Week of Money: Where I am not sure I can keep up with work right now

DAY ONE

??:?? — Little Bun checks the time (I can hear him), and if it is too early, he forces himself back to sleep. He deems it acceptable (it must be 6 a.m. at least), and comes over to carefully check where I am sleeping and how. Once he determines the body lump configuration, he slowly lowers himself on top of the blankets, and I hold out my arms, and snuggle him. We cuddle there for longer than usual, him nestled in my Mommy nook, kissing his head.

6:28 a.m. — I twisted my back a little last night, so I make a mental note to take it easy and to stretch it out a little today. I should get back into yoga, but I find it difficult without a live instructor in front of me. I absolutely need to be in a group doing yoga, and not by myself at home. It is one of the things this pandemic took away from me, so to speak.

7:05 a.m. — I log off and start working. I can’t seem to start my work computer. I am not sure what is going on. I restart and try again.

8:08 a.m. — Meetings all morning. And this is so true:

12:22 p.m. — Lunch time. We end up having some mashed potatoes.

1:57 p.m. — Down for his Quiet Time / Nap.

2:51 p.m. — Up from his nap, he bounces out of the bedroom.

3:40 p.m. — I am shaking. I think my blood sugar level just plummeted, as it was not enough calories (?) from the potatoes from lunch, that was definitely not enough food. I shakily warm up a fast a meal of brown rice, brussel sprouts and omelette with mushrooms. I munch on a few brussel sprouts to steady my blood sugar, and things slowly return to normal.

4:00 p.m. — I go and lie down in the bedroom after eating, and end up napping.

5:12 p.m. — Dishes, but not all of it from the weekend. It was a big cooking day yesterday, I leave a few for tomorrow as I am still shaky. Little Bun is wiping down cutlery.

5:25 p.m. — Little Bun and I spend the night deciding how to bedazzle my work headphones. I had purchased these Jabra Evolve2 75 after much extensive research for the best WFH headphones, and I find them rather hideous.

I end up drawing inspiration from these headphones but mine will not be as encrusted, as they’re not accessories and are working headphones. I won’t be blocking the buttons, the sides, nor putting crystals or items on the headband where it can catch on my hair.

8:54 p.m. — Bedtime routine, and then we go to bed.

Spent: $0

DAY TWO

6:03 a.m. — I log in and just sit there, blogging while Little Bun recaps what he has learned about pouring orange juice, and how to figure out who is an alien in a video or a mystery. He plays with blocks on the floor while doing so.

7:50 a.m. — I log off and start working. Calls all morning.

8:08 a.m. — I am checking in on Little Bun, giving him hugs and kisses and he tells me politely: Mommy, I really need to work on my pages now…

I back off, and apologize for interrupting him.

Little Bun: No need to apologize! That’s okay!

(How cute is he.)

10:14 a.m. — I remind myself to stretch a bit before lunch.

10:47 a.m. — I am starting to consider buying a virtual reality headset (VR) and the one I am looking at is the Oculus Quest 2. I wonder if it would help me in terms of yoga (likely not, the figures look like creepy play-doh people), but it does look like I could ‘travel’ virtually, or at least, play games and do other things that would be fun.

12:22 p.m. — Lunch time. Pasta again.

1:57 p.m. — Down for his Quiet Time / Nap.

2:51 p.m. — Up from his nap, he bounces out of the bedroom.

5:40 p.m. — I log off for the day.

5:46 p.m. — Dinner, then dishes. We do pasta with green curry paste, garlic and brussel sprouts.

Little Bun loves this dish and brussel sprouts, and likes that it is spicy from the green curry. After eating it, he runs around the kitchen huffing with his mouth slightly on fire.

6:05 p.m. — Little Bun reminds me to play Clue with him. He grabs a sweater he wears, and wraps it around his neck, runs out and says: MOMMY! LOOK! I could be PROFESSOR PLUM today. It is the most adorable thing I have ever seen. He dresses up as Professor Plum, and he takes the character on the board as we start a game.

