Having an open-ended ‘wake up time’ is seriously overrated.
I’m not going to say what time I actually rose this morning, free from the aid of an alarm or hungry child, but I will say one thing. Too much sleep can be as bad for your state of mind as too little.
Yes, you heard me.
I’m not used to All The Sleep! I am a nightowl and go to bed quite late most nights. Then I rise somewhere around 7am to begin the school prep stage, putting total number of sleeping hours at something like five. Six on a good day. As much as I fully understand this pattern to be my own fault, I would have thought a few extra hours of uninterrupted sleep would feel GOOD, not BAD.
I feel sluggish, icky and have done precisely zero housework in the few hours since rising. When I rolled over and glanced at the bedside clock this morning, I laughed and went back to sleep. I didn’t see the first digit. I thought it was still the middle of the night. I am stupid. Auugh.
The kids are still at their grandparents’. Last night Talented Hubby and I had nachos for dinner. Yum. Don’t worry, I didn’t just upend a bag of corn chips on a plate and top it with salsa (though that would have made a spectacular ‘married with no kids’ supper, don’t you agree?) I made it with ground beef. The salt content was through the roof, but there was protein in it, goshdarnit. TH is still waiting on news of his promotion. He’s the kind of guy whose level of stress increases with each passing hour he doesn’t hear anything. He’s heard some really positive things from his coworkers though, so fingers crossed.
Also, a shout-out to a Real Life Friend who has begun reading my blog lately. Isn’t it funny how lots of us bloggers still want to keep their blog life separate to their real life? I’m like that. I don’t tell people I know personally (or am related to!) about this corner of my world. Della (hi!) however knows and has popped in and left a couple of comments. In a private email she brought to my attention the fact that in my Home Management Binder Tour contains some ’side links’ which lead to an ‘invited reader only’ page. In case anyone is wondering, that post was written on the old Blogger blog. When I imported everything to Wordpress in March, the post itself remained intact but any link to pages at the old blog now don’t work (after I had been with WP a couple of months I set the old blog to ‘private’. It was a disaster site anyway, removed pictures, etc. Just ugly). Don’t stress though - most of those internal links were to my Routines and other various homemaking lists which have since been altered. I’m about due for another Home Management Binder Tour anyway (with some significant changes) so when I get that up and running I will also included the Routines in it in the “Binder Basics” section. I can sometimes neglect the ‘peripherals’ of the blog, all the various extra pages and such. It happens. So Della, welcome :)
Talented Hubby and I are going out for an early dinner tomorrow night, possibly a movie, and perhaps some late-night shopping. We’ve finally saved enough money for our new TV. Yes, its an expensive one, but we honestly don’t do/buy much throughout the rest of the year and we’ve been saving for some time, so we’re excited to finally be able to purchase it. It helps that we received some unexpected bonus payments from the government. It’s kind of complicated to explain to non-Aussies, but basically down here most families receive some money from the social security system to help with the cost of raising a family. It’s made up of a few different payments, some means tested and some not, and its different depending on whether you are partnered or not, but essentially, the less you earn, the more you get in SS, and vice versa. Even those earning a decent salary usually get something. In order to get these payments you have to give an income estimate to the government at the beginning of each financial year (which begins in July here). If you end up earning more money than you state, you have to pay some back. We did that once. It’s not fun. We’ve since purposely OVER-estimated our income each year. We get a little less each fortnight but we don’t tend to miss it. What we love, however, is receiving the balance back as a lump-sum at the end of the financial year. Kind of like having a term deposit account you forget about for twelve months then realise is due for maturity. Depending on the amount we quote to the government, this lump sum payment can be quite significant. For the coming year, for example, we quoted a figure far beyond what we actually earn at present, to account for this possible promotion TH might get. Last year’s quote (which is in the process of being ‘paid up’ now) included a fair bit of ‘wriggle room’ which gives us a nice little bonus. In addition to this, our federal budget a few months back saw a bonus $600 paid to recognised carers (which we are, because of Master J) and we also ended up with another carers bonus of $1000 recently as a last minute sweetener, also from the government. When you add on our regular tax return and another payment paid per child (Aussies will know what I’m talking about)…. we feel very blessed to have the extra. We were almost ready to buy the television before all this money came in, so now we’re over that, and we’ll have a little extra to put toward some household repairs and the odd item of furniture, as well as topping up the mortgage a smidgeon.
So, a tip. If you want your man to come shopping with you, tell him you’re looking at big screen TVs. Works like a charm!
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