Window Shopper

For those of you who do not take any type of meds, this will seem possibly trivial but for those of us who are on medications 24/7/365 it is a pain in the posterior and other places too. This has been a running problem for me for years. You go to the doctor, he/she gives you a prescription that, sadly, you have to take every day of the year.

The rub? Each and every prescription is written for a 30 day supply of medication. That’s great. Has anyone looked at a calendar lately? There are 4 months of the year that are 30 days long (April, June, September, November). There is one month that either has 28 or 29 depending on whether it’s a leap year or not (February). And there are 7 months of the year that are 31 days long (January, March, May, July, August, October, December). Clues anyone? Those are the months when you will find that you do not have enough medications to make it through that particular month. Why is this?

1) Because the doctors are not about to change it. They have done this for years and are not about to stop it.

2) Because the government, in it’s ridiculously infinite wisdom (Laughing so hard she falls to the floor laughing hysterically), has decided that they are not going to pay for medications for more than 30 days at a time. Never mind that it is going to hurt people. It’s just done that way.

3) Because the drug companies like it that way. No known reason other than it’s always been that way. Got any ideas why they would want it that way?

4) Because the insurance companies are not about to pay for more than 30 days at a time.

The reality is that for 7 months of the year, I am coming up short on the medicines I take because most of the months are 31 days. I am not alone in this. And people on Social Security are hit particularly hard with this. I should know. The government, as in Part D insurance, will NOT allow anyone to get their meds early, no matter what. I have run into that several times now. And in effect, I have lost 7 days of the year on medications. Now, the doctor requires me to take them every day of the year but he doesn’t apparently feel the need to write a prescription for every day of the year. Even if he did, the government would not allow me to have it before the day it’s due to be renewed. Well, I have gotten it a couple of days ahead. There is not a lot of leeway there.

How about some sanity here. Doctors, government, insurance companies….GET A CLUE!!!! People on lifelong prescriptions, I realize that this is not an earth shaking problem but it is a problem. It needs to be addressed. Call or write your congressperson about this. This is insane! And really, really stupid.

After seeing the news again, we needed gas. Gee, I bet you know the next line by now. The price had risen again. Up several cents from a couple of weeks ago. And worse, it’s WAAAAY higher than it was last year at this time. And it isn’t getting any better. Why? For one thing, the oil companies are so greedy that they won’t change the war at the pump.

Personally, I cannot see how the oil companies execs can actually sleep at night. Of course, if they have the cold hearts that it truly looks like, it doesn’t bother them a bit as they rack up more money in salary and perks. Shouldn’t this be a crime? At this point, it is legal theft.

Those execs had the guts to sit in front of congress after having had the biggest profits seen in human history and ask for more tax cuts for themselves. HELLO???? What is wrong here? What’s wrong is that they are so greedy that they want it all, to bleed the American public dry. When that happens, other countries can take over because we will be helpless.

It’s just like the Chinese products that get recalled so much. This is all about bringing the United States to it’s knees and by golly, they are gettin’ ‘er done too. Take a look at the big picture.

Housing is in the pits because of ridiculous loans that any truly sane person should not have entered into. So the market is in trouble. Credit cards are getting ridiculous and not really regulated on fees. You can go broke on a couple hundred dollar charge. How about food prices? Those are sky high because of gas prices, another setback in the US. Should I go on or are you living it like we are?

What is it going to take for the American public to get a clue that all is not well here at home. We are being bled dry by big oil, the car companies, grocery stores, lenders, credit card companies’ fees, banks and the list goes on. How can you tell what you can safely buy these days? I have no idea.

I would say Happy Shopping but I think that statement needs to be retired so this is the last time you will see it here. I am sorry! Times are tough.

With the ever increasing gas prices, it’s much harder to move goods and products across the county cheaply. In fact, the big ticket items will most surely go up dramatically and soon. You can probably already see the difference in the grocery stores and department stores. The biggest problem is the price of fuel. Gas prices are at an all time high but what gets missed in all of this, the price of diesel fuel is also extremely high, much higher than gas prices ever were.

