Not My Mother

Ah, New Year’s Eve 1999. You whippersnappers are too young to remember the Y2K bug but we thought it was a big deal. I worked in IT for a bank and we were all rostered on to work overnight and through the next day, just in case. The people who worked from 10pm to 6am got $6000 for their efforts. I only had to work from 6am to 2pm on January 1, so I just got $4500. I used it to put air conditioning in my old house. It was good.

(The guys who had to work overnight had it better as everything was laid on for them and they had a prime spot on the floor to watch all the fireworks. One of them told me that at about 5 minutes to midnight there was a power surge in the city and all the lights went out. “We thought, oh crap, we’re in for a long night.” Heh, heh, heh.)

Anyway, I was also on call just in case there was a problem, so I had to stay home (I don’t know why, we theoretically could log in from home but it was on shitty 56K dialup and anyway how would that work if everything had turned to shit?), so me and my then-husband Andrew stayed home, ordered pizza, and watched videos. Yeah, partying like it’s 1999 is really quite lame. At 10pm we turned over to watch midnight celebrations in Wellington, New Zealand. I always thought they really missed a great joke by not turning off all their lights on the stroke of 12. Seriously, how funny would that have been? The first major place to tick over and it all goes black. Hee!

So eventually it got to midnight and I poured a naughty half glass of wine (I wasn’t supposed to drink on call) and we went out into the backyard to watch the fireworks. I was overcome with emotion, and the booze (this was also before I discovered wine; now it takes a full glass to get me drunk). Here we were, the clocks were all ticking over to zeroes, it was a brand new start. I love new beginnings. I was going to be a better person from now on, nicer, kinder, everything good. I could just tell this was it.

“Happy new millennium, world,” I whispered to the night sky.

“Happy new millennium,” Andrew replied. “… Of course, it’s not really the new millennium yet…”

“Oh for fuck’s sake, will you JUST LET IT GO?” I snarled. And thus ended the shortest resolution attempt ever.

We split up a year and a half later, are you surprised?

*

And now here we are, ten years later. I’m back in the same city, married again, once again not doing anything for New Year’s Eve. And yet in the meantime I’ve been all around the world, fallen in debt, fallen in love, got out of debt, got married, got pregnant. I’ve travelled so far. It might look like I’m in the same sort of place I was that night, but really I’m a completely different person.

I wonder where I’ll be ten years from now?

I’ve been thinking a bit about Dog’s situation over at Dog Ate My Finances. She lives in a crappy rental property that she hates, but she can’t afford the kind of house she wants, and she doesn’t want to buy a “generic townhouse” that she’d have to sell in a few years time. And she seems to have a mental block on upgrading to a different rental property – I think she sees it as dead money. So she’s talked herself back into staying where they are, even though the apartment is old and doesn’t fit her needs, and her cars keep getting broken into. She doesn’t see any other option — or more accurately, she’s written them all off.

It reminded me of our situation when we moved back to Australia. We were looking to return in December 2007, just in time for Christmas. At the time the rental market in Melbourne was going crazy; there were news reports that for any property that came up you’d have 50 couples swarming the place and there were rental auctions going on. It was mad. We had friends looking at the time and they said it was true.

Now, as it happened, my work moved me to London, so they were organising moving me back, and as part of that we’d get 4 weeks’ accommodation in a serviced apartment when we arrived. But what we didn’t get was any assistance to find a place to live (unlike when I arrived in London; I guess you’re expected to know your home town yourself). It was all down to us. How would we manage to find a place that was available within those 4 weeks? Also, we wanted to buy a house, but that would mean trying to line up the end of leases with the purchase – and with the market as it was, no one needed to take on a short term lease.

So it made sense to buy before we got back. The only thing was, the kind of property that we wanted was a larger house maybe 30-40 years old, which needed some work. And it’s really hard to judge that over the internet. We tried sending family round to look at a few places, but it didn’t work. They didn’t understand what we were looking for, so they’d come back and say “Oh my god no, there is bright red shagpile carpet everywhere, run!” Well, I don’t know about you, but I like bright red shagpile, and maybe the rest of the house was okay. But the point was, buying a house you’d be happy to live in is a completely subjective matter. It depends too much on gut feel and instinct, you can’t trust it to other people, and they don’t want you to either, in case they get it wrong and you end up hating them as well as the house.