6:25 p.m. — We are reading storybooks to the Stuffies, and he gathers ALL OF THEM, including two “pillow babies” he has adopted, to cuddle around me, with a blanket, while he sits on my lap and I read out loud. I am trying my best to love and cherish these moments because one day he will be too big to sit on my lap.

8:54 p.m. — Bedtime routine, and then we go to bed.

Spent: $0

DAY THREE

5:48 a.m. — I log in and just sit there, watching videos and blog. We are up early.

7:50 a.m. — I log off and start working. My partner set out some banana cake slices for us to eat, and Little Bun after eating his, bursts into tears. He is inconsolable for the morning. I finally get off my meeting and go to talk to him.

9:20 a.m. — I ask Little Bun what happened. He sobs out: Daddy was taking a video and picture of me eating it, and I felt so pressured to eat it and be happy, but I just really wanted US to eat it together, and now that I have eaten all of it, there is none left to eat with you now because your meetings went so long. *sob*

I give him a portion of mine to “eat together with me”, but he isn’t really happy. He wanted to eat the full pieces of cake together.

I tell him that things happen. It is okay. It is just cake, and at least nothing bad happened. I understand that he felt pressure (unspoken) from his father to eat and be happy with the cake for pictures and a video, but he also can speak up and have his own voice next time to say – Daddy, I want to wait for Mommy! ..

I tell him that it is okay to ask and have his own voice next time, he should not feel pressured to give in to everything we say when he himself feels inside his heart that he does not want to do it.

10:00 a.m. — He’s so sensitive. I snuggle him, he is still upset. I have to go back to meetings but I promise to come back and check in on him afterwards.

10:56 a.m. — I come back in between my next meeting and he is calmer but not happy. Well, disappointment in life happens. Now he knows.

12:22 p.m. — Lunch time, and we share a pasta meal together. He likes sharing food with me in particular.

1:07 p.m. — Down for his Quiet Time / Nap.

1:25 p.m. — FYI for everyone:

2:51 p.m. — Up from his nap, he bounces out of the bedroom and tells me: I can easily distinguish between the times now without having to wake up to check!

Surprised, I ask him where he learned the word “distinguish”. He tells me from an app or a book, and I am just marvelling at his vocabulary.

5:04 p.m. — I log off for the day.

5:12 p.m. — Dinner, dishes and laundry. Little Bun is wiping down cutlery. He always gives me riddles or asks me things while he does this task, and sometimes I am not in the mood to answer, nor am I really mentally free to do so. I just want a break by myself. Tonight, he is asking me why they say “21st century” when it is a different year – 2022. I tell him to ask his father.

5:25 p.m. — He hops over, asks his father, and understands it on a timeline.

5:55 p.m. — I check his pages and saw this:

6:20 p.m. — How pretty is this idea for hanging fabric panels?

And this one is nice with the navy blue backdrop + pop of yellow curtains… and accents in bright fun colours everywhere.

This is a great storage idea, but these urns make me think of cremation + old-style toilets. I would need to find a less triggering vase to do such a cute idea on.

8:54 p.m. — Bedtime routine, and then we go to bed.

Spent: $0

DAY FOUR

??:?? — We wake up to ear-piercing, bloodcurdling shrieks from Little Bun having night terrors.

??:?? — We wake up to him with a nosebleed. I am awake anyway, but for sure my partner did not sleep all night – he has trouble sleeping. I go and snuggle Little Bun on his little bed and wrap my arms around him. He makes baby cooing noises.

6:22 a.m. — I log in to work early, I have a lot to get done and my meetings moved up to 8 a.m. now.

6:53 a.m. — I have meetings (not planned), with just people calling. I guess it’s okay. I am rather annoyed because I enjoy having a quiet morning to go through emails, and not talk to anyone.

8:25 a.m. — I send emails and quickly handle a return for my mother remotely, while on calls. She ordered some items (I paid and sent them), and now she wants to return some, but gave me the WRONG ITEMS TO RETURN. So now she is adding more items to return, and this is frustrating me because I have to see how I can change the return to add in the right ones.

