Another week of tales Chez Tolcher…bills, fines and marital bliss…

Monday:

Work. Nothing terribly exciting happened, except a school visit and another cancellation.  Got home and made another yummy dinner though.  Wonders will never cease!  Or maybe my kitchen skills are improving?!🤷🏼‍♀️

Tuesday: Ian’s day at court. To recap: he was stopped on the way home from the bottle-o (not the best circumstances, granted!), blew over (he’d had a drink when he was at home, still looking bad I know!), it turned out his licence had expired 🙄, so he was taken to the police station. When he was there he blew under, but they wouldn’t let it go because of the licence (and the fact that the cop said he was his last one of the night, so he was determined to pin something on him!😒) so it was 2 misdemeanours and he would have to go to court.  PS.  He was adamant he hadn’t received a reminder to renew his licence…

I was tutoring when he called to say he was finally out after having to wait over 4 hours! In typical “Ian luck” (and a surname at the end of the alphabet) style, he was the last one before lunch and the judge was more bothered about getting something in his belly than listening to what he had to say! He pleaded guilty but when he tried to explain the circumstances, the judge cut him off and said he would get the details in the post! 3 months driving ban and a $500+ fine!😭Exactly what we need right now!😒

So now I’m stuck doing all the ferrying round/extra errands!😑

Dropped Mia off at gymnastics, where she had a meltdown about being tagged out in the warm-up game.🙄Just walked out and left her to it though as I had to take Ian to get some parts to fix his bike for the work commute starting tomorrow! In the car he had the audacity to criticise my driving and be grumpy with me after what HE had done, so lost it and went on a big rant about how his actions were affecting all of us. He got out of the car while I was still talking, so I honked the horn incessantly to get his attention and he kept walking!🙀Cheeky shit! Thought “sod you then!” and drove off and left him there!😤😤😤

Received this text:

He guesses I was a bit upset?!?!🙄Give me strength!

I started dinner but had to dash off to pilates so left Ian to finish it off.  He hasn’t apologised (not his style!) so that’s the least he can do!

I was very uncoordinated tonight! I dropped the ball (literally) twice, which was pretty embarrassing as it was a full class and people had to retrieve it for me!😳My balance was also shocking! Not sure what I can blame that on?!  Being old and wonky?!🤷🏼‍♀️

Got home and tried to talk to Ian about everything and he said “Are you still going on about it?!” “Well, yes! For the next 3 months since you ask!”😡

Wednesday:
I’ve been taking the
tonin for a few days now and trying to go to bed early and I must say I do feel slightly more alert/energised.

I wanted to get to work earlier today as I had 5 new students starting in my class, but the traffic was crazy this morning so I had to settle for on time (which is still better than recent efforts!). It turned out that the other trainer for this class had decided that they would start tomorrow but had failed to tell me, so I had done all the printing and prep for no reason!😡Had a stomp around and a moan and calmed down around mid-morning!

I was telling my friend at work about the driving situation and she said you could apply for a “work hours only” licence which would make life slightly easier, but when I rang Ian he reckoned they told him not to bother as it won’t work. Personally I think it’s worth a shot!

I was the last one left in the centre again so after my last appointment I quickly closed up and dashed off before the ghosts could get me!👻

Went to Zumba and felt the most upbeat I have felt for a while, so maybe it is the melatonin?! Or maybe it’s a placebo effect? Time will tell…

Asked Ian how his boss had taken the driving ban news, since he’s one of the only ones in his crew with a heavy rigid licence.  “Better than you did!” he replied.🤔

While I’m on the GH topic: What kind of a husband doesn’t share his chocolate pudding?! Bloody grumpy husband, that’s who! Not even a mouthful. In fact, he licked the entire top of it to stop me from stealing any! Selfish! Thankfully I found a Kit Kat that I had stashed in the cupboard to ease the pain!😋

Thursday:  Torrential rain this morning and Ian had to bike to work!😬I can’t help thinking that this is chocolate pudding karma.🙊But I do feel a little bad that he will be drenched all day!😕

Went to my Emotional therapy session. She thinks the melatonin is a good idea. Money came up a lot. I’ve been feeling a little jealous of all my friends buying beautiful new houses at the moment while we continue to live pay cheque to pay cheque, barely affording rent, with the overseas landlord tax debacle for the U.K. hanging over our heads, but she said I need to focus on our life and be thankful for what we have, rather than focus on others. That is going to take some work…

Here we go…I am really thankful that we don’t have a dryer…wait, no, that’s really bloody annoying at present, because we have had rainstorms for the last week and every time I hang the bed sheets up inside, the dog pulls them down and lies on them so they stink more than they did to start with!😒😒😒My gratitude skills need work.