But you know what is easier? Buying an investment property. Then it comes down to cold facts: is it close to transport? Does it have a garage? Is it low maintenance inside and out, with enough bedrooms and bathrooms for your target market? We decided that we wanted an investment property eventually, so why not buy it first? We wouldn’t have to LOVE it, it just had to be good enough for us to live in for maybe a year while we looked for the house we really wanted.

So we looked, and within a couple of weeks had found something that met our needs exactly. Better yet, it was in a largish development of similar properties so we could see what they’d been going for. So we bought it. Settlement was in December, a week before we got back in the country. Perfect.

As it happened we loved the house, which was good because it soon became clear that we’d been a little unrealistic about being able to buy a second house within a year. (It took us TWO years to get to that position.) Now, we live in the second house and rent out the first one. And we love the second house.

So this is what I think Dog should do – stop thinking about it in terms of a Mansion or Nothing. Buy the generic townhouse, but with an eye to it being a good investment down the track. It’s a reasonable compromise, if you do the research and are smart about what you get. And the mortgage would be a lot less than the mansion’s, and it wouldn’t be the dead money renting something else would be.

Disclaimer: I don’t live in the US, so I’m not completely familiar with the ins and outs of purchasing properties there. But Dog’s already been approved for a modest sized mortgage, and people are still buying properties. It doesn’t matter what she intends to do with the property a few years down the track, she’s planning to live in it now.

Still, it’s a lovely surprise, even if my statement says I’ve got unpresented cheques (unlikely, since I’ve always had direct deposits done), and that Dave’s dividends are supposed to go to the account that he closed a couple of months ago. Oops.

*

Christmas was a great success. Everyone had a lovely time (or at least lied and said they did), and I got by with the minimum of screaming matches with my mum. We got some lovely pressies too. My favorite was the complete boxed set of Friends DVDs from Dave. When we lived in London Friends was on about 4 times a day on various channels, and during my 2004 Summer of Despair before I met him, I got in the habit of watching every single showing. So after that it was a joke that Friends was always on. But here, it isn’t! So he bought me the DVDs so I can watch them while nursing the baby, and I cried because really, he is the most thoughtful person. I got him a book on forbidden Lego models and half a Crumpler bag for work (the other half was his family Kris Kringle gift) and he was happy too.

Mum stayed with us from Christmas Eve through to Sunday when we drove her back to my home town, and it was mostly okay. Our relationship is… frustrating, is the best word I can come up with to describe it. Frustrating, for many different reasons and for faults on both our sides. Remind me to tell you about it sometime. It’s hard to explain without giving you the full story but the full story would probably take up the whole internet so it will have to wait. Anyway, we had a few issues on Christmas day, but afterwards we were mostly okay and Saturday was actually successful. And then she went home :-)

Yesterday (Monday) was Boxing Day holiday here and we went to see Avatar in 3D, which I thought was absolutely brilliant, and then we went to Myer and bought a Dyson handheld vacuum cleaner. I have been lusting after one of these for ages, we really need one because of the budgie and the new baby and I just don’t want to have to haul the big vacuum out every day. It has a power head! Myer only had it 15% off, but we also had a bunch of reward gift cards that have been hanging around for months, so we ended up getting it for $200 instead of $349. And I thought that was absolutely brilliant as well.

And then Dave’s sister and her boyfriend came over and we had a BBQ and played a couple of games of Ticket to Ride until midnight, and now I’m exhausted and I don’t want to see a single other person for a week at least.

I hope your weekend was as successful!

A lot of my blogs have been setting their goals for next year, so I’ve been trying to come up with mine. It’s hard because I have no idea how next year will go. I could say that about every one of the last 6 years, but this one will definitely be different. I’ll become a mother. I’ll be moving to a part-time salary, and although I’ve worked out a tentative budget that shows we can do things quite comfortably, I have no idea how out of pocket we’ll end up with the birth, or how much the baby will cost (although Mum’s gone a bit mad buying stuff and friends have been very generous, so that helps out.) Hell, I have no idea at all what being a mother will do to me or my life, so it really is all up in the air right now.

I’ve not really tried setting goals before. Resolutions, sure, I make a billion of those, and promptly forget them. One year I had 13. How many did I achieve? Your guess is as good as mine. So for the last few years I’ve not bothered making them. Best to avoid the sense of failure. But I can see the point of setting goals, especially financial ones, otherwise you drip through the year with no focus. But how to do it? Goals should be achievable and measurable and everything else that makes them SMART. Also, I don’t want to have a goal for each aspect of my life (too much to focus on), but neither do I want just one financial one (an area that IS measurable) that I’ll get obsessive about, I’m obsessive enough about that already. So what to do?