11:34 a.m. — Finally a break. I catch up on emails — oh, 35 in just this morning? No problem. *insert stressed face* What is in the water today!?

12:22 p.m. — Lunch time. I am watching this trash reality TV show called Love is Blind, and giving my opinion on various people. Long story short, this show should be called – LOVE IS STUPID – because there are guys and girls still going for people who are clearly not interested in them. What a waste. Is this for fame? I don’t know but I am exhausted for them and all singletons out there.

1:01 p.m. — Start of my THREE HOUR LONG CALL. THREE HOURS. THREE. HOURS. Did I mention it was 3 hours.

2:51 p.m. — Up from his nap, he bounces out of the bedroom. I am completely drained. Three hours is inhumane. I am definitely not talking any more today. I am a mute by choice.

5:40 p.m. — I log off for the day.

5:59 p.m. — I check his pages, and we get into a discussion about fireworks at festivals. I remark on this:

Reviewing his pages has given me a chance to help him see other sides of things but also that he can choose to control his actions and words.

6:30 p.m. — Dinner, and Little Bun wipes down cutlery. He runs off to his father who is resting in the bedroom and comes back out, sobbing silently. I am alarmed. I ask him what is going on, and why he is crying. He tells me he feels like his father hasn’t played with him for a long time (not true, but with children they mean daily or else it didn’t happen), and “Daddy is lying there and doesn’t want to play”.

I tell him that his father is not feeling well. I could tell in the past few days he hasn’t been sleeping well, and then he hasn’t been feeling well, so he has been resting more often, and not speaking as much. I tell him it is not his fault at all or anything he has done, it’s just that sometimes adults also have low energy days, and cannot do what you want all the time. His father needs to recharge and rest.

6:47 p.m. — Little Bun perks up after our little talk (he was really sobbing silently, with sadness, and told me his chest was hurting), and I remind him again that it is not his father rejecting him at all. I snuggle him and then we end up doing something online together, looking at pretty wallpaper. He offers his opinions of what he likes and does not like.

7:16 p.m. — We watch our new favourite reality TV show (I am late to the bandwagon) Love is Blind, and my partner is watching with me because he is (a) trying to learn more casual English and (b) interested in the TV drama as much as I am.

8:54 p.m. — Bedtime routine, and then we go to bed. Little Bun stops and says – MOMMY! WORDLE! WE FORGOT WORDLE!… I go and turn my phone back on, and we all do it together as a family.

Spent: $0

DAY FIVE

??:?? — I wake up early. I can’t sleep. Too much work stuff in my brain.

5:48 a.m. — I log in and I want to blog but end up getting sidetracked with returns for my mother, myself, new purchases they want (spices, an old-style spice grinder..). I log into bank accounts, organize my money to make sure I am properly allocating and not missing anything….

6:08 a.m. — Little Bun is teaching himself Adobe Lightroom. I paid for the app for the year. $77.78

I want to encourage him to learn and be creative in any way possible, and if it is with Lightroom, why not. He likes taking his iPad, taking photos like of this glass reflecting light from the kitchen lights to make a heart, and then editing the photo.

He also likes to borrow my phone so he can create ‘experiences’ with videos he takes, like the one he did recently of a “Day in the Life of Stuffie” where the phone acted as the perspective of a tiny little Stuffie going about its day.

6:23 a.m. — I start working. Calls are coming in (international work zones).

12:22 p.m. — Lunch time. I went nonstop on calls until now. This is insanity. I cannot keep this up.

1:07 p.m. — Down for his Quiet Time / Nap, I am still on calls explaining things and trying to not get frustrated when the same questions come up over and over again. DO YOU PEOPLE NOT TALK TO EACH OTHER. We are wasting our time re-hashing out the. same. subject. over. and. over. again. when. the. decision. has. been. made.

2:51 p.m. — Up from his nap, he bounces out of the bedroom and starts with his father for schooling.

