ffox

i just wrote a whole entry and then closed my browser by mistake. gah.

i have had a quiet day, mostly at home listening to locke lamora and sewing.

took moose for a walk, the lake was flooded. so i let him off the lead, and he went wild running through the water and throwing himself around. i wasn't sure i'd manage to get him back on the lead! on the plus side it washed all the mud off him.

came home and decided that i didn't really fancy a salmon bowl for dinner. did the tesco shop and i had £33 left in my pot for the month so i took myself to co-op to buy pizza, chocolate, strawberry milkshake and ice cream. delicious, especially after a month of eating home made from scratch meals that are all chicken or carb based. and it cost less than a takeaway for the lot. i mixed some matcha into my strawberry milkshake - highly recommend. didn't manage to eat the whole pizza before i was full! but it was a lovely treat, and i will still have lots of goodies to snack on tomorrow. last month i spent £661 on groceries and £292 on eating out, this month i have spent £461. i am very pleased with myself. that is a saving of £492!!!

liverpool lost the football in the last few minutes of the game, chris was not a happy bunny. he went to bed early, he is still feeling very poorly.

nearly pay day, this has been the longest month of the year ;)

currently reading: the lies of locke lamora
giving myself: repetitive strain injury from all the stitching.

wore my lucy and yak cord trousers today, have decided the reason i don't reach for them is i really don't like the colour. they are pale lilac and it just doesn't go with the rest of my wardrobe. they are incredibly comfy though! so i am going to try and dye them. i debated marbling them with darker purple and black but i think it will end up looking like a primary school project, so i am better off dying them just black. i found the joanie dress i needed on vinted and i didn't buy it. it's a size 16, i am a 10-12. so if i buy it i can get it tailored, instead of the one i have which is a size 8 and doesn't fit across the bust. it's my favourite fox pattern so i am hoping it is still there when i get paid in a weeks time.

systems training in work today. barry who supports everton (boo) has come from civil service directly, and says its absolutely shambolic. he has been there three months and still does not have a log in. he asked us about pay and i told him what i am paid and its 2.5k more than he is, even though he has been there three years. that made me feel very proud of my negotiating skills! especially as rich has come in as a senior and is only on 2.5k more than me. i am going to make senior this year, and then earn more. i am determined!

chris and i had words over his smoking as i had to go to the shop at 7.15am for more tobacco for him and he was like "so" but its costing £200 a month? and then that makes me spend more on myself because i begrudge spending the £200 a month on him smoking and me cutting things out of my budget left and right. he was ruminating on how he could earn £50 a week to cover it, but he doesn't do anything so i don't know why he's expecting money to fall into his lap.

i had a chat with ovo about the fact that they are reporting me as missing payments from march to october last year even though i was paying them. they applied the DMP flag to my account seven months late. they have escalated it to a specialist team and should correct it within 30 days apparently. i hope they do because its wrong and annoying. but also pleased that i said something.

had a shower and used curl jelly on my hair but i don't like the feeling of it. it feels greasy and crunchy. so i might get rid of the rest of the curl jelly that i have and just go back to using mousse. i had to buy makeup wipes because the micellar water and cotton pad combination was not getting rid of my eye make up. i was trying to be frugal by not adding wipes to my weekly shop and it backfired because i then had to spend more in the corner shop for the same product. argh.

i nearly finished my sewing but was running out of thread.... and after an hour of looking for it i found it in the kitchen bin surrounded by bits of moose's rope toy. i gave it a wash and wrapped it around the chair to try, and i am so annoyed by that entire escapade that i am now taking myself to bed.

currently reading: assassin's blade

(i am running out of sewing related journal titles)

today was blue monday. apparently that is a massive gimmick that was made up to sell holidays in 2005 to combat the "january blues". however, mind and samaritans use it to campaign to talk about mental health. so lets see. my mental health is very up and down. some days i wake up and am entirely satisfied with my life, and other days i want to starve myself into obsolescence. i read old open diary entries and i was the epitome of a manic pixie dream girl, and i was also clearly very mentally unwell and desparate for approval from any source. now i think i do not seek approval from anyone but myself, so that is a giant step forward. i still people please to a pathetic extent and suck at putting my foot down with a firm hand when it comes to my boundaries though.

work was okay today, we did lots of team building again and group training sessions. i spent the day slyly cross stitching at the same time and made huge amounts of progress. they asked us to share a photo from the last year when we went on holiday. lots of people abroad, saint kitts & nevis, fuertaventura, turkey etc. i showed a photo of the sculpture trail in the forest of dean, but i was so nervous i messed up and said it was the new forest, aka an entirely different geographic location. i also told the story of when i was a teenager and broke a ski lift by crashing into it. its a good job that i do not get embarrassed easily.

greek chicken for dinner (yum) and laura and i joked around for a bit before she went upstairs to watch transformers and i carried on with my sewing. it would appear that i have nearly finished it...

our internet is out of contract, and i am wondering about switching provider, but not sure if there would be an overlap? i can't afford (literally) to be without wifi now i WFH but i wouldn't mind saving a tenner a month. i also need to look into tax rebates for WFH.

