Window Shopper

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The truth is I have a huge weight problem. And a difficulty is that I am at an age that I need to get it under control and fast. Exercise is almost out of the question. My doctor does not talk about my weight. I suspect he has given up on doing that. It seems that the out-of-control weight I am wearing is just too much for him too. Sigh.

You know, I have tried some things to deal with it. I remember one diet plan that said I should go to the grocery store and only shop on the outside wall of the store. At that time, the stores had all their unprocessed foods there. The plan did not allow for using canned products of any kind. It was extremely hard to keep to that plan because there were things in the aisles that I needed. Eventually, I stopped going to the weigh ins. Not much happened there.

A doctor gave me a liquid diet. Unfortunately, at the time, I was an over-the-road trucker. It was extremely necessary that I keep my strength up and the liquid diet robbed me of that. I stopped that one when my partner, who weighed MUCH more than I, ate all his meals in the truck in front of me because he apparently resented me for reminding him of his weight through the diet I was on. I did not say a word to him but I did not like that guy one bit. I was so glad to be rid of him as a partner. YUK!

There have been others too. Some better than others like one of the carb counting diets which I would caution people to go on for short term only. I did lose some weight on that one but the best benefit was the lowering of my blood pressure and cholesterol levels. Yeehaw!!! Of course, that lasted until I left the diet. It did take about nine months before the old problems resurfaced.

Know what? It would appear that I haven’t tried a few other things like weight loss pills. Mostly, I have gotten so tired of trying to diet that I would rather just adjust my eating habits to be more body friendly. I think that would help enormously, don’t you? So, I have a new plan. Hopefully it will help me more than other things have. I really hate to lose some weight only to have it come bouncing back on and the scale reads higher than before. ACK!!!

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Frankly, I am not happy with having to go to all the trouble of getting the tags on the car every year. Why can’t they sell a tag that’s good for about 4 years, you know, like the driver’s license in our state? But we have to go in and stand in the line getting the tag renewed literally every year. And this year was a bigger bonus. The tag we had on the car for the last 7 years needs to be replaced…not because it wore out but because the state says it needs it. So, we had to put a brand new tag on the car.

And, of course, when you do all that you also have to have the card that tells them that the car insurance is up to date too. We’ve been with the company that insures our car for the last about 4 years now. The local people are really nice but I do not care for the way the head office works. They tried to charge me more than they should have for our insurance. I am getting that straightened out because those folks are pretty nice too. Tomorrow, I have to call them. Sigh. But now we have a brand new license tag on our not-so-new car. Hurray!

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This is probably not going to go over well with the younger set if they read my blog at any time. But it will go over a whole lot better with the parents of said teens. The fact is that teen cell phone usage is through the moon in expenses. I read a news report about a 12 year old, that’s pre-teen, who had gotten her cell phone taken away for several months because she ran the bill up over $220 more than the parents expected to see. She just happened to use 1,022 extra calling minutes and more than 200 text messages. WOW!

Now, I have a cell phone, a pre-paid one. We do not allow a teen to use it at all. We pay for the minutes we want. I cannot imagine using that many minutes a month. But teens are using more and more minutes and texting much more than ever before. At this point, it’s a whole new world. According to the stats I saw, 15.6 million people between 13 and 17 have cellphones as of two months ago.

The thing is, text messaging costs a lot of money. On our phone, it costs us 15 cents to text and that much to receive. When you have a pre-paid phone, you notice each time you do anything just how much it costs. If we were to text a bunch of people, it would cost most of what we put on the phone. Teens text as a matter of course. It is not surprising that they go way over the limit during a month. In fact, parents are beginning to panic about it. I know I would.

For instance, a father gave his pre-teen a cell phone. In her infinite wisdom racked up over $1000 bill texting, downloading ringtones and talking. The father, thinking that he could control the situation, turned off various services. Much to his surprise, they were re-activated by the kid. That’s when the cell phone comes back to Papa!! Sorry kid.

Another parent found that her 15 year old daughter had sent over 10,000 text messages during the month costing her over $800 extra on the bill. Obviously, this is only the tip of the iceberg. But hope is still available. Remember when I mentioned the pre-paid cell phone? That would be what I recommend to give to the teens and pre-teens who must text message and talk, talk, talk. Many of the companies now have good plans to help distressed parents in their fight to reduce cell phone bills. We happen to have an AT&T Go phone. It works beautifully. The teens and pre-teens might not like it too much. It means that if they want to have more time, they must buy it themselves or wait until the next reload of the minutes. Why not. Stops all the big bills. I’m all for that.

