Dear Diary

A 3880-post collection

But I don' _wanna_...

We need...

We need a decent dinner. We need cream because we're running out. We need snackables for the kids' lunchboxes. We need to find a local source of good eggs that won't break the bank because trundling to North Lakes every third day to get them is going to drain my budget faster than anything else.

Economically, I long for the days when we could just pop on over to the Golden Circle factory outlet and just get boxes of whatever and not care. But... I was also spending too much on my meds, so that's something I need to ponder.

My budget's going to change over the next few weeks. Because we no longer have half a cow corpse in our freezer. And it might be some time before we get another stash like that. Especially since I did a whole bunch of stew so we'd have some go-to food for the interim.

Because I can have weeks when I don't want to do the thing.

Just like today, but that's another whine for a different cheese.

We need a lot of stuff and I had been saving money on the get-it-when-I-need-it model. But no more. Because now I need to buy proteins, and those are the most expensive things on the shopping list.

So even though I'm going no further than the local shopping labyrinth, I'm dreading it. Because fuel costs. Meat costs. Veggies cost. Cheese costs. Cream costs when you want the good stuff. And I need to resupply with Mascarpone.

This week will be based entirely around what I can get at Aldi's first, and source the rest from wherever.

And to top it all off, my asthma is just not going away. I expected to get better, but no. It's getting worse.

And then there's a whole bunch of inertia centred around the fact that I know I'm going to need more money than I have. And spending it all is a free ticket to Depression Town because I can't firkin save for my New Compy Fund that way and suddenly my entire life just... sucks.

My energy levels drop to a fraction of what they once were. I do less. I feel guilty about doing less. And down and down I go, round and round I go...

To try and ameliorate this, I picked out some of my fancy clothing. Only to realise just now that said fancy wear is all black.

Sigh.

Well screw it. I'm an Addams for the day. I'm going to spend too much. I'm not going to save anything this week. And we will still survive.

Scrape, scrape, scrape...

This is not the first time that I've had to scrape and scrimp to get things together. This is, however, the first time I've been trying to save for a new computer out of my own earnings and savings.

We've made half a cow's worth of meat last for most of this year, and that's fabulous. Now we're out of everything but soup bones... affording another half a cow is out of my budget and might be out of Beloved's for some

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Hocus pocus...

...I need to focus.

No lie, I actually chant that to myself when I find myself wibbling off into lala land. Depending on the day I'm having, it can be effective for maybe twenty minutes.

I don't have ADD or ADHD, I just... can't focus sometimes.

I don't know what the hell that's about, but isn't ADD. I know I have the OCD comorbs because hoarding is a problem I have to fight.

And I need to focus, today, because today is

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All together again

Miss Chaos returned home, last night, and to celebrate - we had fish and chips. Well. The little darlings had fish and chips. Beloved and I simply had grilled fish with a healthy dollop of Aoli.

Today, it's back to stew and whatever I can afford until such time as we get another influx of protein. And I have to rattle on up to the health shops to get some actual eggs.

I know. You're thinking, "As opposed to... plastic eggs?"

For

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Of Mice and Me

This is not just a household rodent problem, though we do have one. I've spotted a minimum of one wee sleekit timorous beastie scuttling between hiding places and I plan to do something about it when I have money again.

Yesterday, I had plans to go and fetch my youngest from Scenic Coominya. Beloved had taken a day off and everything. Alas, Capt S had other plans that involved KIABIL and today. So we were told not to come at all.

I'd

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Fun times ahead

Something there is that does not like me breathing, this week. At this stage in the game, I'm putting it down to Sneezin' and Wheezin' Season. And that's why I'm blogging with a breather mask on my face. Because Seratide and atrovent puffers aren't quite cutting it.

For some reason, I get more typos and type more slowly with a mask on my face, but I'm damned if I'm gonna just spin my wheels whilst I dose myself with saline and atrovent

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Kingsmen: The Golden Circle - pure nonse

We did actually go and see Kingsmen: The Golden Circle, last night. And it is everything you would expect from the Kingsmen. Only this time it was terribly British Gentlemen working with amazingly Stereotypical Cowboys.

Remember the first Kingsman movie in which Galahad firkin tore up a Westborough Baptist Expy Church and the camera had these weird fixed points of stability? I call that "Dizzy Cam". Well, the people who made Kingsmen recognised that that one scene was so fucking awesome and

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Thinking about how to do fibre

So I think I might have perfected the cake-like object from the Keto coconut bread. And since I don't really like a lot of my bread...

I'm thinking about making some choc-chip fibre muffins.

The only drawback to this is that the local Foodways has stopped selling the BEST EGGS IN THE WORLD, Peepers Cheepers [or Cheepers Peepers, I forget which way around it is], the totally organic and ethical free range eggs. In favour of non-organic, non-ethical firkin CAGE EGGS which

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Progress!

I have vowed to make Mayhem and I do the rowing machine twice a week until we get buff or the machine breaks, whichever happens first. It's a five minute stint. We go as fast as we can for as long as we can and then slow row for the rest of the time. In the unlikely event that we can keep up a fast rowing pace for five minutes, we'll move up to ten.

In my second session, I made it

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Slow Progress and Updatey Promises

It's cleaning day, so that means that anything I post will likely be posted in the afternoon.

I will be attempting to post a progress speedpaint of the cover-so-far for Beauties and the Beastly. That's going to be... "fun".

Also in the "fun" pile is unriddling what the flip is wrong with the latest animated shot for SESP. I might have to brute force that mofo or something. That's probably not happening until tomorrow.

Also, all art is slowed because my time

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Finances, Fucked up, and Fuckassery

I'm still hovering around the halfway mark with the New Compy Fund. If I clean everything out at once, I'm just past halfway there at $1.8K and this is because my automatic payment to my personal funds got cancelled because I took it out of the wrong account.

It's sorted out, now. Don't fret.

And I forget how I got through $210 out of my emergency funds, but it was probably food or clothes.

My scrimpings are up by $340 thanks

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Running my arse off

Mayhem is a bit crook,so Miss Chaos is going to scenic Coominya to spend some time with her Nanna solo.

The travel arrangements are a teeny bit convoluted, but I will take anything that results in me not being tired off my arse for a lonely drive home.

...which is why I'm writing this blog entry at twenty past four in the morning.

Also because there's bad weather coming and I can feel it in the right side of my face.

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Rush'd

Okay, so Chaos has a fun run event at her school, I have the cleaners coming, and I have seven minutes before I have to go out and watch for the bus.

Don't expect a story before this afternoon.

I have 1000 words to write, which will happen after everything else, and my $20 patrons will have the finish of the last chapter and the beginnings of a new chapter to read! WOW!

Pledge yourself to be a Patron on my Patreon

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Almost Holidays

There's today and tomorrow until two weeks' worth of slacking off, so of course both my little darlings are trying various tactics to get that time off early.

Mayhem is trying the "oh I'm sick, I'm dying, I need to stay home five-ever" routine. Quickly kiboshed with the household thermometer. Chaos was a little bit more clever and insisted I missed a day. Going to the extreme of pointing out a missing day in the communications book. This missing day was (a)

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Blurgh... murgh

Today is going to be a FML day. I know this because Beloved came home to bed at one in the morning and I spent most of my time since then attempting to snatch a fragment of sleep or three.

The only plus side is that I remember a dream I had that was "sort of" about Steam Powered Giraffe.

It was a procedural drama in which the cops in question were looking into the SteamPunk community and... some very familiar faces

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