Results tagged “money” from KatScan

I have to go and do the grocery shopping this afternoon, there's no food in the house.
What I bought last night got eaten up pretty quickly because little did I know, Mark's friend Jeff was coming over, so I didn't have just the two teens to feed, I had the three teens and myself to feed last night.
Ugh.

I went to the corner store this morning after paying all of my bills and stuff, to grab a pack of smokes and a soda because I had a serious caffeine withdrawal headache, and Moe, the store owner and a few of his friends were all standing around smoking these new flavored cigars that he just got a shipment of in this morning.
I love the smell of a good cigar, but I definitely don't like the taste.
Moe asked me if I wanted to try one, I said nope, no thanks, love the smell, don't like the taste, I'll stick to my regular cigs thank you very much.

OK, gotta get going to the store, need to get the grocery shopping done.

I know that I've posted quite a few times about taking a vacation, and one of the places that I am always talking about going for a vacation, is wanting to be able to afford to go and rent one of those really gorgeous Outer Banks vacation rentals in North Carolina.
Carolina Designs has one of the most awesome, most amazing looking rental homes for just such a vacation.
I mean, just look at the outside of the house, this big, beautiful house right on the Outer Banks.


The house is called SEAHAWK, and it's just yards away from the beach.












It has five bedrooms, and two of them are master bedrooms.
It also has a private pool and a hot tub.
There are 10 tv sets in the house and three VCR's, two DVD players, and a video library so there's always something to watch.
It has a stereo and a game room with a sports bar and a pool table.
It also has an Xbox for you and your kid's video gaming needs, a wet bar and a gas grill, and tons of parking spaces for you and all of your guests.
(If you choose to bring people with you. *wink wink*)

Here is a view of the private pool and the living room.




























Here is another view of the living room, one of the master bedrooms, and the room with the pool table.









































This home is just so beautiful, isn't it?
This is the exact kind of vacation rental home that I would want to stay in.
I hate camping, and hotels and motels are OK for short stays, but if I could truly afford to go on a really nice vacation for two weeks or more somewhere in the US, I would totally go for this exact place, or this exact kind of place, and definitely in the Outer Banks.

I have been hearing for years and years now, about just how awesome and gorgeous it is in the Outer Banks, about how beautiful and peaceful it is there, and that's exactly the kind of vacation that I want to go on.
Somewhere truly beautiful, and somewhere truly peaceful.
This house, the SEAHAWK, just looks so beautiful and so peaceful.
It's nice and big, clean looking, it looks really comfortable, "homey looking", and it has some incredible views of the area that even just looking through the pictures, it makes you want to go there because of how beautiful and peaceful looking it is.

This house is available to rent year round, and of course during "season", it's going to cost more to rent, but the weekly rental rates aren't that bad actually.
I've spent more than the weekly rental cost on airfare to fly the three of us back to Maine for 2 weeks, so it's really not that bad at all.
I don't know why, but I always thought that I couldn't afford to take a vacation to the Outer Banks, but looking at just this home and the rates, it is something that is totally do-able for me to do some one of these days.
Yeah, it's always nice to fly home and visit with family, but I really want to take a vacation some day that is just away from it all, away from everything, just go to a place that I want to go, no stress, no mess, just go and stay in a big, beautiful home, sleep in as late as I want, stay up as late as I want, go for long walks on the beach whenever I would want to, and just relax, just really get away from it all, and leave all of my stress and troubles at home for a week.

I really love this house, I would totally love to stay there for a week someday, just me and the teens taking a relaxing vacation for just one week in a gorgeous home like this.
Some one of these days, I will.
I really will. 

I've totally used eBillme before, and it was a super easy process, but it's even better when they offer deals and special offers like onecall coupons to one of their partner shops like OneCall.
They have a TON of electronics at insanely low prices, and now with coupons to use, AND eBillMe, it's easier and easier to find and get what you need at super low prices.

I have Christmas coming up soon for the teens, they don't want silly action figures anymore, they want stuff, gadgets, more video games, I need a new home cordless phone, so I may just be buying a lot of my Christmas wish list shopping items through them, and paying the super easy way with eBillMe.
Yu can't over-spend on another credit card, you can only spend what you have, and eBillMe protects your vital information from having to be typed in and possibly stolen by hackers.
It's definitely a much more secure way to pay, and with all of their deals at TONS of retailers, you're sure to find everything that you need for less money, and let's face it, in this economy, we all need to save as much as we can, and knowing that our private banking info stays private, you can't beat that.
I've now shopped with about a dozen times or more, and it's been a totally smooth transaction every single time, no glitches no goofs, and the best prices.