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I am going to admit that I hate exercise. Before I weighed what I do now, it was not so bad. Truly. There were days that I could do lots of walking. Walking was my friend. I loved to walk. But over the years, that has faded into the background so much that I just have not been able to do as much as before. And, of course, when you aren’t active, what happens? Weight gain. BAH!

Now, we do have some exercise equipment here. A stationary bike is sitting in what we call the playhouse. It’s a small building that houses some things we didn’t have room to put in the house. It also used to be where the our nieces would play in the summer. It sits in an area where it could be used….if someone wanted to use it. Then, we also have a treadmill. It’s great for hanging jackets on when there isn’t anywhere else to put them. Not bad, huh?

Yes, I need to exercise. No, I haven’t done much in the last few……weeks….uh, months. Yes, I do need to do that again. Will I? Probably when the weather gets to be a bit better. We have a cold snap on us tonight again. If I can get myself interested in exercise, I will probably talk my husband into walking with me. I used to love that. Maybe soon.

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Normally, I would take the recalls from the news and report them here so that you can decide what to do about that. Now, I have another resource that will include some things that do not get reported on the news as well as those that do. These are the recalls for today:

Puffed Wheat/ Rice Cereals from Malt-O-Meal company are being recalled due to at least 23 people in some 14 states that suffer from salmonellosis, a strain of Salmonella, that was recently found in the unsweetened varieties of Puffed Rice and Puffed Wheat Cereals that are produced by the same company. These foods are produced under the nationally known brand name as well as a number of others that include Acme, America’s Choice, Food Club, Giant, Hannaford, Jewel, Laura Lynn, Pathmark, Shaw’s, ShopRite, Tops and Weis Quality. The “Best If Used By” dates are from April 8, 2008 (coded as “APR0808″) through March 18, 2009 (coded as “MAR1809″). These products should be thrown out quickly. Do NOT USE THESE PRODUCTS thinking they will be okay. For more information concerning this recall and the other recall please go to www.malt-o-meal.com/recallinfo.

Battery chargers for toy helicopters from Hobby Lobby. These batteries are being recalled due to a fire hazard. These are the Lithium-polymer battery chargers and lithium-polymer batteries from China (what a surprise). This is a voluntary recall. This product is being sold with the AT600 Falcon Helicopter kit. These kits were sold between April 2006 and July 2007 at Hobby Lobby. Stop using the products immediately. You can get new batteries and a “smart” charger by emailing sales@hobby-lobby.com with your information. The website is www.hobby-lobby.com.

These are the recalled items for today. Happy Shopping!!

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Over the years, the girls have brought home birthday invitations from their friends at school. Sometimes, the things are very straight forward, easy to read and basic. You can buy these at any store that sells party supplies or greeting cards. Like I said, basic. Where is it? What time? For how long? Present or no present. What day? Who is having the party? A contact number. All of those questions are usually answered right there in the basic invitation. However, sometimes someone gets really creative and the invitation is a lot of fun…or not!

What I do not care for is when the person who wrote the invitation (and thought they were being creative), leaves out some really basic thing like…..when is it??? We have actually gotten one that did not have the date it was supposed to be held. Oh yes, the contact number was missing too. Ah well. That’s informative. Or how about it gives you the start time but when does it end?? Quite recently, the invitation stated that it started at 3pm at a bowling alley. We assumed that the party would go for about 2 hours. That seems to be standard these days. I guess it was a good thing that it was checked since it was only an hour. The poor kid would have been waiting for an hour to be picked up again. BAH!!!

Why don’t people make sure the thing is accurate before they send them out? That would be so helpful to those of us who have little to no clue.

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We saw a report recently on food labels and how accurate they really are. Seems that they aren’t quite as accurate as most of would like to believe. The problem I see is that most people do count on the labeling to be reasonably accurate. But what if they are not? How wrong can we get??? I count on them to be accurate because I deal with diabetes. Many people have weight problems, either high or low, and need the labeling to be accurate there too.

For instance, a person wishing to lose weight believes the packaging label and eats whatever the item is. Then, they cannot understand why they have not lost weight. A person who is counting carbs believes the label and consumes more than they really should but they think they are only eating a certain number. People who are diabetic and need accuracy in the labels are also surprised when their blood sugar is higher than they believed it should be. What’s happening here?

