It’s been twenty days since I lost my beloved, spectacularly expensive progressive glasses. In the interim, even though it looked most likely that I somehow threw them in the garbage, I’ve continued to look forlornly for them.
Welp, today the wonderful glasses are FOUND!
Amazing grace!
Having finally, late last night, climbed out from under the load of work that fell on my head right at the end of the semester (a hundred thousand words of stoont drivel isn’t enough???), today I determined to clean the house. Really clean it. Among the many tasks that have been awaiting for two or three months was to do something with two old throws I’d folded up and stacked on top of the bureau drawers, for lack of any other convenient place to put them.
One is a white, loose-woven afghan-like thing I bought at Ikea, very soft and pretty until the first time I washed it, when the darn thing shrank and morphed from an oblong into a funny-looking square). But it was still fine for the dog. Then I have this ice-blue cotton throw. It was the middle of the winter when all the folding and stacking was going on—and when it’s 50 degrees in your bedroom, something about a glacier-blue blanket is less than perfectly appealing. I set it on top of the shrunken Ikea throw and convinced myself that this pile was somehow decorative. It’s been gathering dust since the middle of January.
So today I bestir myself to do something with this junk, since it’s time to take the down blanket off the bed. Figure the glacial blue thing can go back on the bed and the misshapen Ikea afghan can go…somewhere else. Pick up the blue thing and what do I find but a familiar temple piece poking out through the fabric the Ikea throw. It’s the glasses! They’re all wrapped up into and tangled into the white throw’s loosely knitted yarn.
Had a helluva time getting them out—bent the nosepiece wresting them free of the synthetic yarn. But there they were!
How on earth the glasses got UNDERNEATH the tightly woven blue throw and tangled up INSIDE the white rag, I can’t imagine. I haven’t touched those things in three months!
Don’t forget: today is the deadline for Funny’s first giveaway! You, too, can add MONEY BLING to your life with this sparkling accessory…
Remember, all that glitters is not gold. Some of it is plastic. 😀
To make yourself eligible for this memorable bit of Funny about Money memorabilia, go to the giveaway post and follow the instructions. Add a comment for each of the various eligible activities that you’ve indulged in. Each comment will count as a separate entry in the sweepstakes.
You can subscribe to FaM, follow me on Twitter, tweet the giveaway, blog about this astonishing opportunity, or simply leave a comment on the original post describing what sartorial occasion you will use to wear these fine shades.
So it occurred to me, few weeks ago, that if instead of buying most of my groceries at Costco the first day or two of the month, I were to hold off on the Costco junket until the end of the thirty-day credit-card cycle, all the emergency bills that inevitably scotch up my budgeting efforts would have happened. Then, I would know exactly how much was left to stock in food.
This required me to live out of the freezer for a month. The billing cycle ends on the 20th, and by then the fridge, the freezer, and the cupboard were about bare.
However. By the 19th I knew I had exactly $206 left in the AMEX budget (all discretionary spending goes on the American Express card and is promptly paid off, because AMEX gives me a nice kickback at the end of the year). This should in theory be plenty to cover the big monthly Costco bill, though I’ve been known to spend as much as $240 there. So, to keep a grip on that, I created a grocery list, with space to enter prices:
At the store, I filled in the blanks with the cost of each item and then, when the cart was full, whipped out the calculator and added them up.
The S-corp was to pay for the paper, but I couldn’t lift a box into the cart. I’ll order that from Amazon.com; in any event, it wouldn’t have been counted into the budget. Unlike the upscale Costco outlet I’d visited about a month ago, the ghetto store near my house still had the lifetime supply of colored pens I need for editing, and so I grabbed a package there; that also will be covered by the little S-corporation.
All told, ta da!!!!! The bill only came to $178.42. Subtract the $12.50 for the S-corp’s pens and the hit against the budget was only $166. At Target, I picked up the desperately needed tennis balls for the dog, who has loved her current set to death, adding a mere $3 to the tab. The rest of the errands were opted.