I've already begun looking for the stuff the teens want. 

I really need to get my own wholesale club membership going because I cannot constantly rely on other people to get me to the place to do my shopping.
I need to start saving even more money, and buying things in bulk and getting discounts, being able to use coupons, and get really good deals, is what I need to start doing more of if I'm going to be able to continue surviving in this economy.

I don't have a lot of money to start with, so going shopping for food for the teens, for my family, is getting tougher and tougher these days.
I had my friend pick up a loaf of bread and a gallon of milk for me today, and it cost me $5.89.
That's crazy!
A loaf of bread used to be just $1.29, today, that same loaf of bread cost me $1.90.
If prices keep increasing like this, we'll have to start getting even more creative with how I do the shopping

I had the most horrible time finding a particular receipt this week and I really needed to find it.
I searched through every box, my folders, every drawer, all over my desk, in my desk, the coffee table drawers, freaking everywhere and I could not find it.
It drove me absolutely nuts!!

I really need to come up with a far better document management system for all of my receipts and other important papers that I have so that I don't lose anything ever again.
I even have a filing cabinet, but it's in my room and such a pain to get too, so I rarely use it.
Then I set up folders in a portable filing cabinet that has drawers, and that became a total pain so I stopped using that too.
There just has to be an easier way for me to store and save all of my important papers and receipts  without all kinds of hassles that I face right now.

I never did find the receipt, I actually had to call the store that I purchased it from, their corporate offices, speak to their receipts office, and have them try to find it by the date, then the amount spent, and then finally they found it through my debit card number.
It took about 45 minutes for them to find it.
Such a pain, I really need a way better system for this stuff. 

I got an email about getting a good deal on a Branson vacation package.
Branson?
As in Branson Missouri?

I am not so sure that me and my family would enjoy ourselves there, it is like a country music place, and uh, we are so definitely not into country music.
They say they have stuff for everyone though.
Roller coasters, live music, boating, magic shows, musicals, comedy acts, etc, but I still don't know if it's "our kind of thing".
I guess it's something that I would consider if like part or all of the trip was something I won, you know?
Like if I won a trip, I would definitely go, but I don't know if it's something that I would pay for because I am so not into that whole country music scene.

Anyone ever been there?
Was it any fun?
If you don't like country music, like how many days would it take before you wanted to stab yourself in the ears?

I apologize in advance for the length of this post, but this is a very serious product review of a medical device that claims it can completely relieve pain, "remind the body to heal itself", and strengthen the body's immunity, and many, many other medical claims.

About two months ago, I was contacted by a woman named Cheryl who said she had an amazing product that would help me, help me with my back pain, blood pressure, all kinds of things, and she would love it if I would try it out and review it on my blogs.
I agreed to test it out and I have been using it as she told me to ever since receiving it in the mail.
It's called the Amega Amwand, and it claims to use "zero point energy" to help the body heal itself.
I HATE giving these people a link, but I feel that I need to so that people WILL NOT fall for this scam, I need to warn people that this thing is a total scam and costs hundreds of dollars ($304.00) to buy, and all it is is the body of a ball point pen minus the ink and ink chamber.
It is one solid piece of metal shaped like a pen, it looks exactly like the image above.
You can pretty much tell that this thing is a scam by the url of the website where they sell it.
The url to purchase this thing has the words "CASHRICHES" in it!
Another of their sites is just one big page all about positioning yourself to get in on this amazing money making scheme!

Cheryl told me that in order to get the most benefits from it, to use it properly, all that I needed to do was to simply "wave" the Amwand over my body, the areas that are in pain, in a clockwise circular motion for 30 minutes, 5 times per day.
"It's vital" she said.
She even told me to "wand" my son Mark with it as well because he is having bad back pain too.
Mark laughed at the idea, but he let me use it on him for the entire two months that I've had it and have been testing it out.
Below are the claims that this "wand" can supposedly do to help people.

