Window Shopper

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Time and time again, I love thinking about Christmas…until I have to think about presents for people in the family. That part is not on my list of fun things to do when the cash is short. On the other hand, I do love to get presents for the family. That part IS fun. And I just started thinking that particular time of year is coming around again. Really, the only reason I brought it up in the first place is that usually at Christmas is when we all get a load of new DVDs and television shows that we always wanted to watch. That part is very good.

When that happens, we have a mountain of new movies and television shows to watch. I remember one year, someone got Quantum Leap for a present. And over the years, they received all five seasons of the series. So, we decided to borrow it. This is something we do, all of us. When everyone wants to see a certain movie or series, we loan or borrow as needed. I like that. That way, we do not all have to own it. We borrowed the series. Thing is, we sat and watched episode after episode. Of course, in our limited way, we had our home theater seating in the livingroom, otherwise known as the couch and recliner. I cannot recall how long it took to see what we did watch but it was quite a while. And at the end, we wished there were more episodes. On a side note here, we decided that they did not end that series the right way. That just wasn’t right.

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I know. Late as usual. Well, this year we did not go. The nieces did but we did not. Too many problems for us to go. But I have been there before. In fact, I worked at the carnivals when I was young and stupid. The main thing about those places is that you can smell the diesel fuel all over the place. Stupid as this may sound, I loved that about it. All the sounds, sights, music, smells. All of it was really special to me….then. Now, it would be more of a nightmare since I do not walk well. But it was so much fun then.

I do not want to romanticize that type of life. It was really difficult and would be even more dangerous now than it was then. But I did this in the 60s when some people still regarded themselves as being kind. Now, it is very difficult to find such people in that line of work. But, like Sophia Petrillo (Golden Girls for the uninitiated), I am going to ask you to….picture this. Carnivals: 1960s. I was driving my Honda motorcycle then down the midway…just because I could. No, not during the time it was open. Before we had set up everything. Lots of rides were halfway up. The games were already set up since they don’t take as long. All sorts of people running around there in funny shirts and strange looking hats. The cook tent was the first thing to be operational.

One of the things I loved about the food was the…..don’t choke on your coffee now….fried baloney sandwiches. Those things were awesome. So good. Funnel cakes were pretty good too. I used to work in the cotton candy tent. That was fun. People have no idea how much sugar they are choking down with that stuff. The whole thing is pure sugar spun out. Foot long hot dogs are 9 inches long.

The games do not have to be actually rigged to keep people from winning. The games are just pretty hard to do. You have to practice. Some of the ones with sort of a betting thing going on? Don’t bother. You will NOT win. The rest are win-able just not very often. Sometimes, it is the judgment of the person in the game. If it is, you lose. Period. But it is still fun if you go out there to have a good time. If you go out there to challenge everyone for the bear or the stuffed toy, you will go home usually unhappy. One guy did get the big stuffed toy but he had the police out there and saying someone ripped him off. Not true but that’s what he said. In that particular place, the police believed him. Uh huh.

We did go to some places I would not go back to if I was paid. There was a city that would NOT allow us, who worked with the carnival, to shower at the fairgrounds. That particular place then had problems with the “dirty carnies”. Yeah. That was good. Ah well. It was one place out of so many others. All in all, I had a good time then. But today, I would not go through that again if you paid me to do so. I am older and hopefully wiser.

The fair is still a fun place to go. I love the county fairs and the state fairs. That will never change.

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We watched with a prayer on our hearts while Gustav plowed into New Orleans. But it did not pack the punch they, the experts, thought it would which is fantastic. We were so worried that the hurricane that was a category 4 would turn into a living nightmare that was worse than Katrina. They were blessed that it did not do that. And right now, the upper edge of what is soon to be just a rain storm is coming to our neck of the woods.

Were we living in New Orleans or somewhere close by in Mississippi, I would have been thinking about taking out some senior life insurance (I would have to have the senior kind. They think I’m a senior these days) simply because of the previous problems associated with Katrina. After all, you just never know what might or might not happen. However, since we live here instead, we can look forward to some simple rain for the next couple of days. The usual forecast from our local tv station is as vague as it gets. What a surprise. Uh huh. The lady on this morning was so definite that she said we would be getting some rain, she thought. Really? Rain, you say.

Ah well. If we want some real information, we usually go to the Weather Channel on the television or to couple of sites online. There is one guy at our local station that has a clue but he isn’t on in the mornings. Sigh. For now, we have what used to be a hurricane knocking on our door. Not too bad considering it was horrible in Cuba and other places where it took lives. There were eight lives taken in the Gulf coast states. How horrible. We pray for those families and for those who are dealing with the after effects of the storm.

