Resting Time

I have had some time off recently - mostly over our birthdays but also in lieu for working a bank holiday next week (boo!) and I feel I've needed most of this time to just rest and try to relax - something I have found rather difficult recently in life.

It may seem a bit like wasting time, but I've felt recently that trying to do things just for the sake of it when you really don't want to is equally a waste of time. And by that I mean things like going out shopping when you don't want/ need anything and have no money. So today I have spent my time in my pit (aka my seat on the sofa) and job hunted with a live feed of footage from Springwatch on the TV. And I didn't even bother getting dressed as I have no plans to leave the flat - even the weather has gone rather dark and colder after the blaze of summer we've had recently.

Of course this means that a man sent by my agency to look at the boiler turned up unexpectedly.

"Hi there."

Ah well, it's my flat. If I want to sit around all day in my PJs eating biscuits then I can. Though apparently I may occasionally get an audience!

Another reason for lounging about instead of trekking off for no reason is that with my appetite being poorer in recent times I don't always eat as much as I should - a lot of the time eating makes me feel very queasy. So until that settles down a bit more I am more aware of the stresses of trying to eat outside my comfort zone, which is mostly at home, and as I walk everywhere I don't want to overdo things too much and end up having walked 2 miles for no reason and not eat because I feel more sick than usual. Not much fun.

It's been nice to be able to have time guilt-free to just sit at home and pick up a book [A Short History Of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson at the moment] and let my mind work on something other than worrying/ depression and not be stressed out. That approach doesn't always work, but it's still lovely to have some actual peace now and then.

I wondered if I'd get sick of it...

As I made a brief mention of a few weeks ago, Tom and I have got engaged. Naturally this period leads into planning our wedding. I noted to my mum a day of two into my engagement, "everyone seems to be keen to give me advice, even before I've actually asked..." Her reply was, "they will."

And so, a few weeks later, Tom and I took our birthday weekend off from anything wedding-related because we'd grown sick of it. I can't wait to be married, but the whole planning of a huge event (with no money) and lots of people was starting to drive us mad.

Things we have not yet decided on: venue, date, church, time of day, budget (currently at zero) etc etc.
Things we have decided on: bridesmaids, best man, grooms men, theme.

This is not it.

If I weren't a Christian I would probably pressed more for eloping to somewhere like Gretna Green before now. But I want to be married before God as I believe this is the way to do it. Everything else is just extra decoration as far as I'm concerned, and great as having it will be, I don't want the main point of things lost in a whirl of flowers and name places and cake issues.

I'm sure once things are a bit more in place I'll be having more fun.

Is my birthday

So I'm going to try and have some fun (something I have been lacking of late).

Fun is currently consisting of going to Pets At Home and Sainsbury's but hey, at least it gets me out of the house :)

I'M SO EXCITED

Because...

I'm getting married!!!

Tom asked me to marry him a few nights ago (he was meant to wait for my birthday in a few weeks but couldn't!) and we haven't stopped bouncing off of the walls!

Attempting to plan things on a budget of approximately £0 is both hard and easy - hard because we need to have a serious think about what we each want, where to have everything, who to have there, etc, and easy because we have no money so everything will have to be done very creatively.

Surprisingly this all feels so right. I'm usually the princess of doubt, and I'm not saying there haven't been any negative thoughts slipping in there once in a while, but I am actually so, so happy!

And now back to thinking about dresses...

Hello Money, Goodbye Money

This past month has been the first in a long time that I've had disposable income and been able to (carefully) buy things not considered essential to my longevity. Though those luxuries include lunch because we never have much to take in that I actually want to eat. But one example is I finally, for the first time, got some flowers from Tom!

They looked a bit like this.

But I'm considering some options that may leave me back in a similar position of being broke in the future. Hmm. This economy has been a bloody hard one to be living through with there being very little for households like ours to be falling back on if things go wrong. At the end of the day, the rent needs to be paid so the landlord can pay his mortgage so the bank don't take his house off of him. It's a strange kind of position to be in; we are surrounded by objects of various wealth that such a huge amount of the world just doesn't have (eg the sofa) but we're always about a month's loss away from no food. 

Now logic would say if that were the case then why not just sell all the big expensive things so you can get by? Good point. But our home revolves somewhat around this sofa; its function aides us in so many tasks we don't even realise until it is not there. When we first got our old flat we didn't have a sofa. It was annoying and caused more backache than you'd imagine - floors are hard. So the way we have our lives, our functioning lives, requires having some things not everyone in the world has.

This is not a thing to be guilty about as it fulfils such a practical use. What I would argue is extravagance is wasting a lot of money on a sofa when you can get an equal one at less cost. Some people in our society get into this strange habit of filling rooms - having a place they live in which has more rooms than they need, so they decided to furnish them with the hope of... what? They don't want to use them, because they have other rooms which they use for the same thing. It's just to fill the space.

When we got our flat, the second bedroom was a blessing because we could put all our excess stuff there: spare lizard tanks (in case of quarantine or a new addition) a dining table (redundant by the sofa) and as storage for new things like the mountain bike.

And the next chapter was us reducing stuff down because the room changed its use, but again for a practical reason. Personally nothing screams EXCESS like having rooms you don't use but keep pristine because, hell, you can.

Anyway, one thing I'm trying to do with my money is to use it on appropriate things: we don't have the space for me to just buy cool crap. You can't get around our living room without an airer attacking you (good thing it's weighted down by the never-ending amount of washing on it). So now I may be using money more to do things - takeaways, trips, drinks, feed pets. I want it to be my tool, not master.