Stinky dawg! Bed sheets not pictured. I AM grateful he’s so “stinking” cute though!😍

Got a text later saying Mia had left her water bottle there. I know it’s not really a big deal but she leaves the bloody things everywhere!🙄 I need shares in a water bottle manufacturer!  And then I saw this quote on Instagram and it resonated with me. Do you think the universe tries to send us little messages sometimes?!  I think I do, even if I still choose to ignore them most of the time!  Too stubborn and stupid for my own good!

Nothing like a resonating quote! This lady also suffered from infertility and is now pregnant so is pretty inspirational to read about.

I’ve been completely stressing about money recently and then my tutoring guy paid a bulk deal for 10 lessons which was a godsend really as have bills coming out left, right and centre right now!  Somebody just saved my bacon!😅

I’ve been waiting for my Medibank rebate for ages now and at ballet I was talking to one of the Mums about health insurance and whether it’s worth it and we were trying to do calculations. I just do not have a mind for this kind of thing! I set up the app with fingerprint recognition and was trying to work it for ages, when I realised I was pressing in the wrong place!🙄 No wonder I can’t work out health insurance, I can’t even work my bloody iPhone!😩Anyway, we think we worked out it’s not worth it, so I’m going to go into the Medibank office tomorrow and ask questions (and pretend like I understand the answers!)🙊

GH was definitely grumpy husband tonight because he’d been soggy all day. Nobody ate much of my dinner, except me naturally!😒Well, the dog would have, but it was too spicy for him and I didn’t fancy dealing with doggy runs!  So my gourmet chef run is sadly at an end!😭

Friday:

Mia’s class had already gone to the library when we arrived at kindy and she refused to walk down with another class because they were “little kids”! She’s so precious about her age right now! Anyway, that meant I had to walk all the way down the campus and back up again before I could go and help set up for playgroup, but Fitbit steps, so I shouldn’t complain!

Playgroup started off all quiet and then bam! I turned round and it was packed! Too many people asked how my fertility injections were going as I haven’t publicly disclosed their failure yet and I had to do the “Ah, well, at least I’ve got Mia!” speech, which of course I am undoubtedly grateful for, but it doesn’t help when you feel like you shouldn’t be upset over something you wanted so badly. When you have a vision of what you want, it’s hard to just get over it and move on. But I’m trying my best!

Went to meet Bianca, Rita and kids for lunch. We’re trying to do a new location every week so we can “tick off” every café in Toowoomba. I do like to “tick things off”. Part of the OCD I suppose! Anyway, we weren’t totally impressed with this one, but I ran into my old hairdresser and had a chat so that was nice.

Kid free for the afternoon so I went to get my nails done and couldn’t find my phone! Thanks to the lovely Julz lending me hers, I tried calling the café.  It wasn’t there.  Tried messaging Bianca in case she had picked it up and rang it so many times, but it kept going to voicemail! Got back to the car and it was sitting on the passenger seat – doh!🙈

Went to Medibank to sort out the cover and I had indeed reached my personal limit, but Ian and Mia haven’t touched their yearly allowance yet and it resets in 2 and a half months! I wonder if I can pretend to be them?!🤷🏼‍♀️

Went to Mia’s kindy for a progress report as she had been tested for prep readiness. They said she did really well and has been settling into the new classroom ready for next year, so I informed the teacher that Mia was going to a different primary school next year and she had thought she was staying at the same campus, so had been sending her down for all the orientation sessions and had even assigned her to a class! Whoops!😬. Of course Mia had just gone along with it without saying a word, even though she was well aware, and when I asked her why, she said “Because big school is more exciting than kindy!”  Little sneak!😳

