T-Bird Anni Rides Again

hmm, no, to be honest, this course isn’t gripping me as much as the last one and I’m still just not getting going with it.  I have an essay due on the 3rd of June and all I’ve got so far are some very random scatterings on a mind map with no clear idea of where to go with any of them.  Mind you, it has at least made me pick out the broad themes of the first half of the course which may make the revision bit at the end a bit easier!  Thank goodness for the Study Guide which tells you what you will cover on a specific week, much quicker than plowing through the text book.

Of course, it would help if the TMAs weren’t on a regular 4 week cycle which coincides exactly with my cycle!  Might also help if I had a bit of support at home but I don’t think that’s at all unusual for anyone remote studying.  But I shall stop there…. just take it as read, the world is against me, my child is vile, my husband doens’t understand me and I need chocolate now, Okay?

In other news, the cat may be useless against mice but she’s far too good at catching bluetits.  Bad cat!  But she’s still very good at purring into the small of my back at night for which I will forgive her just about anything, wonder if I could teach her how to poke Duke when he starts snoring?  She’d be the perfect bed-cat then!

Just a quick disclaimer here, I KNOW we are very well off compared to the vast majority of the world population. 

Bleugh, just done the budget now we know what tax credtis we are getting.  I’d provisionally worked it out on what we got this time last year before Duke started doing the Red Cross work and thus expected to get something similar.  Alas we aren’t getting qutie that much, not a lot less, but a bit, due to teh fact that Duke did actually earn a decent wage last year between 2 full time jobs.  Added to that, he hasn’t got a pay rise for 3 years now which you can kind of look at as effectively being a pay cut when you look at how much more everything costs than it did 3 years ago.  So money isn’t going to be as easy this year as it was last year.

But you know, if I’m good and behave myself with the food budget, make a proper food plan and stick with it, we will be fine.  I did an on-line shop with Asda today, got the full week’s worth of food, including baking ingredients, for about half of what I normally spend even allowing for a delivery fee just becuase there was no "oh look, those look good, we’ll have a bit of that then"  

So no more big ticket shopping (ROFL! got that earlier in the week really didn’t I!) Duke is using my car (cos it’s significantly more fuel efficient) and we are cutting back on play barn etc which it turns out suits Aprilia fine as more families have started coming and she doesn’t like it when there are too many other children, she can’t quite work out the dynamics of who plays with who.  I may end up taking her on her own every now and then as a treat instead.

The only real downer it that it’s going to restrict jollies off to visit folks as the fuel costs may bite into the budget a bit far.  I’ll have to see, I suppose I can feed everyone beans on toast for a month to balance it all out…..