Wow, I just realized that I completely forgot to write up my expense report for January. I had to wrack my brain a bit to remember what we did! Mr. Mechanic had a rotation in surgery which meant that I didn’t see him much. I didn’t see much at all, really, as it started getting dark around 4 to 5pm.

To kick off the month, we rang in the New Year with a wedding. We had lots of fun seeing tons of family and friends before heading back to upstate NY.

A Circus Cat

The rest of the month I wrote for this blog, cooked bulk meals, and trained our cat to do some tricks. Did you know you can train a cat? I didn’t. Now in his repertoire: sit, high-five, spin, hug, sit pretty, jump over arm, roll over (that was tricky), and he can climb up to my shoulder from the floor. That’s what you get when I’m cooped up in the dark winter months: a circus cat!

Cat learns to roll over

 

Weekends in Town

We have been hanging out with friends during our weekends, and if Mr. Mechanic is working, I will sometimes head to a coffee shop just to get out of the house.

I’m expecting a low spending month because of how little we did, but we’ll soon see below!

Note: This is the spending for just me. I report expenses when I pay them, so you may not see insurance or other bills until the month that I pay them.

Item	Amount	Mechanic Musings
Rent	$500
Groceries	$161	Nothing much to see here. Pet stuff gets lumped into this category now. We ate through almost everything in the fridge and half of our freezer before going back to the store again.
Travel	$41	We paid for parking at the airport ($35 each) and went through a toll road.
Restaurants	$22	We went out once this month to a new Indian restaurant that opened up recently. Instead of splitting an entree we both partook in the all-you-can-eat buffet for $8! I also went for coffee a couple of times.
Internet	$23
New Passport	$24	I got my passport photos taken and shipped off my old passport to be renewed. Note: I also included a check for $110 for the renewal fee but it hasn’t processed yet so this will likely go in next month’s expense report.
Carpet	$6	We bought a carpet at The Salvation Army. It included 6 matching doormats which is perfect to make a place for our wet shoes in the winter.
Total	$777	Wow! An extremely light month. This is essentially bare-bones as we didn’t do much at all in January. I’m hoping to get out a little more next month!

What About You?

What do you do to keep busy in the dark winter months?

Have you ever seen a cat do a trick?

How was your January spending?

Share in the comments below!