I was talking to Dave about it and he gently pointed out that I am a knucklehead and next year WILL have one main focus, and it won’t be finances. We are becoming parents, everything is going to change. Thus, 2010’s goal should be to adjust to parenthood.

Spend the first three months preparing for the baby, then recover from the birth and adjust to being a mother. Look, I have no idea how I’ll go with that, other than it will change everything for ever (thanks, friends with helpful comments). I’ll probably be overwhelmed by it all and I’ll likely get postnatal depression. So he says I need to forget everything else and concentrate on that, get settled into being mum, get healthy and well, get our routines going and so on. And he’s right. I know he’s right. It’s really important and it doesn’t come at all naturally to me, I need to give it all my focus.

But I’ll need some sub-projects to keep me going, right? You know, for when it all that parenting gets too easy? So here are a few more I came up with.

Finance

1. Get emergency fund up to $20,000.My ultimate goal is $30,000 (6 months full expenses including mortgages for rental properties), but I’ll aim for $20,000 by the end of next year. It is currently sitting at $9,500, so we can comfortably make $20k by adding about $1000 a month.
2. Work out exact financial position. I’m embarrassed to say I don’t really know where we stand at the moment. I’ve lost track of how many shares we have (we get some as part of our end of year bonuses, usually held in trust for a year or more, and I’ve not kept the records of what’s vested and what’s not, up to date), and some of our old superannuation funds have old addresses so I haven’t got up to date statements from them. Plus, Dave tends to be a bit slack with some stuff like managing the account for paying one of the investment mortgages, which makes it hard for me to know how the budget’s going, so I’d rather just get it all under my control.

   This one also means making sure we’ve got everything covered that we should, like life insurance and wills, and to start getting educated on our superannuation options.

3. Grow net worth by $50,000. Again, I don’t know what the current year will bring so I don’t know how realistic I’m being, but if we include superannuation contributions (as we must) this should be easily achievable. It will be hard to definitely assess our success because a lot would depend on property valuations and I can’t see us paying for new ones again next year, but we’ll do what we can. For the record, I did some sums and I estimate our current net worth as being somewhere around the $490-500,000 mark, so $50k would be a nice round 10% increase. (See why I need the exact financial position? $500k would be such a nice milestone to hit and I don’t know if we’ve made it yet!)

Organisation – get home life in order

This one ties into the main goal of adjusting to parenthood, and just getting our lives working smoothly so things don’t fall apart when I go back to work. One of my most common freakouts is that I don’t feel like I’m coping now, so how will I manage when there’s a baby to wrangle as well? So this is all about setting up routines and systems, like meal plans and filling the freezer so we have food, and getting housework and admin down to a quick art. It bugs me that I always have a big list of things hanging over my head that should be done, so I want to make a concerted effort to work through them all and get them sorted out once and for all.

(And before you point and laugh at me for thinking I can do that with a baby around, she won’t be here for a few months yet and hopefully will sleep a lot at first. I could be kidding myself, but leave me my illusions for now, okay?)

Health and wellbeing

Dave says he wants to get down to 85kg (um, about 187lb) by the end of the year. He’s 6 feet tall with a chunky muscular build anda bit of a belly and probably weighs about 104kg (229lb) at the moment. I can’t imagine him that light but he thinks he can do it, and it will help with his cycling. I was 85.9kg (189lb) when we got married and am 94kg (207lb) right now, so I figure I’ll target that too. Ideally I’d like to get under 76kg (168lb) which would get me out of the obese range for my height, but I honestly don’t know how I’ll go. I’d rather have a modest goal I have a hope of achieving than something I don’t believe I can do.

Really though, I’d just like to finish the year feeling fitter and healthier, with better food and exercise habits and a body that doesn’t hurt. This will be part of establishing our new routines. Details still to be worked out.

So that’s it. Of course I’m most interested in the financial ones right now because I’m comfortable in that area. I’m actually quite excited about what next year will bring,

What do you think of these goals? What are your goals for the coming year?