This hits the truckers even more than it does the general public. Truckers move almost all of the goods and products in this country. When they raise the rates on moving products, it would be because of the higher gas and diesel prices. Trucking companies cannot keep their fees low anymore. They cannot exist on no or little profit so the bills for taking a load of goods and food across the country goes up dramatically. Where does it end? In the pocket of the consumer. And since we are all consumers, even the truckers, we all pay for the fuel prices that are causing all the problems in the first place.

And still, the US is dependent on foreign oil. Crude prices are at an all time high themselves. Yes, the price of a barrel goes up and down. You can sit there in your home, watching the news and hoping the prices will drop but is that realistic? Is it? Is it realistic when the middle east sheiks and oil profiteers are the ones controlling the prices and the amounts? There is no way they are going to be nice, is there. You know there isn’t. They LOVE it that we are hurting this much. We are a world power that is about to go to its knees because of middle easterners who control the oil. Is it possible for us to have missed it more??? Doubtful.

I suggest strongly that you brace yourselves for some very hard times. When the oil gets to pricey and we have nothing to put in its place, it is going to be a rocky ride. The middle east and the EU will start to write us off as a second rate power. Only if we can deal with our own oil can we stay in the world power status. That is not going to happen. Our shortsighted leaders have sold us out. This goes all the way back to before the 70s shortages. But we had a clue how it was going to be then. Why did we do nothing? We could have built more refineries, found more oil. Where is it???? And we are going to pay and pay and pay now.

Truckers who are feeling the crunch more than you are have decided to go on strike. I support this. They are protesting the high price of fuel. Frankly, I doubt that too many will do this but if it is possible, many truckers will shut down their rigs and not move for at least 24 hours. Some would like to park for a week. It would surely get the attention of the government.

Many truckers have the problem that if they start their truck, they are losing money. How can this be? Because everything they have to do to maintain the truck costs more and more, like insurance. Most truckers are paying out $600 to $800 per truck per month. The insurance is based on credit. If the trucker is losing credit status, he also pays more insurance which actually makes it a circle. Pretty soon, he cannot pay to run his truck so he parks it. That’s one more load that will not be delivered on time. If that continues to happen, the prices of goods and food will go up again.

It’s no better with the companies that have to maintain their trucks as well. In the case of the companies, there are the additional costs of individual pay, maintaining the fleet, insurance for each truck and trucker, the whole overhead. It is an awesome thing. I do not know how the trucking companies are making it. I suspect many have already fallen and there will be more to follow. When that happens, goodbye good prices for anything. It will cost yet more to move the freight and so it goes. More prices at the store. There is no end to it unless there are some stops put on those oil freaks over there in the middle east. Only then can we get a better deal at the store…..maybe.

Today, I decided to try out the Pizza Hut Online website. We received coupons in the mail that stated they had online capability. While it may be normal and even easy for you with a larger version computer, my computer had problems. It was extremely slow loading. It was extremely slow with virtually everything. And it kept wanting things that it did not specify. For instance, it wanted all numbers or all letters…..in what, we have no idea. It wasn’t the password. It wasn’t my name or address. We have no idea what it’s problem was.

I simply was not happy with the way the website operated. In fact, it was so bad that I completely nuked my signup and order. You have to understand that we live in a rural area where this particular store does not deliver at all. But we could have a carryout. They have only quite recently offered internet ordering for this area. Yes, I do know. Archaic, right? But that’s the way it is out here in rural America.

The problem that we see is that the page is loaded with flash which does not do well on my computer. Because of that, the site was too slow for literally anything. It took the better part of 5 minutes to load from the front page to the order page. It went downhill from there. That is not good for anyone wanting to order anytime this century. We have wasted most of an hour trying to get this to work. The next step is to bypass the website altogether and call them like we usually do. And that’s the way it is today.

