Partner still very unwell, coming up to day 14. She’s been sleeping 20 hours a day, and though she reckons she’s not getting any better, I’m sure I can detect a slight shift in mood. Still no feedback from GP, but my money is on glandular fever.
Discovered swiftly that there were no laundered clothes for kids, and found a mountain of dirty clothes hidden behind the laundry bin. Processed it all now. I’ve no idea where the clean clothes go, so I went to Tesco and got a pile of boxes, and stowed the kids’ clothes in those, stacked up in the lounge.
Decided to clean the cooker one evening, and found the main ring blocked up with grease, so dismantled the whole thing. It was 2 am before I had it back together (clean and working). Regretted it in the morning.
Have resorted to hiring an occasional cleaner for hoovering, dusting, and general cleaning. The extra costs are in danger of tipping us over Micawber’s cliff: “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.”
Getting the kids off to school on time in the morning, but involves getting up 30 minutes earlier. Washing the dishes after childrens’ bed times, and organising next days packed lunches and clothes, while attending to partner’s needs, gets me to bed 30 minutes later. As I was living on minimum sleep anyway, I’m surviving on power naps in the office between jobs …
Shopping isn’t much of a shock, as I did most of it anyway, but those extra few pints of milk etc. midweek are intensely annoying.
I was doing all the morning, and 2 afternoon school runs, but the extra 3 afternoon runs are destroying my ability to run the business. 2 of those days enable me to offer customers a full day on site, but now I must organise a childminder for the pickup before booking a full day with a customer. The third day was my “studio” day, which is now cancelled until further notice.
Painfully, the 10 to 15 minutes I’ve been grabbing each day for music practice have also disappeared without trace. Practiced the Sax today for the first time, but I’ll probably have to put the music side of things back on ice for some months.
Friends are rallying round, and as always it’s the people you least expect who contribute most. My past experience is people lose interest in assisting after 3 months, which takes us neatly to the Summer holidays … the point at which we’re really going to need help, since the school won’t be providing convenient weekday childcare.
Childcare for 2 kids 5 days a week costs 60% of my income … assuming my days are fully booked with customers. In reality, it would probably absorb 80% to 90% of my income, making it almost pointless working.
So I’m trying to manage asking minimal favours, in the hope folks will still be inclined to be generous with child-minding when most needed.
Helen is working all waking hours, and probably quite a few sleeping hours, editing the video of Aquaphonics for her degree show. This was supposed to be a collaborative video, but given the new circumstances I’ve barely put 6 hours towards this project phase, and only then with the help of a childminder.
Most of my input has been watching what Helen has done so far, with my jaw hanging open, occasionally muttering inane phrases like “ … it’s amazing …”. She’s done an astonishing job. My only contributions have been altering the speed of some of the fades, and trawling through the help files to find out how to do freeze-frames and motion-smoothing.
For some reason, AN just published one of my regular rants on the letters page. The editor seems to like extreme generalisations and indefensible views. Is this a good thing?
Tomorrow is another day … one in a long line I’m not looking forward to.
