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If you have one of these for the first time then the chances are that you have not looked around your home from knee height in a while. If you have a particularly mobile one, then they can move at a surprisingly fast rate.
Once one of these starts to move around, then it is only a matter of days before they have mastered the shuffle, the super-crawl and the turbo-toddle.
If you turn around even for a second, then they are off. The main objective is to have a taste of all those tempting objects which have only been observed until now from an infuriatingly safe distance!
If it can be picked up, it can be tasted.
If you can do it undisturbed, try to isolate your little explorer in one room and make that room as safe as possible.
Baby Proof!
The best way to do this is to install a baby gate before they start to crawl around and keep it closed.
It only takes a few weeks for them to be sitting there, innocently gurgling at you to running rings around you. Don’t be deceived. It might look like they are gurgling directly at you, but in reality, they are looking right past your left ear at a ceramic ornament on the shelf and wondering what it tastes like!
The first step is to work out what your weekly or monthly budget is.
This could be your pocket money, or your monthly allowance or your income.
Many people these days use online banking. If you do, download the last statement for the last complete month and open it up as a spreadsheet. If you do not have online banking, and your bank sends you monthly statements, then enter it into a spreadsheet. For pocket money or allowances, enter the amount that you regularly receive.
Now sort the spreadsheet into types of transaction. This will separate your income from your regular outgoings and your extra expenditure. From this spreadsheet, it is now clearly easy to where the money goes every month.
As Mr. Micawber famously said
“Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery”
From which you can see, if you spend more than you earn, then you will be miserable!
So, now you know how much of your income goes out on things that you can not avoid, like rent/mortgage, travel, utility bills, kids etc. And after this, whatever is left is your budget for the month. I hope there is something left.
Look carefully through the monthly expenses. Are there any items that can be easily reduced? Do you pay too much for insurance? Can you cut down on any other bills by switching to another company? The moneysavingexpert website is very good for searching for money saving deals.
If you have been following my budget food posts, then hopefully you can make some savings with the week’s food budget to opt for cheaper alternatives, or to cut down on waste.
Once you have made as many savings as possible, then work out an amount of money which you can safely spend over the month.
For food expenses, to live within a budget the key is to plan. You can not plan every single meal or allow for emergencies and unexpected invitations, but in general, you know that you will have three meals a day and these can be planned in advance. This way you can decide how much you will spend on your food budget for the month.
A good way to live on a budget is to leave all debit and credit cards at home. Because we are survivors, we do not cut up our cards or anything so drastic, but we stay prepared for all emergencies. If we only carry the exact money in our bags or pockets that we need to spend, then it will be much harder to overspend. It really feels like spending if you have to hand over the actual money instead of just giving your card. For some reason, the card seems to be detached from you and your bank account. So even people with not very much money happily hand over cards to buy things they do not need. But if you really have to give someone £58 in cash, then you actually feel it!
So, cut down where you can.
Work out how much you can reasonably spend per week or day and carry that amount with you.
It is very easy to get out of the spending habit if you have to use cash.
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Book a 1 hour session with me at only $25 or £15 per hour, give me a UK time at which to call and I will phone you.
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Which songs are these lyrics from?
Suck a little green pea soup
This is the doggie moggie age of Aquarius
The world is full of famous failures:
He famously tried to develop his famous vacuum cleaner 5000 times. This means that he failed 4999 times. What would have happened to him if he had given up on the 4998th time? Failure just was not an option for him. He just kept going until the end result was the right one and he had the design which was right.
Even then, he failed to get anyone to accept his new design! No-one wanted it. They did not want to manufacture it, they did not want to distribute it.
It is only by going through this type of failure that we now have the Dyson Vacuum Cleaner.
No-one wanted it here, so he went to Japan, where it won an award. He has his own manufacturing company, he has a knighthood. He did not face the fear, and rejection and failure by hiding in his room, shivering under the duvet. Perhaps for him, it was not a failure, but just another step towards his goal.
The way we survive massive failures like this, is by having self belief. By not letting our reactions go overboard when we have failed.
Do not forget that the world and our view of the world is very much made up of how we ourselves perceive it.
If someone is walking along the street and something terrible happens to them. What happens? Let us say that they fall over, or they do a huge sneeze which causes all the snot to erupt from their noses. For the person, this might be a hugely humiliating experience because they are the superstars in their own world. But for other people around them, who are also the superstars in their own worlds, it is just something minor happening to someone walking past.
It could be a short anecdote when they get home and tell their friends, but that is all.
Re-examine your failure and see what you have learned. Is it just a question of trying again somewhere else? Do you have to adjust something? Re-write? re-design?
From our failures sometimes, come our best successes.
There is a bag on the floor.
It is staring at me with its zippered eyelashes surrounding its mono eye.
Winking at the only one it knows will PICK IT UP!
Will zip it up and hang it up upon the hook which was put there JUST FOR IT!
This hook which hangs upon a DAY of arguments and shields the fragile silence which befell after the BANGING of the hook up on the wall.
This hook is the result of FIFTEEN YEARS.
Of silently following the wake of possessions like a little tug boat.
Flotsam and jetsam on the living room floor…
And bathroom floor…
And bedroom floor…
And kitchen floor…
Fifteen whole years and just one day
Of ‘OK! Stop nagging! I’ll do it!’
One tension-filled day, and then…
One EMPTY hook.
Copyright Survival Jones 2012. You are welcome to reproduce any or all of this poem, but please include an attribution and a link back to this page.
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
William Ernest Henley (1844-1903)
New guidelines from the British Heart Foundation have simplified the instructions for what to do if someone’s heart stops beating during a heart attack
Hands Only CPR
The main thing to do is to get their heart beating again. If you are a qualified first aider and are confident, then obviously do what you have been taught and what has worked for hundreds of years. But for all the rest of us, they advise, that we hum along to ‘Staying Alive’ by the Bee Gees and press down on the person’s heart to that rhythm.
Administering CPR to someone who has had a heart attack more than doubles their chances of survival. Better still attend one of the training courses which are being run all over the country. You might help save someone’s life!
How To Survive 