EDIT NOTE: I should tell you that we have DSL so it should not have taken so long.

Like you didn’t already know that, right? But from what I have heard, the price is not heading down anytime soon either. We have been learning how to save money for some years now. It looks to me like all of those things that we learned are going to have to be put into play right now.

If you have not learned how to save money and shop cheaply now is a great time to learn. In our case, we live on a semi-fixed income. That means that we have a fixed income and have learned to do some things that give us a little…stress the LITTLE….income from home. It is not enough to have a street dance over but it does help us in times of financial stress, like when we get an unexpected medical bill that is only partly covered by medicare. It helps that we are able to pay the co-pays with that.

Sometimes, we have a little bit so that we can have a treat now and then, something we could ill afford if we only had our fixed income to go by. And now, gas prices being what they are, we would be in deep doodoo if we did not have that extra income.

I guess this is sort of a rant on gas prices because once those prices filter down, which they already are, you will see higher and higher prices in the stores. Food prices will be way higher than they ever have been. Do not look for dropping prices anytime soon. My guess is that when all of the dust settles, the prices will go up and down a bit but mostly up. We will never see prices on goods and food be lower than they are right now ever again, except on some loss leader sale. Never again. Isn’t that sad? More than sad, it’s a disaster.

For those of you who are getting that stimulus check, I would think long and hard about how to spend it. That would be contrary to what the government wants. But here’s the thing. The government wants us to get it, spend it and wave goodbye to it. That way, the economy will be stimulated. Good. That works. BUT, those awful gas prices will not go down when the people who are controlling them are living in the middle east. That means that when you spend it, it’s gone. Yes, it will help stimulate the economy to a certain extent. But not as much as it might appear.

These people want to see our country fall so they are doing what they can to accomplish that. It began long before this in the 70s when they tried out the gas shortage deal. I was there in those horrible gas lines waiting to get to the pump before the car ran out, before the station ran out, before they told you that if you had enough gas for today, you didn’t need any there. People were pushing their cars into a station to the pumps and finding out that the gas was out at the pump too.

The people who are running the majority of the crude oil in the middle east right now are happy that our country is having problems with it. They want this. So, what can we do to change that? For one thing, use less gas. Yeah, I know. Tough thing to do. We have that problem too.We live in a rural area with no public transportation. We must rely on ourselves and family to get around. We live 18miles from the rest of our family. That means that they cannot help us too much either. We have learned to conserve.

It’s a tough thing to have to learn right now. But it is necessary before the government thinks to make it mandatory….and eventually, they will. Only those people who lived during the second world war and know about ration cards can get a tiny clue what it will be like but it is coming, count on it. Learn to deal with that now while you can.

Do you have that awful sense that you have no idea what to get the family and friends this year? I have it every year and this year is no exception. It is a major struggle for me to figure out what to get some people in my family. When asked what they want, I get some silly thing like “I don’t know.” That’s it. They do not know. Big help, Irving!

So, what do you get the one person in the whole family that simply either has everything or has no clue what they want? I dunno either. Why do you think I’m writing this???? Duh!! Anybody got any ideas? I’m fresh out.

(drums fingers. Hums a little tune. Taps foot. More humming. More tapping. More drumming.)

You just aren’t going to tell me, are you??? Just like my family. Harrumph!!

Over the years, I have shopped in stores and online so much that my head is beginning to spin. What is happening today? We are getting information overload, aren’t we? Going into a store used to be fun because I would have an idea of what I wanted and I went to find it. Sometimes, the store didn’t have just what I wanted but it had some pretty good alternatives. Now, everything you want is either out of stock or simply no longer is sold. ACK!!

Then, online you think that things are better because you can find nearly anything you want. Uh huh. Not necessarily. For instance, I was looking for the second of three movies that are named “Freaky Friday”. It’s enough to send you to drug rehab, since a person could feel like they are in the twilight zone here.