Usage of AmWand Can:

* Discharge blockages in the body
* Clear distortions in our bio energetic field
* Facilitate the body in healing
* Energize food and drink increasing potency of the minerals & vitamins within them
* Use it on our pets and plants to supplement any energy deficiencies that they have
* Balance and energize imbalances your body may be experiencing
* Help to remove aches, pains and other discomforts
* Lift the face...tightens the skin
* Energize our environment in which we live

Amega AmWand Benefits Can:

* Help the body obtain homeostasis condition
* Help the body's bio-energetic field to source Zero Point Energy
* Relieve aches and pain
* Neutralize harmful elements (energetically) from the liquid we drink, & food we eat
* Energize the skin providing a "face lift" with noticeable improvement
* Energize creams and oils for better absorption of nutrients
* Facilitate and strengthen the flow of energy in our body
* Stimulate bodily functions and strengthens immunity
* Help the body to look and feel younger

You also can have quicker and stronger nail and hair growth, and a greater resistance to tooth decay that is visibly seen. The lifting of the face with noticeable improvement has also brought forth an additional and extremely high interest.

When water is treated with the Zero Point Energy Wand and then used in conjunction with any supplements, they can be absorbed much more quickly and efficiently, and effectively by the body's cells.

I have used the Amega Amwand every single day, five times per day for 30 minutes each session as I was told to do.
I even "wanded" my water with it as I was told to do.
I am here to tell you that the Amega Amwand did absolutely nothing at all for me.
It did not relieve any aches, pains, or other discomforts, it has not helped reduce my blood pressure, and I saw no noticeable improvement in my hair, nails, or face.
It has not helped me to look or feel younger.
It has not helped or strengthened my immunity, as a matter of fact, I've been really sick several times during the last 2 months, and it did not help me get better faster, or at all.
It did not do a single thing that it claims it can do.
The Amega Amwand is a total scam and I feel the need to tell people the truth before they fall for this scam and waste hundreds of dollars on it.

Every day, millions of people live in pain and are desperate to be free from that pain, and would take any kind of supplement or other types of self care items to try and relieve that pain.
If you live with chronic pain or know someone who lives with chronic pain, then you know how desperate you can feel to get any kind of relief, and there are very unscrupulous people and companies out there who know that desperation and are ready and poised to take full advantage of those people who live in pain.
There are thousands of products on the market already that make thousands of claims that their product can help you be free from pain, and people buy them because they are so desperate.
This product, the Amega Amwand, is one of those products that claims so many amazing things that it can do for you, but it does absolutely nothing.
NOTHING.

The existence of zero point energy is not controversial although the ability to harness it is.
No device claimed to operate using zero point energy has been demonstrated to operate as claimed. No plausible description of a device drawing useful power from a source of zero point energy has been given. Thus, current claims to zero point energy-based power generation systems currently have the status of pseudoscience.
That means that this Amega Amwand is a total scam.
It is pseudoscience, fake, not what it claims to be.

Amega Global makes all kinds of products that claim to use zero point energy to help the body heal itself.
They make the Amwand for $304.00, the AmPendant in silver for $394.00, another AmPendant in Rose Gold for $404.00, and another AmPendant in bronze for $409.00.
They also make "food" that ranges in price from $52.00 up to $270.00.

They make all kinds of other products that claim to use this zero point energy, and they are selling them to people that are desperate to be free from pain, there are testimonials out there that claim this thing really works, but I can tell you after testing it on both myself and Mark for almost two full months, that it DOES NOT work.
I really feel the need to warn people about this new self care, help the body heal itself, scam.
I do not want to see anyone at all fall for this, and that's why I have used the name of it, Amega Amwand, as many times as possible so that it will get indexed in Google and other search engines, and be in the search results for it so that people will find this post (cross posted to My Single Mom Life as well) and learn that it is a total scam.
I feel very strongly the need to warn people so that they do not fall for this scam and waste hundreds of dollars on any of these Amega Global products that will do absolutely nothing for them except remove hundreds of dollars from their bank accounts.

Please, if you or someone that you know suffers from chronic pain and have either been told about the Amega Amwand, or they read about it, and are thinking of buying the Amega Amwand, please, direct them to this post.
I would not ever lie to my readers, this product, the Amega Amwand, is a total scam, it does not work as it claims to.
I tried and tested the product 5 times per day for 30 minutes each time, for two months, and saw no noticeable improvement in pain relief or energy, or any signs of looking and feeling younger either.
The Amega Amwand is a total scam.