A-n-n-d…YES! This month’s discretionary expenditures came in right on target!
Lookit that! Gasoline was almost $135 this month. And that was after I’d planned every single trip carefully…there were no wasted side trips, no idle drives around the city. I didn’t drive anywhere (except to evening choir practice) without combining errands, and I took care to use hypermiling techniques to save gas. That is just beyond the pale.
I tried to keep the fillups to two, but three times I ran so low on gas I had to stop at expensive gas stations so that I could make it to a Costco. Just now the car is almost full, and since I won’t have to drive to campus again until July 5, I may not have to get another fillup during the May/June budget cycle.
In July, though, it’s going to be tough: classes meet four days a week. That’s twice the number of trips I’ve had to make this spring; presumably gas costs will rise to around $200. And that IS beyond the pale!
Fortunately, I’ve funded most of this year’s mortgage self-escrow, and so I can use all my summer earnings to live on. That’ll be refreshing.
I was stunned at the prices in Target, BTW. No food bargains in that place! Beef that’s on sale for $1.79 a pound at Safeway is going for over five bucks at Target. A container of whipping cream cost what I paid for it at AJ’s, a gourmet retailer in the Whole Foods category. Grabbed the tennis balls and ran, figuring the next day I’d head over to Safeway for the dog’s hamburger.
But back to the point: Delaying the shopping trip for a month’s worth of household and food supplies until after other costs had come in worked to keep me on budget this month. Because I knew exactly how much was left in the budget, I was able to fit buying to the budget. Had the bottom line gone over the $206 left to spend, I would have started putting back items I didn’t really need, starting with the whiskey and wine, and Cassie would have had to make do with her old, busted tennis balls.
She won’t let me throw the damn things away, anyhow. Every time I slip a raggedy old ball into a trash basket, she sniffs it out and then barks at the trash basket until I retrieve it.
Here’s another post from my former student, Anita M. Martinez, who’s kindly holding the fort while I index a volume of medieval European history. This is a great story!
Knowing I’d killed a man was a horrific feeling—one I hope never to experience again. Had he been some sort of perpetrator, I could have felt justified and maybe even triumphant. But Harry was minding his own business, that unforgettable day in September 1994.
“Oh dear God, I’ve killed him!” my mind screamed as I ran toward Harry’s lifeless body, his arms stretched out on the ground. His bright blue eyes glazed over as they stared straight up to the sky. He wasn’t breathing!
“I have to revive this man, or at least try,” I told myself in a panic, wishing to God I’d paid more attention to that Red Cross CPR instructor eighteen years ago. My eyes zeroed in on his white, parched lips. For a fleeting moment, I wondered if I could bring myself to administer mouth-to-mouth on a man I didn’t know. Strange, how the mind can drift to silly things in the throes of catastrophe.
What brought me to this moment? Shortly before I killed Harry, my children, namely my boys, nagged, nagged, and nagged me some more until with an exasperated sigh, I gave in, agreeing to take them to Toys R Us to get a stupid toy truck called the Big, Big Loader. They had just seen the commercial with, you know, one of those jingles that reverberates in your head until you find yourself waking up at four a.m. ready to stick your head in the toilet to flush it away.
Our rusty 1964 Chevy Malibu felt hot as a kiln when I piled the kids in shortly before sunset. I fastened Erika, my five-month-old daughter, into her car seat with the one and only seat belt her father installed in the car.
As the searing September sun fought its descent, the Malibu chugged westbound on Thunderbird Road. My boys were repeating and repeating and repeating the Big, Big Loader jingle. Sweat trickled from my temples. My thighs glued themselves to the Malibu’s vinyl seats while my nerves came unglued. The sun was in on it too, inflicting a blinding glare as the Malibu bulleted through the intersection at 60th Street.
By the time I hit the brakes, it was too late. With a smoking rubber screech and sickening thud, the Malibu’s heavy grill smacked into Harry and his shiny motorcycle. The force of the crash threw Harry into the opposite lane, a good 20 feet from the point of impact.