this evening i watched a documentary on youtube called skint. its a multipart series, i believe set around 2005. i moan a lot about being broke, but these people are REALLY broke. most of it is obviously choice through drug addiction, but the raw poverty is really something to witness. i have never had to steal to survive, and i have always managed to have something to eat even if that is sometimes just pasta and cheese. i have always had a roof over my head, and clean clothes to wear. it just breaks my heart a bit, that these people were someone's baby once, and this is the hand life appears to have dealt them. it makes me feel much more grateful for the little life i have. and then i wonder why it takes something like that to make me feel grateful for what i have.

currently reading: assassin's apprentice
no spend days: six!

we went for a long walk along the beach this morning, and the tide was going out as we went. i took this photo of the dunes, they reminded me of something from another planet.

i wore my lucy and yak cupid trousers and i think that maybe they were a mistake because i have worn them maybe three times since i bought them, but then maybe i just need to make more of a point of getting dressed properly now i am WFH. also wore my lazy oaf tshirt that says don't happy be worry, which always makes me laugh.

we got cut off by the tide coming back in so had to take our shoes and socks off and wade back through the water. the dog had the time of his life and the kids really enjoyed it. it was a fun memory to make.

came back and had a freak out over finances, have become aware that i need to pay the home insurance, mot, yearly tax and van insurance within the next two months, on top of the ad blue issue. so naturally the sensible thing to do would be make sure the finances are locked in, but instead i bought myself a plant from co-op, extra food that wasn't on the mealplan for dinner (looking at you korean bao bun 'served' meal - very very disappointing) spent some stupid money on drop the cat (i swear that game is so fricking infuriating) and bought a back issue of a cross stitch magazine for the free gift. WHY AM I LIKE THIS. It's not like I spent over £20, but that £20 would have been 16% of my home insurance bill. i am so tired of it. i've turned off in app purchases in my settings, and i'm hoping i forget how to turn it back on to be honest.

have spent my afternoon spiralling and watching youtube videos. i am going to go and lie on the sofa in a minute and hate read some more sarah j maas.

currently reading: assassin's blade
currently: full of rage at myself
no spend days this month so far: 5

its finally friday. we have made it halfway through the month and through the first week of my new job. woo.

today has been a day of things BREAKING.

chris' new watch is already broken. the crown is spinning when it isn't supposed to and the second hand isn't working. will have to take it to timpsons. how annoying. i'm hoping it is an easy fix. it has a two year warranty so at least we can get it sorted.

the adblue error came up on the van again and i want to cry. i need to get the adblue delete done before next month's mot. i hate when things crop up that require me to spend money to fix them. it doesn't matter how much i try and budget, i can't make money appear out of thin air unfortunately.

the final thing that broke may or may not have been my sanity reading assassin's blade.

to counteract this i decided i should set up a bookstagram account. i don't know why i have done this as there is no way that anyone is going to follow it or that i will make any money from it. i have got precisely TWO followers.

currently reading: assassin's blade
currently: losing the will to live

the flu has absolutely been kicking my ass today. i am so full of cold i can feel it behind my eyeballs.

training was pretty much entirely CBT based today, but it was all DB stuff, so that was easy enough. figured out why i couldn't finish the other CBT - its because i had one answer wrong. so that was mortifying, but at least its checked off now. had a lovely chat with gin, i think we are going to be on the same team maybe? i definitely feel that so far i could have made senior instead of normal, but at least thats a good goal to progress towards over the next six months or so. the interface we use is called hartlink and its very basic looking compared to altair, but it has all these cool metrics at the bottom for how many tasks you're behind on, and how productive you've been etc. i love a metric. yesterdays zoom background was temu hobbit hole, today was the simpsons. i have a whole host of funny ones downloaded from reddit and i look forward to changing them.

struggled through and finished work for the day, made laura lazy girl dinner (nuggets and chips) because i felt too ill to cook and then laid on the sofa. struggled through finishing a crown of midnight. i have to be in the minority here, but i DID NOT LIKE IT. way too many incidences of borderline copyright infringement and lots of poor writing. the next one is the novellas and i didnt like the acotar novellas either. ugh. now i'm trying to finish up empire of pain which is about the opiod crisis in america (wildly different!) and its good but very heavy reading.

i went up to bed around 9pm because i was wiped out and chris had put away the laundry (ohio and all that) and i nearly fell over in shock. lauras stepmum asked her to draw a heart so she could get it tattooed on her. i feel that is very performative, but ok? like whatever. they are trying for baby and i want to tell her to run for the hills because he already has three kids and only sees laura, but its also not my place is it.

also i really want to get paid, not because i want to spend money, but because i want to update my budget spreadsheet. how lame is that!!