Attention Aussie readers: Via my pureprofile account I’ve discovered Quickflix is having a special offer of 2 months’ unlimited trial for $5 (their normal trial is just 14 days free, which I don’t think is long enough to be useful at all). For those who don’t know, Quickflix is an online DVD rental like netflix in the US and Lovefilm in the UK: you add a bunch of movies to your queue, they post some to you, you keep them as long as you want and when you’re done you post them back and they send you something else from your queue. There are no late fees, it’s all done on you having a maximum of 2 or 3 out at a time, although most of the plans do have a limit of how many you can rent in a month.

I was signed up to Lovefilm in the UK for a while and really liked it, but hadn’t bothered doing it here. For a start, it’s more expensive than it was there, plus Australia Post doesn’t have the next-day delivery times of the UK, so you’ll have more delays in getting your films. Also, the drawback is that while you can prioritize your DVDs, you are still at the mercy of what they have available so if you’re trying to watch a series you could be waiting for the next disk for a while. Or what if what you get sent doesn’t match your mood on the day? Bummer. So since we’ve not really been watching that many movies we’d been sticking to the local video shop instead. (And yes, I know you’re also limited by what your local video shop has, but ours always had dozens of copies of new releases and was reasonably cheap, so we were happy)

But we haven’t yet got around to finding a new local video shop, and $5 for two months was a bargain to try out their service. A bargain! So I signed us up and gave Dave the login details and by the looks of it we’ve just spent the last hour putting every single blu-ray DVD they have on our list. Currently our list goes: Tudors series 2, chick flick, chick flick, action, chick flick, action, action, chick flick, chick flick, chick flick… and everything Hayao Miyazaki has done tagged on the end. (I’m expecting Dave will reorder those chick flicks to their rightful place real soon!) I’ll be interested to see how they go, it seemed every newish release I put on the list was tagged as “long wait” (unlike the local video shop) – hopefully it isn’t too bad.

So anyway – if you’re interested and like watching DVDs, it might be a good thing to sign up for. The code you need is AMS_PUREPROFILE_2FOR5. Just remember to cancel your membership before the end of your 2-month trial if you’re not interested in continuing; I have a feeling they’ll stick you on their most expensive plan otherwise.

Wait, I’ve not written in here for 11 days? I thought it was about a week, tops. Sorry about that!

I has been busy, busier than 10 busy things. Okay, not that busy. Maybe 6 busy things. Let’s see – we went to visit our new niece and admired how cute the top of her head, which was the only part of her we could see, was. It still amazes me that in a few months’ time I’ll have one of those of my own. Speaking of which, in the last week my belly has popped out and I now look distinctly (six months) pregnant, rather than just fat. And I booked us into some Hypnobirthing classes in January. That’s been on my todo list for a while and I worried I’d left it too late to get us in, so it was a relief to get it done. I’m quite excited about it, it teaches you techniques to help you relax, and him things he can do to help you and to not piss you off, which is important. The idea is that fear makes you tense up which makes everything hurt more, so if you’re prepared with knowledge of what’s actually happening to you and the relaxation techniques, you can avoid the fear and thus the pain. One of my girlfriends used it with great results and I’ve heard other good things as well. I don’t expect it to give me a completely pain-free delivery, I’m a bit of a wuss and not very good at relaxing and switching off, but I figure it can only help so I might as well try it.

The truth is I have no idea how this is all going to turn out and I cannot visualise giving birth at all, which unnerves me, so my philosophy is to chuck everything at this pregnancy in the hope it will help. Thus I see an osteopath, had a Lomi Lomi massage, do yoga (but not often enough) and am also going to start acupuncture in the new year. At the very least they are all good for me and help calm me down, so I’m going to enjoy them without guilt.

Christmas – the hard work is all done. Gifts all bought, wrapped, and put under the decorated tree; most of the grocery shopping’s done, everyone knows what they need to bring. All that’s left is for me to buy a couple of chickens and a few odds and ends, and give the house a quick tidy and vacuum on Thursday afternoon while Dave’s driving down to Ballarat to pick up my mum. I’m hoping I can keep it relaxed and enjoyable like the Christmasses we had on our own in England, and kind of how they are with Dave’ family, and not at all the fussfest my mum makes it.