The first one has Jody Foster in it and is funny and cute. The third one has Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan in it and is really funny and cute. The second one, that one that no one seems to remember besides my husband and me, is the one with Shelley Long. NOBODY remembers this one and, for some reason, there is no one selling that particular copy of it. Not good. Not good at all. Where is the justice?

It is coming up on Christmas shopping time. A number of years ago, we had until after Thanksgiving for the “season” to occur. Ah, some of you have no idea what I’m talking about, do you? In the 60s, the stores usually waited until the day after Thanksgiving to hit people with their after holiday sales that got everyone and their cat out to shop. IT was gruesome but it worked.

Then some bright eyed soul got the bright eyed idea that they could start the season a tad earlier. And that’s when things started to go downhill. They backed it up two weeks or so. Then in a couple of years, they did it again. Pretty soon, people were going after sales at the first of November. When it overran halloween, it got really serious.

Now, you will find stuff for Christmas in October, September and even as early as August in some places. Know what? Some people are even shopping for sales at the drug treatment centers. The world has gone nuts. Actually, a person could think they needed some after being at a department store sale or a sale at the mall. Thing is, I hate seeing the Christmas season, as the world sees it anyway, come up. Frankly, I would love it if all we celebrated was the reason for the season in the first place. But that apparently is living in a dream world.

For a few years now, I had been counting on eBay to help me with almost anything I wanted to buy cheaply and fast. When I joined, it was a lot less bulky, fees were low and you could buy things for much less than you can find them at discount stores. Seller fees were so low that for things being sold under $10, the listing fee was about 30 cents. So, sellers could give a really great deal on products and services. That was then.

Now, eBay has decided to drive off the little sellers and, with greed in mind, grab the money of the larger sellers who, for whatever reason, are not leaving like so many others are. eBay seems to be loaded with power sellers that think their product is made of gold. They appear to believe that I am interested in their product but if I’m not, somebody else will be. A good many of the sellers could care less about the customer. All they want to do is get your money. Eventually, they send out the product you bought…maybe. eBay no longer supports the customer by making the seller return the money. It now supports the power seller who could care less if they get bad feedback or not. Their feedback numbers are high enough that the percentage will outweigh any bad feedback given.

So, since eBay is no longer a good place to buy things, for the most part anyway, I decided to find a new place to shop for lower priced items. Found it too. Well, actually, I knew about it and had bought from the place before but I had not really decided that it replaced eBay until now. This should not be a shocker for you if I tell you that I went to Amazon.com to buy my latest purchase. Most things that I buy online now come from Amazon if not from a couple of other sites, book clubs, mostly. By the way, it was a successful purchase, very cheap, shipped out right away with really low charges. And the charges for shipping AND for the item was WAY, WAY, WAY lower than eBay sellers. How do I know? I went there first. Bada bing.

If I were shopping for a new car, I would definitely want to avoid this. There are times when I wonder who thinks up this stuff. Nissan is about to put a car on the market this year that will detect alchohol and shut down a car by locking the transmission. Now, I do not like the idea of drivers who have been drinking and want to drive. BUT, I believe that the way this car is set up, it could actually cause accidents as well.

For instance, say a person is the designated driver and the passengers are still carrying drinks into the car but the driver does not see this. For a bit, the car does not detect it. Then it does and locks the transmission while the car is in gear. Anyone want to comment on what that might do to the driver and passengers not to mention the car? I am all for new technology but this needs a bit more work from the sound of it. I do not drink so this isn’t affecting me right away but I am thinking here, what else are they going to put in cars to stop people who simply want to get away from the nasties.

At this point in time, I am aware that GPS is capable of shutting down a car that has been stolen. What is to keep anyone who wants you to stop from advising the authorities that a person is running and then shut their car down while they are in gear. I know. It will travel to a stop. You ever been in the middle of traffic at a particularly dangerous intersection when the car dies? I have. It puts you in a really dangerous position. I doubt that would be a consideration, frankly.

Anyway, here is the video concerning this new car development.

I do know this is not a scam. But, is this really a good idea?