My adrenaline pumped so hard when I threw the car door open, that I forgot to put it in park. As if to tip toe from the scene, it lurched ahead, driverless, with my children in it. I chased it, jumped in, and jammed that gearshift into park. Glancing quickly at my bewildered children, I ascertained they were uninjured.
I ran to Harry’s lifeless body. Ah yes, CPR. Simple as “A-B-C”: Airway – Breathing – Circulation. Assessing those white, parched lips, I made the split-second decision to skip steps “A” & “B,” proceeding to step “C.”
Gingerly, I placed my hands somewhere (anywhere!) on Harry’s chest and pressed. Suddenly, Harry came to life, pleading with a twang, “Ma’am, DON’T TOUCH ME!”
I screamed as if I’d seen a ghost and began running in circles like a mad woman. You’d think relief would have been mine at Harry’s sudden revival, but embarrassment at my own stupidity took center stage.
I ran back to the steam-hissing Malibu, peering in like a Jurassic Park dinosaur. The baby’s bottom lip was trembling, so I took her out and held her, telling Henry, Jacob, and my stepdaughter, Kaycee, to stay put.
Several of the female residents on Thunderbird Road emerged from their homes, like zombies at sundown. They circled me slowly, orderlies trying to calm an escaped lunatic.
“Honey, why don’t you hand me your baby?” requested a woman. Another offered me a murky glass of lukewarm water, which I reluctantly sipped (just to appease her). Yet another, with unblinking, cow-like eyes, took apparent pleasure in telling me I had run a red light. She must have been a hall monitor in sixth grade.
Phoenix Fire Station Number 31 was four blocks west, so instantly we heard sirens. The medics swiftly responded to Harry, who still lay in the street. Traffic in both directions had ceased, so everyone saw the show.
Amid the sounds of a wailing siren and chopper blades overhead, I found myself strapped to a board in the back of an ambulance, lying next to my 9-year-old son, Henry, also strapped to a board—a scene straight out of M*A*S*H. Jacob, Kaycee, and Baby Erika got to ride in the fire truck behind us, en route to Paradise Valley Hospital, where a rotund, red-faced Phoenix PD officer awaited me.
“The guy you hit is alive, but they’re air-evacing him to Barrow’s,” advised the officer, while presenting me with my citation for running a red light. I knew it couldn’t be good (Harry’s condition, and well, yes, the citation, too) so I began to sob. The officer lost his patience.
“Ma’am! DID-YOU-HEAR-WHAT-I-SAID? He’s going to LIVE!”
The days that followed engulfed me with depression and guilt, knowing it was all my fault Harry lay in the sterile confines of Barrow’s Neurological Institute, probably surrounded by plastic tubes and beeping machines.
“Maybe you can bake him a batch of chocolate chip cookies,” suggested my mom.
Buying Harry’s forgiveness with baked goods was never to be. Luckily, he agreed to a $12,000 insurance settlement plus coverage of medical charges. Harry’s thumb sustained a fracture, which was the extent of his injury. (Thank God!)
As for the Chevy Malibu? Believing it was still operable, I sold it to some guy for 100 bucks. He ended up towing it to a wrecking yard on the west side, he told me with disgust. Not only that, but the radiator was flat as a pancake. And no, it DIDN’T run. He wanted his money back.
It took a good three minutes just to open this blank “New Post” in WordPress.
It’s 9:53 p.m.
I started at 9:05. The project: scan two checks, deposit them electronically, pay the amount of one of them to the Mayo electronically, and set up automatic bill-pay to have the S-corporation pay Cox for the DSL connection and have my personal checking account cover $28 a month, the usual charge for the phone.
Between the iMac moving with the speed of a stampeding snail, Firefox hanging the entire system with its damnable “slow script” messages, and the scanner’s glacial operating pace, it took FORTY-FIVE MINUTES to deposit two checks and make two payments.
During the entire three-quarters of an hour, I’m getting exactly ZERO work done. It’s now five to ten. I haven’t had dinner, I haven’t walked the dog, and I’ve lost another hour of time that should have been used to write the SMRH index.