You know what always surprises me, and has again while we’ve been preparing for this? How some jobs can seem so huge and daunting, but when you knuckle down and do them they really don’t take that much time at all. take our spare room, which I needed to get ready for mum to stay in. It was filled with boxes, there was linen dumped all over the bed and floor, and I had no idea where the doona and pillows were. Sorting it out has been hanging over me for weeks. But Dave stacked the boxes to the side and while he cleared up the garden on Saturday I folded all the towels and bedsheets and organised them into the linen cupboard. It took  me less than an hour and it was fun. (I love organising.) Now the spare room looks lovely. I mean, Mum will still complain comment because the queensize spare bed is a bit too big and has to be pushed against the wall but there’s not a lot I can do about that. And then there’s our laundry. It was the dumping ground for all the odds and ends and I figured I’d just have to write it off, but Dave had a spare 20 minutes on Sunday and managed to pull everything out and reorganise it neatly. He even unpacked our wine! In twenty minutes! I keep having to go in and admire it, it looks so lovely.

So here is my anti-procrastination tip for you kiddies: If you do it, it will get done. As it was for the spare room and the laundry and booking the birth classes, so it can be for everything else on my list? Well bugger me, who knew.

So that’s my big new lesson learned. (Again.) Other than that we’ve been really busy doing a couple of months’ worth of socialising in the last week, and I’ve been stroking my spreadsheets and thinking about our goals for next year. Which I’ll tell you all about next time. Stay tuned, it’s pretty exciting.

I could definitely have done without the second text an hour later with a photo attached. Yep, it’s a baby! Looks pretty much the same as the photo of her friend’s baby she showed me on the weekend! Look, I am just not maternal. I am really hoping that everyone who says it’s different when it’s your own is right, though on the other hand I don’t want to turn into a squeaky babytalking ball of goo, I do that enough with the budgie as it is.

Shortly after the second text I realised that crap, this is going to be us in less than four months, and I told Dave, and then neither of us got anymore sleep. This is why my phone doesn’t make a noise for texts.

But I am really happy that baby girl Name To Be Determined is with us at last, and I’m really looking forward to going and seeing her tomorrow night. Hey, at least there’s someone for me to watch and learn from over the next few months because seriously, about babies I have no idea.

*

And then this morning I got an email from a good girlfriend. I’ve known her for almost 12 years, we met when I did Jenny Craig and she was my consultant, and I used to distract her when I hadn’t lost any weight by talking about books. We haven’t seen much of each other in the last 8 years, after I moved to London in 2001 we discovered we were both really crappy at emailing, but I still consider her really close. In 2003 I was her bridesmaid, I came back for it specially, and I was so honoured that she chose me over people she’d known longer and spent more time with. She was my bridesmaid earlier this year, and then she moved straight up to Queensland with her husband. I couldn’t get mad at her because hey, I went across the world, she was still only a few hours away.

Anyway, over the last couple of months we hadn’t spoken or emailed, both still being crappy at it, but it was her birthday on the weekend so I thought I’d better email and also tell her all the news of the last few months (including the pregnancy). And this morning she wrote back and told me she and her husband had separated. She was sorry that she hadn’t been in touch to tell me sooner but she hadn’t wanted to tell me while I was still in the honeymoon period. And it’s just so sad. Partly because they were such a great couple, so loving and relaxed that I thought they’d make it for sure (but who knows, what with the stress of moving and losing their dog and whatever else goes on between couples) but also mostly because I wish I’d been there for her. If I’d not procrastinated on emailing her she might have told me sooner, and I could have helped. God knows, I know how it feels; my first marriage broke up one week before I went on the 3-month London business trip that ended up taking over 7 years, so I know what she’s been going through. And I might be bad at emailing but I’m really good at empathising and helping people, and I wish I’d done it for her. I guess I am still a really shitty friend.

But, she emailed me now, and she says she’s feeling good now and excited about the future, and possibly travelling overseas. And then she mentioned the new Katherine Kerr book and asked if I’d read it, so I’m going to write back and say no but I bought it for mum for Christmas, and then I’m going to talk about other books and what it was like going overseas, and I am damn well going to be there for her and be a better friend than I have been lately.

I love you, Tam.

A very dark and dreary day today, all close and gloomy with rain pouring down. Days like these feel so cosy, you should stay home under a blanket with lamps on and a hot cup of tea. At this time of year they remind me of December in London and how beautiful all the christmas lights look sparkling in the gloom. That’s a proper christmas. On the other hand, there’s nothing quite like the smell of a real tree on a warm summer’s day, all musty and piney, and I don’t miss it getting dark at 4pm, or how glum it feels in January wen all the lights go off.

