The world is in ruins. South Africans are barely keeping it together nowadays. As the Delta Variant continue to spread through entire families—decimating livelihoods and lives—and the unrest in certain areas of Gauteng and Kwazulu-Natal having left people with growing fear in their hearts and destroyed their faith in humanity … Then hearing about new, really unneeded troubles popping up around the country as desperation, anger, and greed drives folks into doing heinous things. Well, it’s amazing we’re still somehow marching forward.
On a personal note, it feels like the universe has decided to just flip me off on a daily basis.
I don’t want to get into the details, to be honest. It’s not because I don’t want to share my life or anything like that. There’s just so much to process and I would probably need to dedicate an entire post to it. Besides, what seems like troubling times to me may be nothing in comparison to what other people are going through in South Africa right now, so …
*sigh*
On the upside, at least there’s just 2 months of winter left here. That helps. Right?
The World is in Ruins
Announcements
I recently saw that an interview I did with author, Lindy Ryan, for the US Bookshow is available on Youtube … 🙂 Now, I just watched the video and if you need something for your next drinking game, voila! Hit one back every time I say “South Africa”. HAHAHA! In my defense, I was heavily pregnant when we did the interview and my brain had already gone into nesting-mode. Nevertheless, if you have a few spare minutes and you want to know more about Dark Country, here you go:
Books
I’ve been back at work now for a week or two and I find it a tad difficult juggling everything with the baby. For one, I’ve realized reading physical books is kind of impossible, so I’ve started thinking of utilizing Audible to keep my mind fresh. This, however, will have its own issues, considering Samara loves her music (more about that later) … So, right now, I’m actually just on the hunt for some good horror audiobooks. I’m thinking of starting with The Exorcist.
If you have any suggestions for what I should listen to, leave me a comment and I’ll have a look.
TV/Film
So, we’ve been watching some TV, at least. Not a whole lot of entertaining stuff, because we mostly tune into the news now to keep updated on the unrest around the country. BUT Husband and I finally finished watching the Fear Street trilogy on Netflix and it was actually so much fun! That said, I suggest you watch them all in a marathon-type of way for the right vibes to hit in the right way. Individually, apart from Fear Street 1978, didn’t exactly feel Fear Street-y, but together … Boy, oh boy! It was such a good trilogy. Definitely watch it if you haven’t already.
Music
When it comes to beddy-bye time, though, she only wants certain types of music. Specific songs, to be more accurate. Now, I know how it looks—Afrikaans music with religious undertones—but when you’ve been up two days straight with a crying baby, you give into whatever your kid wants. And Samara wants this, apparently.
I’ve tried moving toward some American Country music for her, because most Afrikaans music she likes kinda sounds like that. You know, some Johnny Cash, Joe Purdy, Tim McGraw, but she wants nothing to do with it. I’ve tried playing Tracy Chapman, Elvis, some of those rock lullabies, normal lullabies … Nope. She doesn’t want it. But when I put on her Afrikaans music she drifts off to dreamland like nobody’s business.
I have no idea why this music soothes her, but it does, so I’m sticking with the current curated playlist for now. Still, if anyone has any ideas how to introduce other songs into her playlist, let me know. I like Afrikaans music, but sheesh … You can only listen to the same songs so many times, you know?
Financial Stuff
With Samara here, I think we’ve finally grown up enough to start getting serious about financial stuff and what we’re leaving for her once we depart from this world. I know most people probably get these things sorted out before they have kids, but we’re not like most people. *shrugs* Let’s get real, though. The pandemic has left most folks without any savings. That ‘Rainy Day’ account has been drained dry months ago for almost everyone, and there’s a possibility that the ‘rainy days’ won’t be ending anytime soon.
It’s the same here. All our savings went up in smoke over the last year and a half. The money we’d been saving up to either immigrate or buy a house with … Poof! All gone.
There’s no use crying about it, though. What we decided to do was just move forward and pray we can make some semblance of a life.
So, Husband and I sat down and talked about the financial stuff again. Not for us, per se, but to give Samara what she needs out of life. What we did do before she came along was implement the “Debt Snowball” to pay off any and all debts. If you haven’t heard about it before, click here. There’s also a nifty Excel spreadsheet for you to download to get started. 🙂 We’ve restarted our little project with this again, but I’ve also insisted a few other things to save money.
- Limiting takeaways to once (maybe twice) a month—Having kids make it difficult to cook, I know, and yes I do want to support local establishments, but I realized how much we actually spent on takeaways lately and it wasn’t a pretty number.
- No spending on stuff we don’t need—Yes, retail therapy is nice and I do want to do my part in rebuilding the economy, but Samara’s future is more important than buying a PS5.
- Budget, budget, budget—Sticking to a budget is not easy, especially when prices seesaw, but we’ve decided to just grit and bear it.
- Selling off some stuff we don’t need/use anymore—The next ‘home project’ I’m going to embark on is to get rid of things we no longer use or need. The furniture just taking up space in storage? Yup, that’s going first. Of course, a lot of the things I want to get rid of will probably be donated, like the baby stuff Samara’s already outgrown.
- Utilizing financial apps—I’ve been researching a lot of apps now to track my spending and see how I can grow my savings. It’s been very insightful. Also, financial goal apps to help keep me on track with things, budgeting apps, etc. We have the technology, so we might as well use it.
I’m not saying we’ll become millionaires by cutting expenditures and saving what we can. I doubt anyone’s become a millionaire that way. BUT if living frugally now means Samara will be able to go to a nice school someday or—God forbid—be taken care of if something happens to me and Husband, then so be it.
This was probably one of the weirdest, most eclectic What’s New Wednesday posts I’ve done to date. LOL! What can I say, the world is in ruins and we’re all just trying to make sense of it how we can. *shrugs* That said, I hope you found some of it, at least, entertaining or insightful.
Have a wonderful week!
Monique
