one-month free trial of Audible in order to get £9 cashback from TopCashBack and successfully cancelled it after 29 days. Sadly it didn't track so I am relying on customer service to chase it up. Fingers crossed.

Win: I normally do a rather random Christmas dinner shop a few days before the day and invariably can't find a good price on one item, can't find another item and refuse the price on a third. This year I've actually stayed abreast of when the Food Club hamper was being pre-sold and I managed to put in my order on time.👏 I can't remember what's in it apart from a whole fresh chicken and vegetables 🤣 but there must have been 20 items, so at £5, it'll definitely be a bargain.