That reminds me, I suppose we should put our tree up at some point. We have a fake tree, I feel mean chopping down a tree every year, and it’s okay. I liked our one in London better, it had pinecones on it. We weren’t allowed to bring it back because of them. So I bought a new one and like I said, it’s okay. The main problem apart from it not being the old one is that it has the lights wired in already and they are so ridiculously bright you can’t actually see anything else on the tree when they’re on. I don’t like them. Plus, putting it up seems like a lot of effort for just a couple of weeks. When I was growing up I was never allowed to help decorate the tree because I “wouldn’t do it right”. Well, great, thanks mum. I’m guessing that’s why I can’t be bothered with it now.

(Dave tells a lovely story about himself aged around five or so, where his parents let him hang the ornaments. They unpacked them in one room (I don’t know why) and handed them to him, and he’d run into the next room and put them on the tree and come back. When they went into the next room they found the tree on a 45 degree angle because he’d put every single one on the one branch and it was toppling over under the weight. Dave tells great stories about himself. I hope our kid has as great a childhood as he did.)

So anyway, it’s dark and gloomy outside.  Inside I am not much better,  I am tired and crabby. The thing I’m working on isn’t going right and I can’t work out why the hell not. Consequently I am procrastinating by eating chocolate and surfing the web and this makes me feel worse. Damn you, java, you make no sense.

But! Yesterday I did brilliantly with my tasks. I did all three things on my list, and also unpacked a box and emailed a girlfriend (I am terrible at emails). So that is fantastic. Also we got the final water bill from the old place because the tenants had switched things over, so that’s one thing off Dave’s list even thouh he didn’t do anything. So I am considering the first day of being organised a huge success. Yay!

Today’s tasks are a lot simpler. Dave is out tonight at one of his Christmas parties and I don’t do very well when he’s gone. Not that I miss him, I love time to myself, but the evening has no structure so I wander around aimlessly and end up flopping in front of the TV binge eating crap. So today I just want to have an evening where I consciously relax instead of wasting time.

Today’s tasks

• pick up milk, birdseed on way home AND NO JUNK
• have proper dinner (soup counts; fistfuls of almonds from the pantry don’t)
• relax/meditate 15 mins
• go to bed early
• DO NOT WASTE EVENING

It feels like a bit of a cop out to be honest, and I did originally plan to do laundry and yoga and all sorts of things but I don’t feel up to a lot. And believe me, if I can do all of this it will be a win. I really need to get back to taking care of myself properly.  

This feels like a bit of a nothing entry today, sorry. I promise to be better tomorrow.

You know, I am getting really tired of waking up in the middle of the night to spend an hour or so fretting about stuff. Often it’s not even stuff I need to worry about, but my mind keeps spinning around on it anyway. Like, the other night it was about Christmas, which we are hosting this year. I was stressing over the timing of the meal and when I should put the sprouts on to cook. I am not even serving sprouts! And last night it was something about getting a move on making maternity shirts from some patterns I bought a couple of weeks back because time is moving on, you know. And Saturday morning I was up at 5am because I couldn’t sleep from thinking about all the paperwork piling up on my desk.

See, they are really stupid things but underlying them is stuff I do need to worry about. I do need to organise for Christmas and for the baby, and even general stuff won’t wait. Unfortunately this goes against my natural state of slothful procrastination, hence everything piles up and up while I loll around watching tv, until I start waking up unable to breathe.

Also, I don’t do well with multitasking. I can concentrate on one thing at a time but if I try to do several things I end up thrashing around trying to work out which to do first. So, I can spend a weekend happily unpacking and arranging my kitchen, or I can do all the filing; but try to get me to unpack a box and do the ironing and research childcae options for the year after next (seriously – apparently we were behind on this the moment we conceived) and I crash and burn. Thusly: our situation here.

You know what I need? A list! Actually I need many lists. One time, during a really stressful project, I made myself a “list of lists to make”. And my friend Connell found my list of lists, and he pointed and laughed at me. Actually pointed and laughed! But screw him, that worked better than one big list. And then I need to actually look at the lists every day, and give myself 2-3 tasks that can be done, and I need to choose them in order of priority not just what I feel like doing. So the scary things I hate and which I always procrastinate on will get done as well as making all my files look pretty. And if you’re really lucky I’ll post my lists and  my wins so you can see how I’ve gone.

So: here’s my list of lists I think I need, and my tasks for today. It’s important not to put too many things on the list, otherwise I get anxious and I am supposed to be working as well.