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Why do I call it a fiasco? Because that’s what it ended up being. I have been in the hospital recently for a blood clot in my leg. Since then, I got a really strange rash that our doctor said was bad enough that I needed to be in the hospital or at the least, get to a doctor that knows about this thing. He sent me on to a hematologist. She told me that as far as her medical knowledge, I was healthy…blood-wise. But that she agreed with my doctor that something needed to be done. She called a couple of doctors, none of whom was willing to admit to admitting privileges at the local hospital. The hospital itself was not about to admit me with an unknown origins rash. Interesting right?

So, the docs decided I should go to another facility. We did that. Bearing in mind that I have a blood clot in my leg, we traveled by car from our house to the docs, the second docs, back home to pack and on to another hospital, roughly 180 miles or more. That’s where we stayed for several hours while the ER doc decided whether I could be admitted there or not. He came in and said that I needed a better hospital than theirs and wanted to send me on to Springfield, Mo. hospital. I hated the idea because we had been on the go all day, my leg was aching badly and I was so tired, I was about to fall over and would have except I was on a narrow gurney in an exam room, leg up for once. By this time, I am entertaining ideas of going on one of those Mediterranean cruises and getting the heck out of Dodge. But it was not to be. He did want me to travel by ambulance due to the clot but we were unsure as to how my husband was going to get there if he could not get a ride. (He can’t drive at night)

The doc returns with a funny look on his face. I am getting the picture. Springfield did not want me there either. Interesting, isn’t it. We ended up staying in a motel that we got to around 1:30am. It was a pit. We didn’t argue though we should have. It was incredibly hot in that place due to the air conditioner that wouldn’t. Eventually, it did but that’s just the icing on the cake for the day. Next day we got back home. It was Saturday. On Monday, I get from the doc’s office that we went to the wrong hospital and if we had gone to the one he wanted us to go to, we would have been admitted……probably. Uh huh. And then he wanted me to go on to that one despite the fact that we were still tired from the previous situation and that he had no guarantees that we would be admitted. The capper is that this one is over a hundred miles from the house to the city..that’s one way. We had already traveled over that to do the other runaround. No thanks.

In the end, the rash is disappearing. Funny, huh? Not to me. Strange, weird, not funny. Tiring.

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I am sure I mentioned that our extended family has a new member, right? She was born to my niece making Mollie Beth my grand niece or great niece, I believe. And she is absolutely beautiful, smart and all sorts of things that work for little bitty kids like her. At this time, I believe she is almost 3 months old. Since I cannot get out to see her, she will look so different to me by the time I can see her again. And so big!

Reports coming in from a proud grandma say that she is already on solids, teething, has a major preference in types of music. This kid is smart. She has learned how to get grandpa to hold her too. There are times for one and then the other. Don’t forget great-grandma either. She gets a turn at holding her majesty. And the aunts are hanging around a lot too. Of course, being teens, they are fascinated with baby Mollie.

Because I do not get to see her right now, I will not see some of her milestones and that’s sad. I would love to watch her say things (apparently she is saying a few things already. I did mention that she’s smart), see her love of music, watch her give grandpa a fit which she is apparently quite good at doing. I am blown away at the fact that this kid can talk already. Most kids don’t do that for months, just make gurgle noises.

But my problems will not last forever so I will get to see some of her firsts, I know. Say, Christmas is coming. Now that’s another first for her. She was born in May. Missed my birthday by about a month. Too bad. I can’t wait to see her get one of her first dollhouses, baby dolls and maybe Barbie. Right now, she has a ragdoll that she will not part with. I remember Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy. I had one. Do you notice how hard it is to get the really good ones anymore? Well, she will have the best of everything if it’s affordable. This is going to be one really spoiled brat!! Hahaha. Nah, she is loved and there is no question whatsoever. I love it.

Thing is, with this being the computer age, I suspect she will be on one by the time she’s 4 or 5 if not sooner. Good thing too. Kids these days seem to grow up on the computers. If they don’t get there that soon, they lose out. I don’t know if that’s good or bad. Having a kid on the computer all the time doesn’t leave much time for anything else, does it? They have to have time outside too. That was something I had a lot of, time outside. We didn’t have computers when I was growing up, just had to use our imaginations. I think kids today need that more than ever. So, Mollie Beth will need to use that imagination of hers instead of always using the computer. As a great aunt, I will have to tell her that……a lot, I imagine.

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There is a bit of good news for once. I have noticed that the price of gas has dropped and that is such good news. As you are likely dealing with the same thing, I can tell you that our limited income is getting sucked away by the gas prices that have been hitting of late so it is with a grateful heart that we pull to the pump and see a little less pain. I do not know how long this will last since predictors indicate that we are going to have a really hard winter, price wise. They could have said a lot of things besides that.

But it is great to see some price coming down so we celebrate! Of course, the usual celebration would be to go out to dinner or something like that. Uh no. That would spend all that we have already saved at the pump. I am simply not looking forward to anything during the winter. I do not like winter in the first place. It was always too cold for me. Well, not true. When I was a kid, it was fantastic. When it snowed, we could get out of school. Uh yeah right. Not in Iowa. I stayed home from school one day when it has snowed over 2 ft. total. They did not close the school. My parents allowed it. The next day, I found out that only a few kids had stayed home. The rest showed up the day before. Bah!