Back when I first received the Amega Amwand, I brought it with me to one of my pain management appointments so that I could get my doctor's opinion of it. I took out the box and explained to him what the distributor Cheryl was selling to people at a cost of $304.00 and a promise that it could heal people's ailments and completely relieve pain. He read the little pamphlet, looked at the wand very closely, and then he asked me if I had actually paid for this thing. I told him no, of course not, and explained to him how I received it and what my plan to review it was. He told me, and I quote,

"Kat, you have to use your websites to tell people about this. This is probably the single biggest medical scam that I've seen in the last five years, and believe me, I've seen a lot of them. If you have your blogs (he looked kinda confused on what a blog really is) and the power to reach as many people as possible, you absolutely must tell people the truth. And Kat, the truth is that this thing is 100% garbage. It is a lie packaged and sold to desperate people, people who are so desperate to be free from pain that they will do just about anything they can to get relief. You have the ability to help people not waste their time and their money. Use the power you have to do something good. If you just spare even one person from wasting their money and their time, then you've done something great. Thank you for bringing this to my attention, I am going to go to the website and then email this to as many of my colleagues as I can, they need to know about this too and try to stop their patients from getting scammed if any of their patients happen to mention it or ask their doctors if they've heard of being healed by zero point energy."

He then laughed and repeated the phrase "zero point energy" as he jotted down the website urls for both of the websites that Cheryl gave me.
When I got back home and was going back over the pamphlet and stuff that came in the box with the wand, I found the certificate of authenticity, and one thing that I noticed on this "Certificate of Authenticity" that comes in the beautifully padded and silk lined box, is the ultra fine print typed so freaking small that I had to get my jewelry making magnifying glass out in order to be able to read it.
On the very, very bottom of the back of the certificate of authenticity, it reads in super tiny fine print exactly as follows:

DISCLAIMER: These statements have not been evaluated by The Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease or physical condition.

These lying scammers know full well that this freaking magical "Amega Amwand" absolutely cannot treat, cure, or heal any ailment of physical condition.
They know that it cannot relieve pain, the number one claim that they use in their selling techniques!
The FDA won't approve this damn thing because they know that it's a total fraud, and these scammers admit, right there in super fine print, that this thing cannot do any of the things that they claim that it can!!

I will be updating this post on both of my blogs with new information or links to other articles about the Amega Amwand and what a total fraud it is, as I find or come across them.
If I find other reviews, I will link them, if I find video reviews, I will link to them as well, and when I see my doctor on Tuesday at 11am, I will be updating him about my "progress" after using it for two months.

**EDIT**
Added 2 links on 6/22/2010

Here is a link to a Youtube video and a post about the Amega Amwand scam.
I am not a hamster, Boob product: Amega Amwand.

Amega Amwand: Medical Scam, at the blog I Am Not A Hamster.


Amega Amwand Is a Scam at Blahvert.

The comments on this post at a money making blog are quite interesting, especially one by someone named Chadi.

FTC disclosure;
I was not compensated in any way for this post.
I received the Amega Amwand for free to test it and review it, and I have to send it back.
It is not mine to keep.
There is absolutely no free product to keep, or compensation received for reviewing this product.
The opinions expressed here are my own, but some of the wording has been taken directly from the Amega Global websites where they either sell the product or hype the product to get people to become distributors of these products.

I've spoken about my friend Mindy here many, many times, about how her and her family are just really great people, any time that I've needed help, a ride, or to be taken to the hospital, there they are, ready and willing to help me.
Well now Mindy and her family need my help, your help, our help.
Her post explains in detail what is happening, but if they don't get some help, Mindy and her family, husband, son Jeff, and daughter Katie, they will be homeless.

Things have not been good recently around here. Chris and I just recently found out that our landlords must sell the house that we have been renting since October of 2008. It wouldn't be such a big deal because normally tenants are allowed to stay until the house does sell. Not in this case. They have asked us to leave by the end of this month. They are in the midst of a foreclosure and are wanting to sell asap and the easiest way to do that is get rid of the occupants so that it will be a smoother transaction for all parties involved. Except of course, US.