Lists I need [you can call them "task categories" if you want]:

• Christmas organisation
• Baby preparation
• Finance to do
• General to do
• Dave to do [he'd never admit it, but he procrastinates worse than I do, so I find giving him one job per day gets stuff done without me feeling like a nag]

Just writing those makes me feel all organised and tingly! Just wait until there are actual tasks in them too!

Today’s tasks:

1. Find and print form for Dave’s UK tax return (one of the things that woke me up on Saturday)
2. Buy book for mum’s Christmas present
3. Get electoral enrollment form witnessed and post
4. write blog :-)

Weekend wins

1. balanced money accounts
2. did mending while watching Deadwood (not high priority but at least I wasn’t just sitting on the couch)
3. registered for Medicare Online and updated details
4. updated some addresses and sent Dave list of ones which are easily changed online
5. did about half our Christmas shopping
6. tested roasting a chicken in the new oven for Christmas

What about you, are you lazy? How do you keep on top of everything that needs to be done?

So yesterday the Reserve Bank of Australia raised the official interest rate by 25 basis points to 3.25%. Westpac has already responded by raising its home loan rates by 45 basis points, and there’s no reason to think the other banks won’t follow suit. And I’m a bit cross about it.

(For overseas readers, Australia hasn’t had the recession issues that the US and UK have. Our Prime Minister Kevin Rudd would tell you it’s due to the government’s fantabulous stimulous package, but mostly it’s because our banks were far more conservative and didn’t get that involved in the subprime mortgage market in the first place. Not that it wasn’t tight there for a while, global finance is all intertwined so banks and companies had to scrabble to fund debt and there were some layoffs, but nowhere near the levels you’ve had overseas. So our interest rate is higher, and that’s why the AUD is doing so well at the moment.)

The rate rise was expected, but I find the RBA’s strategy frustrating. They raise rates to rein in inflation, but it’s hard to believe they have much of a grasp of what’s going on. For a start, they were still raising the interest rate until late last year – last September it was 7.25% – despite the meltdown overseas and rumblings here. Their excuse was that inflation was too high – but the inflation figures are measured using things like higher oil prices, leading to higher fuel and grocery prices, and housing costs. All stuff we can’t control, and hardly things we can do without. So they raise the interest rate, leading to higher costs to fund mortgages, and then act all surprised when we end up having to spend more? Sheer genius. Gosh, better raise rates again, that’ll stop people spending so much on bread.

They finally started dropping the rate in October, because, who knew, things weren’t looking so good. Over the next six months it plunged to 3%, and you could hear the sighs of relief all over the country.  But at the same time Kevin Rudd started his stimulus package, whereby he gave cash handouts to low income earners to stimulate the economy because gosh, people got scared and stopped spending money at the shops! It’d be nice to think that money was being used to pay down debt or put aside for a rainy day but it’s not, it’s buying flatscreen TVs and playstations and funding holidays. And Krudd’s fine with that. Hey, it keeps the retailers happy. It probably has saved some jobs. But it’s also made the economy look better than it should and that’s alarming the RBA.

The thing is, they’re not giving anyone a chance to react to the new rates. They won’t even have the latest figures in yet, so they don’t know how last month’s rate rise has affected things yet. Chances are it hasn’t, yet. They’re still looking at the artificially inflated figures caused by the stimulus package. So yeah, raise the rates, but maybe don’t do it every fricking month, give people a chance to work out what their new budget looks like, hmm? Or, do it half a percent every time, but only do it once a quarter. At least then you’d have time to run the figures and see what’s what.

But the real problem is that the banks won’t just pass on this rise, they’ll increase it. Westpac’s already added another 20 basis points on, and the other banks are likely to follow suit. Westpac has claimed it’s due to the increased cost of funding, but it’s also to cover themselves for bad and doubtful debts. NAB alone made allowances for $2.3 billion for this purpose last financial year. They have to make it up somehow. And yes, that is completely down to the banks’ shady ethics and greed, and the demands of shareholders. But why do they have bad and doubtful debts in the first place? Because people and companies already can’t afford to service their loans. Isn’t that a sign that the economy is not doing great? Raising rates is not going to fix that!

So  yes, I’m frustrated about this. As a consumer, it hurts, and it makes everyone that little bit more nervous about what next year will bring. I don’t deny that rates are lower than normal at the moment, but so is the world economy. A better indication of what’s going on is house prices which aren’t going anywhere right now, despite the low rates and the first home buyer’s grant. If the RBA really wanted to slow down inflation maybe they should stop Krudd chucking money at Harvey Norman’s cash registers instead.