currently reading: empire of pain
currently feeling: very ill

Current Mood: sick

i started my new job today.
i woke up at 7am, had a shower, and then pottered around until 8.30 when i logged on to my work laptop half an hour early.
my training group is really small, there are five other people there. rich, laura, debbie, priyanka, gin & me. they're a really nice bunch of people. we did housekeeping and general expectations and then played two truths and a lie, which i won as i was the only person that nobody guessed which one my lie was!
my three items were:

i have moved house five times in the last seven years
i was vegetarian for my teenage years and broke it with a black pudding sandwich
and i was myspace famous.

the black pudding sandwich caused outrage - but is true!

we had training then, and i found out there is no active phone lines for the department! it's all based on portal communications/email/letter. i am stunned. they also end each day with something called "proactive" time, so for the last half hour of the day you are dedicated to wrapping things up, doing daily sign offs and making sure you're ready for the next day. that scratches my brain in such a good way, and feels like a lovely way to wind down. i am feeling like it was 100% the right choice to move to the new company.

laura has been to the emergency dentist today, she still is not back from her dads house. he is being difficult as per usual and i had to ring the school and explain that i couldn't provide any paperwork as he wouldn't give it to me, and hadn't returned her when he was supposed to. he was supposed to bring her back at 7pm and has messaged to say she will be late which is beyond a joke as she has already missed a day of school and i need her home in time to go to bed!! apparently her nerve was exposed in her tooth, he is making out that it is my fault, but it wasn't like that when she left!

i had a jacket potato for lunch and some supernoodles for dinner. food is not appealing to me in the slightest at the moment. on the plus side i no longer want to throw up as soon as i eat.

my leopard print mary jane crocs arrived from amazon too! i have so much guilt over spending the money on them, but they're so pretty and comfortable and non slip! my old crocs are three years old and i have worn them pretty much every day since i got them so the soles have completely worn down and as we have tiles downstairs if there is even a hint of moisture on the floor i am on my ass. still was absolutely not a necessary spend though and i am now £22 over my personal spends budget for the month. there's so many cute things on vinted too. trouble is as i am now WFH there is nobody to see them!

i nearly managed another no spend day, but i needed to put money on the gas. at least that was an essential purchase i guess! i have had four no spend days this month, and i am going to have another one tomorrow. i'm really trying to get chris on board the frugality train, and every now and again i think he's got it and understands we need to live below our means to build a buffer.... and then he will send me reels of things he wants to buy!

the coat we bought for moose doesn't fit him! £30 that i spent, and we took him into pets at home but he was just too broad for it to work. i will have to take it back. i also need to weigh him so i can get his flea/worm medication but the only way i can think of to do that is to get on the scales, and then pick him up and i can barely lift him. chunky sod.

currently reading: crown of midnight (good lord its clunky writing, i am annoyed by it)
last weeks screen time average: 9 hours 14 minutes (waaaaaaaaay too much)
current weight: 11st 1lbs (7lbs down so far)

i took the loan. it came through this morning and i promptly paid off four credit cards, and the skip and transferred the rest to savings. feel very pleased about it as it will save me about £45 a month. i then went into overdrive mode on sorting out the finances for 2026, and treated myself to a new spreadsheet set up from etsy. it's got everything including a net worth tracker, investment calculator, automated emergency fund target, debt snowball calculator, monthly budgeting and transactions and two different annual overviews. it has made me very happy. i've decided to put £25 into investments each month from the £45 i was saving by not paying the credit cards. hopefully i've picked smart funds!

took moose for a walk to work on his training. he was less pully than usual and quicker to "leave" other dogs, but he wouldn't sit for anything. i think he doesn't want a cold bum because he hates sitting on the tiles in the house too and is more likely to respond to you if you ask him to sit when he is on the rug.

i cleared out the majority of the upstairs landing although i still need to finish vacuum packing things away and putting them in the top cupboard. it looks a lot bigger. the whole of the house looks bigger since taking down the christmas stuff. i'm going to need to start building a list of things that i want to do to make it snug again, starting with painting the wall my desk is against, and getting my gallery wall and skulls up. i don't think many people would say that skulls are snug, but i kind of like them interspersed with the cross stitch and silly quotes.

wanted to play switch with laura this afternoon but i can't find my switch dock anywhere, so that is something i will have to dig through the airing cupboard for tomorrow. we ended up propping my switch up on the table and connecting both sets of joycons to it and played lego harry potter for an hour. it was pretty good fun! made dinner (haha, i didn't make anything at all, i just dug a bag of some chicken pasta concoction out of the freezer) and then decided to make fudge. very pleased to report it has set for once, although my arm is absolutely killing me from beating the daylights out of it for 14 minutes. ouch.

laura and i then watched the traitors, i read a thread about how george r r martin will never release winds of winter, and now i am sat here. chris has just come down for an electrolyte pill being two days into his seven day fast, and asked me what i am doing tonight. i told him i was going to be reading throne of glass, and he was pleased because it means he gets to carry on watching boardwalk empire. i would go up to bed to read, but i am in mortal danger of falling asleep and i want to eat fudge!

currently reading: throne of glass
current vocal stim: i have thirty thousand dollars of credit card debt (credit card debt)

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Location: home

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