Back to reality now after two weeks off work relaxing and staying in bed late. The Christmas period was great, no hassle, no stress, just "quality time". I've been feeling peaceful and positive recently which really is quite refreshing, the trouble is those feelings only lasted until about lunchtime yesterday and now I'm feeling edgy and tense...

I'm not one for making new years resolutions, but there I need to make some serious changes to the way I'm living my life. The biggest problem is a financial one, years of being irresponsible with money have left us in a situation where there are more bills to pay then there is money coming in each month. It's been like this for ages and each month leaves us in a worse situation than the previous one. We used to get by before Georgia was born because Clare and I were both working full time, this is when we built up our debts and commitments. Clare now looks after Georgia in the day and we are getting by on my wage alone (unless Clare can get some evening work which is pretty scarce around here).
One option would be for Clare to return to full time work, but neither of us want Georgia to spend all day with a childminder, the cost of childcare means it's not a particularly effective option anyway.
We are attempting to cut our spending right back to practically zero to enable us to bring our bank balance back to somewhere around our overdraft limit. It's going to be hard and it certainly won't solve the problem as there are still a mountain of unpaid bills, but it will be a start.

Clare has an interview on Friday for a job working from 5.30pm until 10pm, this would really help out. I would need to work more flexibly so that I can be home to look after Georgia. The nature of my work means that this isn't out of the question but we will have to wait and see.