Budgets and Bugs

The tedious business of our neighbour complaining about us is wearing me down. I've been feeling poorly this week and juggling vitamins, prescription meds, attempts at exercise and relaxation (ha!) and trying to get a bit more sleep in an attempt to beat the stress.

Not content with complaining repeatedly to the council who presumably eventually just stopped listening (well they stopped asking us to comment) he then went to a solicitor.  Our professional association replied for us, and so did our landlord. The whole thing is nonsense. He doesn't have a complaint.

Then it transpired he'd gone above everyone's head and complained to the overall landlord. The man is insane. I *know* in my heart that everyone sees it for what it is, but I'm tired, and I find myself too often tearful about it all.

As October begins I've set out a proper budget - and it is now the second day of the month and the first thing I hadn't thought of has come up. Bill for Boo's clarinet lessons. Sigh. Back to the drawing board.

I know for a lot of people 'Stoptober' is a no spend month. My chances of hitting anything like no spend are ... nil! But I've set myself the challenge of coming in under budget somehow.

I've finally got to work on sewing Boo's *summer* dress (spot the deliberate error) and am trying to get it done as I'd like some time to make some crafts for gifts and sale this Christmas.

However, when I was forced to make a detour back to the school this morning on my way to work - she had left her PE kit in the car - I was horrified to find I had to hand it in to reception in a tatty, split, supermarket carrier bag! So a couple of roughty toughty drawstring bags might have to do a bit of queue jumping.