We may have first months rent but nothing more. We have been looking and most renters now are required to pay security deposit, first and last months rent up front. That is a lot of money to come up with in just a few weeks. A goal that we will not be able to make on our own. Our parents are all retired. They receive their social security and are budgeted to that alone. They are willing to help as much as they can but the reality is, it will not be enough. My biggest fear is that if we do not come up with enough funds that we need, we will be homeless.

Mindy and her family need our help, whatever you can spare, even if it's just $1, they need our help to come up with a security deposit, first, and last.
Mindy has always been there for me, they never ask anyone for help, they are always the ones helping others, but this time, they really need help.
If you can help, please, please, please, go to Mindy's blog and click on the PayPal donate button and give whatever you can.
And please, spread the word, link to her post on your blogs, Twitter, Facebook, wherever.
Mindy and her family need our help, I am begging for help for them.
They are really great people, so kind, loving, and generous, always helping everyone else.

That is the question both of my sons ask me, why do people constantly bug them to get their drivers licensee?
Neither of them want to get their license, because getting a license doesn't actually make things easier.
We can't afford to buy a car, we can't afford to get insurance quotes and actually pay for insurance, we can't afford to put gas in the car, we just can't afford a car and all that goes with it, so why bother getting a license?
I can totally see the teens point, they make great points, but people still pester them to get their license even though we cannot afford to get a car and all that goes with it.

Please forgive my blogging absence since like last Tuesday I think?
Yeah, Tuesday.
Anyway, I've been battling an illness again, and this past weekend was pure hell for me and the teens.
I had a ton of stuff going on, I caught some sort of stomach thing that Mark had caught but in me, it mutated into the stomach thing spawned from the very bowels of hell, and it was also the "end of the month" pain medicine wise, so I was short a few days just like every month which resulted in my stomach being even sicker than the stomach thing that I was dealing with.
But I got the pain medicine taken care of by my doctor, but the stomach thing stayed and got worse, and worse, and worse as each day passed.
I was so sick that I was completely unable to eat or even drink anything at all for about 3 days, and if I tried to take even super small sips of water to wash down my pain meds and now some seriously strong antibiotics and phenergan that the ER gave me on Saturday to try and stop me from vomiting,  I ended up even more violently ill than I was within just minutes of taking them.
All the vomiting and diars I was dealing with is not exactly the best weight loss supplement, but I did drop 9 pounds from Wednesday through to today.
Hey, weight loss is weight loss for this fat chick, it all counts to me no matter how I lose it. 
But I was so ill that the teens got really scared for me and made me go to the hospital again on Sunday, and that was the absolute worst day of my weekend.

I only have brief recollections of actually getting to the hospital on Sunday, I know that my friend Mindy took me, that Sebastian called her, and I recall being put in a wheelchair, and then the next thing I remember is waking up on a hospital bed in the ER with an IV in my right arm and 2 doctors standing over me and talking about my high white cell count and a massive infection that they couldn't locate just yet.
While I was out, they drew blood and ran tests, ran a cath line and took urine samples, and they were talking about the possibility of cancer.
Again.
I have an unnaturally high white cell count, it's always been high, but it's been extremely high since my first spine fusion in 2006, but apparently it was really super high this time, and so they threw around words like cancer, again.
I've already been down this road, I've already had tons of cancer tests, but here they were, talking about it and I admit to getting, and still being, really, really scared.
I was in the ER on Sunday from about 3pm until almost 10pm, they pumped in bags and bags of fluids because I was so dehydrated, they gave me about 6 doses of Zofran because it was obvious that the phenergan hadn't helped me at all, and about 6 doses of dilaudid for all of the stomach cramping and pain that I was in, but I continued to be violently ill, so violently ill that they had to bring in a portable toilet for my room.
I know, TMI, and it was embarrassing and humiliating, and I hated every damn second of it, but being hooked up to an IV and getting sick so rapidly, I wouldn't have been able to make it to a bathroom if I tried.
Puking and the diars at the same time, ugh, and the nurses kept coming in to check on me and clean me up, and there was some sort of brownish liquid in my vomit that concerned the nurses, so they went and got the doctors again, and they kept calling the lab to make them hurry up with the blood test results so they could try to figure out what I had so that they could treat me properly.
By the time they released me, they still didn't have the lab results back yet, so they said they would fax them to my doctors ASAP, and then they sent me home with some more antibiotics and a script for Reglan which is another anti-nausea medication and it also "speeds up the the rate at which the stomach empties into the intestines."
They gave me that in the hopes that whatever this thing, infection, whatever the hell it is that is in my gastrointestinal tract, will get the heck out.