So, I do not like winter. I do not like high prices. I don’t like snow and ice. It’s just not fair. I should be able to live in the climate I like and still live in the area I want to as well. Not gonna happen. So, I will live in the ice and snow should it show up. I still do not like it, no matter what.

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We have contemplated moving several times since we came to live in the house we currently live. Every time we do that, it occurs to me why I hate moving. For one thing, we are not the spring chickens we used to be. Years ago, it was a whole lot easier to move from one place to another. For another, we have no help whatsoever. We must do this ourselves. ACK!

For what it’s worth, I will move when we find just the right place, right price and the right location. I will hate the process but I will do the deed. At some point, I would like to have the money so that we could hire someone to do the moving for us. Now that is a wonderful idea well worth exploring. See, I hate to pack and move because packing requires all those shipping boxes be packed and labeled. And what happens? For some odd reason, I tend to forget what’s in them. It then becomes a trial and error system to find the one thing I knew was packed but not where it was packed.

If we had someone else packing and shipping everything, it would be even worse, don’t you think? I mean, at least if I had to pack it, there is a slight shot I would remember WHERE. If someone else does it, there is no possibility of me knowing and then it’s a mystery to be solved. Hey, I can live with that! Mystery. I like it. Let’s move. When can we get started?

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With all the prices rising faster than you can catch a paycheck, shopping is becoming a nightmare. I am willing to bet that you have the same problem. You walk into the same store you visited a few days ago. The prices on several of those “have to have” items are now higher, blowing any shot of you keeping to your budget this month. I had that same problem just a few days ago. The worst part is that those were the items that had not changed prices in many months.

The truth is that most of the rules about shopping are going out the window. Price hikes are frequent and sometimes debilitating to the budget. Regardless of what you previously knew about shopping, it is now time to click into survival mode. Most of the time your budget will be trashed until you can get a handle on all this. It worked that way with us and we were practically doing all that anyway. Those little extras have to wait or have to go bye bye.

The reality is that you have to save where you can, pinch the pennies just as hard as they can be pinched, get the best deals in the closest places to save gas. For years, we have gone 50 miles north to a store that had much better prices for the things we bought. In fact, they have a number of items we cannot get anywhere else. If we can still afford it, we will still go there. It will be a stretch. I do not intend to give that up easily. If you have such a store, calculate the cost of the gas into your budget and decide if it costs too much to do that. If so, then you will have to find a good store closer to your home. We do not have that option at this time. We are hopeful that the company will build one of their stores near us.

We have found that it is very important to limit trips anywhere. We now do all of our shopping along with doctor trips, visits to family and so on. I know that some people didn’t see the need for that before. Since we live in a rural area, everything is a long way away, several miles in fact. We stay at home a whole lot now, only venturing out when necessary. Yes, shopping is turning into a nightmare but you and I can survive if we simply do those things that will compact everything into a few trips instead of a trip at a time. That saves gas too.

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Every year, we see the ads in the paper for the county fair that starts sometime very soon. The kids love to go to it. I used to but these days I don’t really want to walk through all that noise and people. The rides used to be so much fun but that was years ago. The real reason I would go in the last few years is because of the exhibits and the great stuff you can get or sign up for. Every year they have these booths that promote products for you to try out. I love it when they have all those promotional products because you can at least see how they operate and how it might fit into your life.

I’ve gone to more county fairs and state fairs than I really want to admit to through the years. It used to be so exciting when I was still a teen. These days, it just seems to be too hot to go. But maybe this year we will venture out and check out all those products and services again. I do miss doing that. It was so much fun.

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A few months ago, we had a full refrigerator and full cupboards. Then a sort of money drought happened around the same time we were able to help someone have a place to stay. Do you know what happens when more food goes out of the fridge than goes in it? Big, raging holes of nothing are in the fridge. That’s what happens. No one is at fault, mind you. It’s just that way.

At the moment, I feel like the Old Mother Hubbard though I hope I ain’t that old. But the cupboards are certainly looking a tad more bare than usual. And now, the big question is….what happens when people know that the cupboards are getting bare and some of the things they usually have available no longer are available? I can tell you! Voracious appetite hits. When that happens, you get bad attitudes. ACK! You know what I think? People ought to get on Phentermine 37.5 mg because that would take care of voracious appetite syndrome. I do believe that’s what it is.

These more than sane people usually could care less about those things sitting in the fridge and the cupboards. Those items could sit there until they were out of date on the label. I am not kidding here. But let there be a few holes in the items in there and you get insanity!!! Okay, I am done hollering about it now. Oh, hey what about that cupcake that was in there? I want it!!! Wait! No!! NO!! Don’t take that! It’s MINE! Rats. It’s gone. Somebody got it first. Sigh.

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