3:06 p.m. — Meltdown. He doesn’t want to do his French, his father bans computers for him all day, and he bursts into tears. I am on a call with audio noise cancelling on, so while I hear and see what is going it, it is helping keep me separated until I can deal with it.

3:33 p.m. — I go and grab Little Bun. He’s sobbing (not hard). I ask him what is going on. I say – I see a frustrated little boy who is crying on Mommy’s lap.

Little Bun: IT IS SO BORING. ALL I DO IS TALK TO DADDY.

Me: And how do you think you learned English with Mommy? Did we gesture at each other? Did I make funny non-English noises?

Little Bun: Noo… we talked.

Me: So…?

*launches into a lecture about learning, and how everything is boring at the start, but once you get to know it, it becomes fun. EVERYTHING sucks at the start, but if you put in the hard work you can understand everything, plus start reading books on your own, and be autonomous*

I remind him about being a hard worker which I know he is, and that it is boring but I think he thinks it is difficult / frustrating rather than boring, and we have build a foundation, first, right?

4:01 p.m. — I AM SO FRUSTRATED with my headphones. I updated my operating system and now NOTHING works.

4:42 p.m. — I finally uninstall the program for the headphones and hope that it works without it interfering. I don’t know what I did, but these programs don’t play well with each other, and I suspect the mismatch was causing this issue.

6:30 p.m. — Dinner, dishes and laundry. Two loads of laundry. Dinner was pretty good, I was working until the end because a last minute email came in and I did not want to hold them up as we are on different time zones and they start earlier the following week and need documents from me to continue.

7:21 p.m. — I do all the dishes, and Little Bun pipes up about how he doesn’t like how his cousins have been pressured into saying they enjoy Math as their favourite subject when in fact it is Gym. I talk to him about expectations and how the parents expect a lot without seeing what a child is interested in. Instead of encouraging them in what they do like, they try to make them like what they like, but children and parents are separate people.

Little Bun pauses and reflects on all of that. He tells me that he wouldn’t want to say Gym is his favourite subject when in fact it is Math, and then Science. I ask him what is his LEAST favourite. He tells me Social Studies and History, and I make a mental note to make it more fun in the future.

7:50 p.m. — We watch another episode of Love is Blind together, and my partner is mildly horrified they are using metal glasses for wine. Turns out, it’s a filming thing, so you cannot see how much wine they have already had. Who knew? Apparently a bunch of people had the same questions and read articles on the show. This is how invested we all are.

8:54 p.m. — Bedtime routine, and then we go to bed after a Wordle. Little Bun nails it with HATCH though it could have been BATCH.

Spent: $0

DAY SIX

??:?? — Little Bun stage whispers before he goes to the bathroom: MOMMY. Remember. DO NOT LOG IN TODAY. IT IS THE WEEKEND. OKAY? Don’t go to any meetings at all!!!

5:01 a.m. — I log in and just sit there, do some quick banking, realize that I wrote down the wrong credit card name on my payment and fix it hastily. Nothing is worse than thinking you paid a card, only to realize you sent the payment to the wrong card issuer.

5:41 a.m. — I check my budget, check for refunds (I keep track and make note of all of them). I am still waiting on a refund for my mother’s items.

8:08 a.m. —

7:08 a.m. — I spend the morning setting up my new computer from Apple, and this icon totally flabbergasted me. WHAT DO THEY WANT?

7:26 a.m. — After much Googling I realize it is because it wants a wireless keyboard and mouse to be connected via bluetooth. THIS is the bluetooth symbol. IS IT? I thought it was more like a rune-like “B”. This is why companies are so frustrating, because if they had put a symbol of a keyboard and mouse flashing, I would have instantly clued in. Instead, what is this?

I googled: “Apple two lines, dot, green indicator, arrow” …. I mean. That tells me nothing.

12:22 p.m. — Lunch time. I am watching Only Murders in the Building now while I set up my computer (it has to download everything apparently and transfer all my files), and love Gomez’s character’s style here. There is something so effortless, 70s (though I dislike the era for style), and cool.