Jenn at Blogging Girl is asking bloggers to help spread the word about what a bunch of scammers Blog Advertising Store AKA Paying Post are.

You can read Jenn's post for all of the details, but basically, Blog Advertising Store AKA Paying Post, get bloggers to do work and then they don't pay for it.
Basically, Blog Advertising Store AKA Paying Post are a bunch of scammers.
To quote some of Jenn's post,

Well over a year ago I signed up for Blog Advertising Store, though at that time they were calling themselves Paying Post. Between then and this past February I have written $109.00 worth of opportunities. I followed the instructions on each opportunity, included the required links, wrote relevant, high quality content, and submitted each opportunity on time. Every opportunity that I did was approved, and as of April 2010 I was eligible to receive payment, as my balance had rolled over $100 (that is Blog Advertising Store's / Paying Post's minimum payout amount). Only...I didn't receive a payment in April. I didn't receive one in May, either, despite Blog Advertising Store's / Paying Post's dashboard stating that I would be paid $109 on May 1st, 2010.

She followed all of their directions on how to receive her payment, and has sent them emails requesting her payment, and they still haven't done it.
She even sent them an email about how she had heard from other bloggers about their business practices and their handling of payouts, and they still did not reply to her or pay her.

I have been a bit wary completing posts for your company, as in the past I have read some unsavory things about your business practices and the handling of payouts. Please ease my anxieties and compensate me with the money I am rightfully owed. Again, the balance due is $109.00, and my PayPal account is x@jenn.nu.

She has sent them an email every single day requesting her payment of $109.00 for the work she completed and was approved to be paid for.

I forwarded the May 11th email to them on May 12th, May 13th, May 14th, May 15th, May 16th, and May 17th.

The situation has now gotten even worse.
Not only have they still not paid her, but they have now locked her out of her account on Blog Advertising Store AKA Paying Post, they have blocked her emails, and they have banned her home ip address so she cannot access the site at all.

Seriously, y'all need to go read Jenn's post about how Blog Advertising Store AKA Paying Post are scammers, and help spread the word.
If you are a blogger who is working for them, you may want to seriously reconsider that, and if you have a blogging friend who said they were thinking about signing up to work for them, send them the link to Jenn's post.
Blog Advertising Store AKA Paying Post are scammers, plain and simple.
DO NOT work for them.
Blog about this, post about this to Twitter, (to make it simple, you can use this to Twitter it; Blog Advertising Store AKA Paying Post is a scam! http://bit.ly/basppscam #paidblogging #scam) and post it to Facebook, everywhere.
Blog Advertising Store AKA Paying Post are scammers and they need to pay bloggers for the work completed.

They need to pay Jenn the $109.00 she rightfully earned and was approved to be paid.
They are being totally unprofessional by blocking her emails, banning her ip address, and refusing to acknowledge that they owe her this money.
Blog Advertising Store AKA Paying Post are scammers and they need to pay Jenn and all of the bloggers who work for them, the money they have earned.

One of the cats marked their territory on my small electric heater, the only thing that keeps the house warm during the winter when it gets really super cold here.
Yes, I'm super furious, but luckily it wasn't really expensive, it was only about $35, so at least I am not out a ton of money.
I noticed that whichever cat did it, did it after I came home from a friend's house that has dogs, and I had been with the friend and her dogs for hours, I had pet the dogs, played with them let them lick me, so yeah, one of my cats was all hell no, and made sure that if the dogs who licked me ever came in the house, that they would know that this was a house for cats, not dogs.

