No more AS checks came in on Saturday, so I closed out the quarter. Quite a bit of the work she did hasn't paid yet, so I moved those payments to Q2.

Q1 came to about $11,000. Lower than 2017 and 2015 but higher than 2016. Q2 should be bigger (even though it's only a two-month quarter) because she's already worked a lot of the expected payments. In fact I'm hoping she'll get about $10,000 in payments in April alone!

After NT's and SL's birthday parties, and accounting for what we need to pay in taxes, but with a few of AS's payments offsetting slightly, our shared spending deficit is about $2300. Upcoming expenses this month are a donation to my alma mater on "Giving Day" and AA's party space rental. And medical bills from our various maladies last month; we've gotten about $300 of bills so far. I'm in no hurry to pay them as there doesn't seem to be any consequence to paying them a month or two late! But I will have to contend with it eventually.

AS and I both want new clothes for the spring and summer. We always try the cheaper thrift stores first, but sometimes it adds up, depending on how many things we need to buy new if we don't find what we need at the thrift stores.

I'd also like to make a donation to an environmental nonprofit whose founder died last year, and I'm still interested in this line of facial products. But I'm holding off on those until I see how our money goes over the next month.

The good news is, I don't foresee any more big expected expenses that aren't already in the budget. So I'm hoping AS's April payments get us close to eliminating the deficit even with the aforementioned upcoming expenses. March is always tough because we budget for gifts, but party expenses have to come out of shared spending, and we all love having parties for our birthdays! And it seems most of the kids' friends who have birthdays also have their parties in March, so those gifts hit the shared spending as well. The clothes shopping might make it challenging to break even, but hopefully we'll get close.

Last week I slipped and only did one day of no drinking and one day of no screens after work. Since I'm structuring my goals differently for April, I won't try to make those up. In April the goal is minimal, intentional screen time at both work and home Monday-Thursday, and 0-1 glasses of wine (0 at least 2 days per week) Monday-Thursday unless there's a social event or other special occasion.

Now that birthday madness is almost behind us, I really really hope I get re-motivated on my novel-publishing and emergency preparedness goals! Another thing I want to do in April is build a really nice capsule wardrobe. I have my colors, and preliminary window shopping has made me interested in possibly some floral prints. I haven't done many patterns at all for the past couple years, so it might make a nice change.

My weight has bumped up this weekend, which is a bummer. But hopefully that too will even out.