Bloggus Quietus

When my blog goes quiet for a while, it is most often because I am worrying about stuff.  I need a clear head to write blog posts and apparently have not had one for large chunks of this year.  I have already mentioned that there have been family worries, but my latest quiet patch is more due to my worries at home.  Not that there's anything truly bad going on, it's just stuff that makes me anxious.

Mostly it's money.  Living as we do on some family allowance from the government, Fixit's apprentice wage and my small-business earnings, the last 4 years have seen us on a tight budget. Because I am pretty good with money and because we're very blessed in the way of occasional hand-outs and lots of hand-me-downs, we've got by and managed to make sure the kids at least don't miss out on too much.  But we were never going to be able to accumulate money and we have been gradually chipping into the little buffer sum we had during this time.  Then we paid Basil's astronomical vet bills and our buffer was gone, plus we had a big help from my Dad which I had hoped to repay but just couldn't manage.  Things looked up again when I got the Spicks and Specks gig, I thought it would give me a little to spend on myself and see us through Christmas.  Which it absolutely has in one way because I spent $100 on a pretty dress and jacket, but then the car's engine-cooling systems went bust and my celebrity earnings had to pay for car repairs instead of frivolous stuff. I'm not whinging about that at all mind, it is far more important to have a functioning car and I feel grateful that that money was available!  It's just now that Christmas is looking tighter than normal and January (when I don't earn at all) could be a little bleak.  Of course we'll make it, we're very good at managing on what we have.  It's just my brainspace has been really taken up with working out ways and means.



Fixit and I also had what I realise is our annual pre-summer fight.  We really don't fight much, but we have this same one every December.  This is what happens.  I suddenly realise we are going to have to spend another summer in this house, which is uncomfortably hot in high temperatures and difficult to keep cool and puts enormous strain on me as I'm the one hefting the portable airconditioner from room to room in an effort to make them bearable, being the door-and-blind control freak and also the one who suffers in the heat the most.  Add to that that the annual rent increase letter arrives just as I'm realising this and you can see why I get antsy.  Then I do my Pollyanna thing, of trying to think of a positive outcome and this is what happens.

WHAT I ACTUALLY SAY TO FIXIT:  It'll be great when you finish your apprenticeship and we have more money so we don't have to live through another summer in this house.  (Some years I might say I wish we could win the lottery)

WHAT FIXIT HEARS: You are failing by not bringing in enough money

WHAT HE ACTUALLY SAYS: I can't earn any more money at the moment, there's no overtime.  If you want more money you need to get a day-job.

WHAT I HEAR: You have a stupid job that I don't value and should get something more conventional.

He doesn't quite get that I manage my bad times by thinking ahead to some good times, so he hears it in that very masculine fashion: you have raised a problem, I will tell you the solution. Add in to that overtones of me thinking his evil friend the Bike Nazi has been getting in his ear (this has happened) saying I should get a "Proper job" ie, working in an office and so stirring up all my resentment towards that relationship, and Fixit's feelings of resentment because he is working his arse off all day and then comes home at night and doesn't get to relax because I go out to work while I probably sit around all day relaxing, so he's always tired and put-upon, with my feelings that my efforts in keeping the family finances on track whilst still maintaining a happy family home are not appreciated and it all goes up in flames.  Every year we have that same fight.  This year we had it in an adjacent room to the kids and Climber got pretty upset and came out halfway through it to ask us to stop.



Next year I will try and remember to keep my mouth shut.  And anyway, maybe next year it will all be okay.  (I always think that.)

Other things that have been worrying me are: getting all the end-of-year stuff organised at tap [concerts, parties, emails, handouts, questionnaires, Christmas routines, notes and music for Christmas routines], getting all the beginning-of-next-year stuff organised at tap [databases, timetables, websites, prices, places], trying to work out what needs doing for Christmas-on-the-Cheap [making/baking], our oven stopping working, [landlord insisting it be repaired as cheaply as possible, he actually said to us when he came over to inspect the broken-ness of it -making sure we weren't lying about it being broken- You have electrician friend can do? No. You've just put our rent up again, you bloody well pay for it to get fixed properly], our car air-conditioning still needing repair [pipe en route from Japan, meantime I am obsessively parking in the shade] our trampoline breaking, [next year, if and when Fixit gets a payrise] our fancy second-hand telly breaking [might be fixable but involves putting the bloody great thing in the little Corolla and driving it to somewhere to see if they'll do it].  Oh and whether Fixit will actually have a job at the end of this apprenticeship in 2 months' time.


I'd probably still feel stressed even if we hadn't had the world's most-expensive lesson in feline road safety, so don't feel guilty Basil, no really.