But now this means that I have no heater for the future winters if it gets super cold.
I saw an infomercial for a handmade wood and  electric fireplace, and I was like wow, I like that.
It provides heat and looks good, I like it.
But if I did something like that, if I was going to spend money on an electric fireplace, I would want a really good looking one that is also more functional than just a heater.
I found this one that would perfectly match my coffee and end tables that are a gorgeous dark cherry finish.
I've had them for about 8-9 years now, and they are still in totally awesome shape.
The coffee table is 5 feet long, it has a drawer and a hidden storage compartment.
If you have never seen the table before, you would never know that it's there, heck, I have forgotten that it's there a few times.
 The tables are all solid dark cherry like I said, and they have wrought iron legs, and a wrought iron shelf underneath each one, they are really beautiful tables.
Anyway, this electric fireplace that I found would look really good with my table set, and it has storage for a tv on top, my vcr and dvd player, and even more shelves for all of our dvds and vcr tapes.
The storage areas and the "fireplace" are all behind glass doors too, this would look so good in here with my tables and couches.



















It's a little more money than I will have in a very long time, but maybe an income tax return some one of these years could help pay for a really good looking and functional new addition to my furniture.

I have a PayPal debit card, a State of Florida child support debit card, and an Amscot card.
They are all used for various things, like Paypal is for work payments, the child support card is for obvious reasons, and the Amscot card is for my SSDI to be direct deposited.
I had to get both my SSDI and my child support checks direct deposited to cards, because someone once stole a child support check from my mailbox, and even though it was a piddly little $21.05, I couldn't risk someone stealing those every week as it's court ordered, (not that he pays every week as court ordered) and I certainly didn't want to risk my SSDI checks being stolen.

I can deposit any kind of check or money order, in any amount, deposited to my Amscot card, but I can't always get there, so I usually have to wait until I can get a ride there to deposit things like that.
If I get cash, it's the same thing, I can deposit it, but I can't always get there to do so.
I don't like carrying cash with me, I don't like using cash, it's really dirty and I already wash my hands (OCD) a lot so yeah, I don't like to carry or use cash unless I absolutely have to.
I also don't like banks.
I take great issue with the government being able to access all of our private financial information if they feel like it, if they decide that you or I are a threat, or have possible ties to terrorism.
I don't like that banks require so much of your personal and private information to open an account, and for you to update your information so that they comply with the regulations of the governments "protect the home front" policies.
None of the cards that I currently use, have ever asked me for the same kind of information that banks do, as a matter of fact, I think several of the cards only have my name, date of birth, and phone number(s).
Banks also charge crazy fees for every single transaction that you do no matter how small, and now some even charge you a fee (I've heard this fee can be as much as $10)  for physically going in to the bank and interacting with a human teller, whose job it is to help you deposit or withdraw your money. 
So when I had some cash this week that I didn't want to carry with me, have it sit in my wallet driving me crazy that I can't get up to Amscot to deposit it, so I decided to try a new pre-paid debit card that I can get re-load cards from right at 7 eleven.

I bought a Green Dot pre-paid Visa debit card at 7 eleven for $4.95*, and a money pack re-load card, also for $4.95*
I gave the cashier the amount of cash that I wanted to load onto my pre-paid Visa debit card, and he added that amount through the cash register's POS systems card reader.
I came home, logged onto the Green Dot website, entered in the Visa debit card number, the expiration date, created a password, and logged in to load the card.
Loading the debit card from the money pack was really easy, and now I have all of my cash, all of my income sources, on debit cards, 2 of them are pre-paid, and 2 are not.
I only have to touch cash when absolutely necessary, when I get it, and when I hand it to the cashier, so now I don't have to be grossed out by the thought of handling very dirty paper money for too long.

Once I've used the Green Dot card for awhile, I will give it a proper product review, but so far, it gets 4 out of 5 stars for it's ease of use, fast money transfers from the money pack to the debit card, (the time it takes you to type in the numbers from the debit card and money pack) and the fee refunds.
The only downside is that they are not available everywhere yet.
While they can be purchased at over 50,000 retailers nationwide like CVS, 7 eleven, Kmart and Walgreen's, it will/would be really nice if they were also available at grocery stores as I go to Publix far more often than I go to 7 eleven, and I hate that place because while convenient, they charge excessive prices on almost every single item that they sell. 

* The $4.95 that you pay to buy the card and the money pack re-load cards, are credited back to your account (refund!) in about 1 business week, and the only fees for using the Green Dot pre-paid card is a monthly service charge of $5.95, and fees if you use an ATM, and those fees are just .50cents per transaction.
I don't plan on using any of those, so just $5.95 per month to help me control my OCD is ok with me.