When I started this chore, I figured it would take more time than is desirable. But I didn’t expect it to consume nearly an hour, between the interminable task of scanning and e-depositing two measly checks and the five-minute job of setting up a couple of electronic bill-pays.
That’s what makes me clench my teeth until they break: frustration. And (other than losing a $725 pair of progressive glasses) few things frustrate me more than wasting my time.
Sometimes it seems to me that a goodly chunk of my time is wasted. Maybe half of every day. Between the bureaucratic diddlings-around imposed on us by corporate Web pages and flicking phone trees and the pointless crap inflicted by the government and the endless grinding of computer operating systems, HALF OUR LIVES ARE FLICKING WASTED!
So on Sunday I went over to the Safeway after the churchfest. Needed to pick up some meat for Cassie, since we’re going to run out of chicken before I can make another big grocery run.
Didn’t expect to find any bargains, it being a weekend, but was pleased to discover $1.79 chuck steaks, very fatty, just the ticket for a dog. Plus I get the bones to make the next pot of stock, which I’m about to do with the carcass of the chicken she and I have finished off. While I’m standing there, the PA system delivers a pitch for the shingles shots Safeway has been peddling for the past while.
Hm.
I’ve been eying the shingles shot for quite a while. Last time I asked, they said Medicare Part D wouldn’t cover enough of the $250 fare to matter—I would’ve had to pay around $200. But my doc at the Mayo has been urging me to get one…only not at the Mayo, where they charge over $300 for a shot.
Well, I thought, as long as I’m having to pony up $1,200 for a new crown, I might as well use up some more of the tax refund that bill is decimating. So I sidled up to the pharmacist’s counter and inquired.
It took the better part of an hour for the pharmacist’s sidekick to navigate Wellcare’s and Walgreen’s bureaucracies, which initially denied me. But finally, after I stood and stood and stood and stood, he extracted the deal: a $138 bill to me to cover the $250 immunization.
Makes sense, doesn’t it? Charge as much as an entire month’s grocery budget for a shot targeted at people living on limited, fixed incomes. Great humanitarian impulse there, Big Pharma!
I haven’t wanted to be forced to pay such a ridiculous charge for a few grams of immune serum. However… Shingles is not something you want to enjoy. It is extremely painful. If it gets into your eyes, it can actually blind you.
If you’ve ever had chicken-pox, you’re at risk of getting shingles, which is really just a relapse of the same virus, which takes up permanent residence in your system. The older you get, the higher your chances of getting it. And the older you are, the harder it’s likely to hit you. It can lead to encephalitis, facial paralysis, and hearing or balance problems. It is extremely painful, and the pain, called postherpetic neuralgia, can last for many months, even years. I knew a woman who came down with shingles in her late 70s. Two years later, she was still in so much agony she was incapacitated. This had been a very active woman—she and her husband owned a bird sanctuary covering several acres in the Chiricahua mountains, not a pursuit for the idle.
Every year about a million Americans develop shingles; of them, 20% are affected by postherpetic neuralgia. After a bout with the virus, forty percent of patients over 60 develop this excruciating chronic pain.
So, even though I suspect the price is a huge rip, no one wants to go through what shingles victims commonly experience—described by one sufferer as “as a very bad burn being stuck with needles and spikes.” So I went ahead and coughed up the $138. I’m never going to be any more able to afford it.
So far, no untoward side effects. We’re told the vaccine is only about 50% effective. You still can get shingles, but supposedly the infection will be relatively mild. However, it reduces the risk of the horrific postherpetic neuralgia by about 67%. And that’s big.
What the heck. After the pharmacist poked me, she handed me a 10% off coupon for my next purchase in the store!
So, to the two big packages of meat, which the butcher had converted to hamburger and soup bones while I was hanging around the pharmacy, I promptly added an eight-pack of foamy-delicious canned Guinness draught! And threw in a big $10 canister of roasted cashews.