The truth is there is little real truth in the labeling. The fact is that the government is allowing a 20% difference between what the label says and what it actually is. 20% OVER acceptable levels. So, what’s happening here is that your favorite brand of food is giving you way more than you thought it was. This could actually put some people in trouble nutritionally.

Good Morning America had some products tested and the results were not encouraging, to say the least. Wonderbread has 70% more total fat than advertised, Ritz crackers have 36% more sodium. There were many more. The problem is that each and every one of the products they had tested had more than the label stated. When contacted, the companies that were willing to address the issue stated that this was only one of those products and products do vary in content due to the machines that make and package them. While I do agree that is true, I also believe that the labels need to be much more accurate than they actually are.

In another case of the government having “double speak” (what a shocker), “No” does mean that there is none of that element in that product. However, ZERO does not mean none. The manufacturers are actually allowed to say ZERO when it contains up to .5 grams of an ingredient. What that means is that if you were looking for a product that has no saturated fat in it, and the label says a ZERO, there is the possibility that there is saturated fat in it up to a half gram. On the other hand, if you see on the packaging that it says NO saturated fat, then there is no saturated fat in it at all.

Now, this gets a bit sticky when you want to eat a few cookies and the label says there are ZERO trans fats in them. So, you eat a few. Who can eat just one? Those cookies could have up to a half gram of trans fats EACH!!! The government says that they can have trans fats in the product even though it also says trans fats are dangerous for us. Frankly, the government talks out of both sides of it’s mouth. The problem there is that the whole thing is so confusing that it’s likely that we should not eat at all!! Ever. Not if we do not know what’s in the product we are about to consume.

So, we are now in a pickle. What do we believe? Unless you grow all your own food, you have to depend on a labeling system that isn’t accurate. Is it any wonder that people get sicker even though they read the labels. From the consumer point of view, I believe that this is a legal scam the companies are putting on us. It’s universal too. GMA’s testing people literally found that each product tested had MORE than the label stated. MORE! That’s more fat, more sodium, more calories, more carbs and sugars. This could be dangerous to many of us.

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I love spring. It’s a new birth of the green things that lay dormant during the winter. The trees begin to sprout their leaves. The early spring flowers show up. We have had daffodils already. They are such pretty yellow flowers. The roses will be out and blooming pretty soon too. It won’t be long before the hummingbirds come back. That’s one of my favorite things about spring, when the birds come back.

It’s also the time to get out the decorations for the yard. Now normally I do not think of garden decor, especially all winter, but, in the spring, that stuff springs into the mind so just having some fun things in the yard and garden make looking out the window nicer, don’t you think? I have seen everything from those garden gnomes to deer, the fun bugs to someone’s very serious scarecrow. It really does not matter what we put in the garden or the yard. It just makes things more interesting when you do that.

Naturally, each spring we end up in the garden center in some store to pick up a part for the lawn mower or some plants to put in the ground early enough for them to produce such great things all summer! This is definitely the time to get all those plants you have ever wanted to plant in your yard and garden. I love spring!!!

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Years ago, people who did not have a lot of money usually made do with what they already had. My Dad was one such person. Learning how to save money was very important in those days because if you didn’t, you did not have the items that you needed. He grew up during the Great Depression and so learned to use what was available to make anything he wanted to use. Sometimes, the things he made looked pretty weird.

When something broke down, that did not mean what it does today….go out and buy another one. There was no such thing as “throw away” items. If you bought the thing and wanted it to work, you made it work regardless of how you did it. One day, Dad had put together some contraption that looked a good deal like one of those HDMI switches but had absolutely nothing to do with that at all. He tinkered with it for hours. I remember that because he was not about to let it get the best of him. And at the end of that time, the thing worked!!! We were always very proud of him. But the thing is, he always saved us money when he did these things. Awesome!!

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Charlton Heston died last night. He was 84. During his very long career, he made over 100 movies. Frankly, he seemed bigger than life after having made the films “The Ten Commandments” and his Academy Award winning role in “Ben-Hur”. These films gave him star status in the 1950s. In the 60s, he ran with the apes in “Planet of the Apes” and teamed with Henry Fonda in “Midway”, an epic movie of WWII. Of course, he was in a not-to-be forgotten movie like “Soylent Green” as well as many others.

It is not possible to write down all the attributes of such a person. His life was spectacular just as his film career. I could give you the stats for the man but you can read those in other places. But this man had Christian values that he portrayed in many of his films as well as making movies that included the Bible.

We will miss such a film maker and actor because it is unlikely that there will be another like him. And rather than give the details of his death, I would rather just say goodbye to him and that we will miss him.

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