Ian was GH because he had to go to a kindy meeting rather than drink with his workmates. Let the record show that I even offered to drive him down to the yard after the meeting, but he does like to be a martyr, so declined.🙄

Saturday:

Mia was up early but not up for Parkrun, so I happily went alone for the first time in ages! I appear to have lost the ability to run though – my legs felt like lead!😣  It had an extra charity element this morning for Blush cancer care so we wanted a group photo and got a random guy to take a group photo but my phone annoyingly froze, so he offered to take it for me and text it to me.  All relatively normal until one of the ladies told me that the random guy was Councillor Geoff Mcdonald, so I shall keep his mobile number for when I decide to embark on my foray into politics!🙊

More like “park-dragyourselfaroundthecourse” today, but for an added charitable cause: Blush cancer care, so worth it!💕

Mia had a make up lesson for ballet from when the teacher had been sick and then had to go straight from there to swimming so it was an active morning!😴

Then in the afternoon I had a blind date! One of the ladies at Parkrun worked with an English girl who didn’t really know anyone in Toowoomba yet, so had asked if I would meet her. You know, being the same species and all, we were bound to get along! Well I had been so busy recently I hadn’t got round to arranging anything until today, but arranged to meet for coffee and cake at the Springs. It dawned on me that we didn’t have a clue what the other looked like, so I texted her to say I was sitting under a bird painting! Definite blind date fodder! She was actually really nice and we nattered on for about an hour until they asked us to leave because they had a function on! 😒

My friend, Petrina, had invited me out for dinner and drinks and I wasn’t going to go as we are very short on money at the moment and I felt bad leaving Ian and Mia at home. I asked him if he wanted to spend some time together instead and he replied “Not really!” 😲 “You DON’T want to spend time with me?!” I asked again. “Not really. You should go out!” “Right then, sod you!” I said and stomped off to get ready. What a charmer?!😐 At least I had the green light for a girly night I suppose!🥂

It was chucking it down with rain, so I shouldn’t have bothered straightening my hair!  Frizzball!  We went to Muller Bros with Petrina’s friend Alice, which is a Brazilian BBQ all you can eat. It wasn’t as good as last time we went but the waiter was really funny.  And English.  So we were predisposed to get along, right?!🙊 I didn’t do the food justice at all though and was pretty disappointed in myself!☹️. Alice works for a chiropractor and apparently pretending to be Ian or Mia for a Medibank claim would be classed as fraud.  Of course I asked! Better not do that then though!  And now I’ve alerted her to my plan, so I’d never get away with it!😬

We went to the Spotted Cow after as it was Parkrun Christmas party and everybody was wasted by the time we got there!🙊  Alice bailed as it wasn’t her scene and we got IDed and had to be photographed on our way in which blew my mind!  I was flattered until I was informed that they do it to everyone now regardless of age.  Damn it!😒

We saw our friend Kelly randomly. Apparently Oktoberfest had been flooded out so a high influx of them had come over from there ridiculously drunk! We stayed for a while but people kept bashing into us and were on a totally different level so we made an exit. Went to Fitzy’s but still weren’t drunk enough so decided to call it a night! Uber was a right rip off as it was peak time!  Should have got a taxi to save money!😲

Before we got sick of being shoved and stood on! You can’t go to a party sober and expect to fit in!🙊

Sunday:
Hadn’t even been drunk last night (sadly) but still felt groggy this morning!😣

As I said earlier, it has been raining for over a week in Toowoomba now and it’s starting to drive me insane, as we don’t have a dryer (didn’t ship it from the UK as didn’t think we’d need it!🙄).  If it’s not the dog lying all over freshly laundered sheets, it’s this one playing cubby houses or hide and seek!😐

What clean sheets?! Rain + dog + kid = wash the sheets again Mummy!😒

Drove in the rain to Jessica’s 2nd birthday party and carried Mia in to the building as the car park was waterlogged and I wasn’t drenching her party shoes!  It was a good chance to catch up with some friends I hadn’t chatted to properly in a while and Mia was being the photographer and taking random pictures (unfortunately none of the birthday girl or cake though!)🤷🏼‍♀️Thanks, as always, for reading the ramblings!Emma x