Back at Work

I guess it's about time I give an update. I have been back at work this week and keeping myself busy, so very often by early evening I am exhausted and usually in bed by 9pm but waking up through the night and if necessary getting up for a bit more online time before I get tired enough to go back to sleep..... until between 4-5am when I get up to get ready for work.

So my routine is more or less how it was before the two years of hell when Sally's health issues took a turn for the worse. That is I am up by 5am, getting online for a bit then getting ready for work, leaving by 6:30am arriving before 7am - there is hardly any traffic at that time of day. Then stay at work all day, no need for lunchtime trips back home, etc, so I knock off around 3:30pm, and if need be go to the shops, etc, otherwise just come straight home. Then just wind down a bit, go online, do various other jobs around the house, have dinner and watch the news on TV, than maybe another show or I get back online..... but as I said I am usually in bed by 9pm due to sheer exhaustion. Back in the days before the two years of hell I'd stay up until midnight on weekdays and 2am on weekends or vacations. During the week I be up until midnight then up at 5am for work, I'd run on 4 hours sleep each night due to my ADHD. I still run on 4 to 5  hours of sleep each night but just spread through most of the night in blocks of as little as one hour at a time!!! On weekends I'd "sleep in" until 7am, that was before all this. During the two years of hell my sleep patterns were all over the place, sometimes Sally waking me up in the night cos she needed medical attention of some sort. So I guess I am so used to being woken up at all hours that I simply cannot sleep straight through the night, plus also the nights are a bit freaky as I am not used to being alone at night. But I guess I will get used to it over time.

Another issue is getting all my debts paid off stemming from medical and carers expenses and etc. Plus also our utility bills are very high due to Sally's intensive medical needs, so now have two very high bills but knowing that the next bills will be much lower even in spite of Barnett's broken promises. Barnett promised to keep utility prices rises to around inflation level, but I KNEW when he was returned to office in the last elections last month that he would break those promises and I expected the utilities bills to rise by around 10% in the May budget. It is now April and it seems my prediction is coming true, he is already suggesting that his promise may not be necessarily kept, of course citing "unexpected" budget conditions as an excuse. So I am expecting for the utilities bills, electricity, gas and water, to go up around 10% in this May's budget. The electricity charges has already gone up by about 60% since Barnett won office four years ago and only 9% can be blamed on the much despised carbon tax, that leaves 51% for other pitiful excuses!!

However in spite of these increases, my bills should go down after I paid these ones. Due to Sally's health she needed stringent climate control, intensive heating in winter and cooling in summer. I have no such needs, probably stemming from the poverty years at Wilson when we didn't have aircon and mother used the oil heater sparingly, and our only method of keeping warm in bed were those rubber hot water "bottles" placed at my feet - though in later years mother did manage to get us electric blankets. So I can get by without any such devices, with only a single fan being used for cooling, and I rarely use the heater. About the only time I use any heating is when I take a shower and that is only during the colder days of winter. But once I get into my warm winter PJs and nightgown I am OK, I turn the heater off, and with the doona on my bed I don't even need the electric blanket. So I usually get by with little or no heating even in mid-winter.

Furthermore I no longer doing laundry 4 times per day. Due to Sally's sores and other issues, we'd go through a lot of towels sheets etc, and the chair gets changed usually once per day. So there is always a pile of laundry to do, and in order to ensure an adequate supply of clean dry towels, sheets, etc, I be needing to do the laundry virtually around the clock four times each day, a full load each time. I set the machine on the timer before I go to bed, and the 1st laundry of the day is done by the time I get up, then I throw the load into the dryer, and are dry by the time I head off to work. Even in summer I still must use the dryer cos the towels needed to be dried as soon as possible. I set the next load of washing going when I head off to work, and that is done by the time I come home for lunch and change towels etc again. Then the next load when I head back to work, and that is done by the time I get home, than another load for the evening. So between the washing machine and the dryer, that makes for massive electricity consumption, not to mention the water and gas, our water is heated by gas. So now being back to only one or two laundry loads per week together with far less climate control, I expect a drop in my utilities bills, certainly the electricity and gas, even in spite of the expected 10% rise in those rates in May due to Barnett's broken promises which I knew would happen. Meanwhile for the next month or so I would have to scrimp and save in order to settle my debts and pay these (hopefully) the last of the very high utility bills. But mother taught me well during the poverty years and beyond, I know how to budget, and right now I am literally down to $10 for a week but I have enough food in the fridge and pantry, enough petrol in the car, and enough other resources to get me through.

Anyway must get on with my evening tasks.... I be back with my football musings tomorrow......