1:05 p.m. — Down for his Quiet Time / Nap.

3:25 p.m. — Up from his nap, he bounces out of the bedroom. He slept in. I show him a scammer text I got and ask him to pick it apart. We can never start cybersecurity training too young though I suspect these days, kids know more than we do.

4:50 p.m. — I am beading and waiting for the transfer of files. It said 299 hours, it is now realistically down to 9. By bedtime it should be done right?

5:12 p.m. — Dinner, dishes and laundry. Little Bun is wiping down cutlery. I put it away and ask him what he’d like to do tonight – read storybooks, or learn something? We have lots of learning books now – math, science, physics, philosophy, body, etc. He says: We have been reading a lot of stories lately, let’s learn something!

Schooling for us, never stops in the home, which I think is part of the reason why he knows so much. We try to make learning a part of his life, the way it is for us, and I explain all the time how at work, I have to learn new roles and things. I explain how I may be annoyed or frustrated but I have a strong work ethic, and the ability to be confident that I can learn and know anything and everything, given time to do so, I just have to do it.

He is hopefully, picking all of this up from us. We end up reading from – 100 Things to Know about the Human Body – he is FASCINATED by this book, and actually, the whole series of various topics are amazing. The 100 Things, really presents interesting, but knowledgeable bits about things to children in a fun manner (even to adults).

7:40 p.m. — I text my friend while we are watching Love is Blind together. She is eager/keen to know my thoughts and my partner’s commentary (lol) .. as we watch the show remotely together at the same time.

8:54 p.m. — Bedtime routine, and then we go to bed. I leave the computer on and let my partner turn it off for me because it did not finish but it was SO CLOSE to transferring everything and I absolutely did not want to have to do this again.

Spent: $0

DAY SEVEN

??:?? — I wake up early. I don’t feel like doing much.

6:34 a.m. — I try to take the weekends off from any kind of work including blogging, but this week, I barely logged on to blog because I have been so busy at work. I take the next hour and a half to finish a post.

7:50 a.m. — I stop and do something fun, like start the new season of Upload. This TV series is actually quite thoughtful, exploring the concept of a virtual reality “life after death”. I won’t spoil it, but it isn’t gruesome, it is more drama + comedy, and it really made me think about what life was. It dove into philosophical thoughts, while keeping it light.. at least, for me. I found it quite entertaining and am excited for Season 2.

8:08 a.m. — Little Bun is teaching himself more Adobe, and has now moved on to chess. I bought him this book – Chess for Kids – and he has been learning about each piece, and strategies on how to play the game.

I have ZERO interest, though I thoroughly enjoyed The Queen’s Gambit, and I think he got interested in the game from watching snippets of the series with me. I am considering buying him a chess set so he can play with the pieces and learn in real life by following strategies.

9:45 a.m. — I am exploring wallpaper options and I keep coming back to JJ Reddick’s custom wallpaper inspired from a bag he bought his wife. I like the gold “rain” in teh forest, the light plants at the bottom, the leaves being lush and green.  I will likely end up getting something custom made because it would be a joy to come into a room and feel happiness each time.

10:22 a.m. — We head out to play in the snow.

11:59 a.m. — Home, it is lunch time and he is happy about having gone out. After lunch, he puts laundry away.

1:57 p.m. — Down for his Quiet Time / Nap.

2:51 p.m. — Up from his nap, he bounces out of the bedroom. I snuggle and kiss him and we head off to play in the closet together.

3:40 p.m. — I strangely do not hate this look. I know it looks like a duster but it is so cute..

5:12 p.m. — Dinner, dishes and Little Bun is wiping down cutlery. He loves the weekend because of the “feasts” we have.

6:25 p.m. — We watch Love is Blind together as a family. Little Bun is giggling at his father’s silly commentary.

8:54 p.m. — Bedtime routine of book reading, talking to the Stuffies, and then we go to bed.

Spent: $0

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Want more? Read all of my previous Week of Money Diaries.