**EDIT
My first fee (bought on 3/2/2010) refund was posted to my account today, 3/6/2010.

 

Mark will be attending college starting this summer, and he's also going to work on getting his license, finally.
After the license, comes finding a car and figuring out how to pay for it, and also getting an auto insurance quote for a new and young driver.
I know that the insurance is what's going to be what costs us the most.
He's only 18, never had a license, no work history, no credit history, so yeah, the insurance for him is probably going to cost quite a bit to start with.
I think the prices go down after he's had a license for 6 months or so.
I think.
That's what I've heard anyway.
My sister Jo said that she would put him on her insurance, so he would have insurance when he was driving her car anyway, but we have to wait for 6 months to 1 year of him having his license before the price of insurance goes down.

I will get some term life insurance one of these days, I feel like I'm running out of time here.
Lately, it's been one thing after another with me, it all feels like it's falling apart, fast.
I turn 40 on March 1st, and my body is breaking down faster and faster as each day passes, or at least that's how I feel, that's what it feels like what's happening to me.

Intestinal viruses, drastic weight loss, illness after illness, medication changes, and then at 4am today, this Thursday morning, my way back right molar, which has been broken for a long time, freaking exploded like I got shot in the face.
I couldn't sleep, as usual, and all of a sudden, it felt like I had literally been shot in the face.
The entire right side of my face immediately swelled up huge, my gums are completely swollen, my whole face hurts, the swelling is moving up the whole side of my face, my right eye is swelling shut, it's really pretty bad.
The antibiotics that I have are not working on it, not yet at least, I need to go see a dentist, but there is absolutely no dental coverage on Medicare, none.

I simply do not have the money to go see a dentist, I won't have the money to see a dentist for a very long time, and even if I did have the money, I cannot open my jaw wide anymore, an extraction of that broken tooth would have to be done while I was put under, and they would have to be extremely careful or they could break my jaw.
Being put under for extractions cost a ton of money that I just do not have, will not have.
But first, before anything like an extraction could even be discussed, I need the correct antibiotics to get rid of this massive infection that is taking place and spreading.
If this abscesses, it can get into my blood stream and make me even sicker than I already am all of the time.

I'm so tired people, so so tired.
 
I'm tired of being sick, I'm tired of having things go wrong, I'm exhausted from struggling to make ends meet, I'm stressed out all of the time, it's really no wonder that I don't sleep and can barely eat, I'm far too stressed out to even properly function half the time anymore.
I lay awake all night long, sick, stressed out, worried about how I'm going to pay the bills, the rent, pay for all of this medical crap that is constantly happening.
Every single day is a medical and financial nightmare for me.
I'm so tired and so scared.
I'm absolutely terrified that I'm not going to be able to hold it together for much longer.
I get sick and then I can't work because I'm too sick to even sit here and type.
If I can't sit here and work, I lose making the money that I so desperately need to pay the rent, bills, and medical crap.
I'm feeling like total crap right now, the right side of my face, the whole right side, is completely swollen, it hurts, my whole jaw hurts.
I called both my pain doc and my primary care, I asked if they could call in some antibiotics, they said no.
They told me to go to the dental clinic butcher shop downtown, or go back to the ER.
I am probably already marked as a "frequent flier" at the ER, so yeah, I really don't want to have to walk back in there, show them my face, and beg them to help me, again.
 
I'm sick and tired of my ex-husband paying the child support once a freaking month because he knows that he can get away with it.
He doesn't even have to pay that much anymore!
Mark is 18, so he only has to pay for Sebastian, just $59.56 per week, and he refuses to pay it every week like he's supposed to!
He knows that he can miss 3 weekly payments in a row before any legal action is taken, so he doesn't pay for 3 weeks, then pays just the one payment of $59.56, and then doesn't pay again for another 3 weeks!
He hasn't paid a freaking dime since January 8th!
I know that's not much money, but I need every single penny that I can get, that I'm supposed to have.
That weekly child support payment pays for my doctor appointments and medicines, Mark's doctor appointments and medicines, helps buy food, and helps to pay some of the bills, and he just keeps avoiding paying it.
It's not fair!

When I say that I'm really scared, I mean it.
I honestly don't know how much longer I can keep this pace up, how much longer that I can try to hold my life together financially.
Everything is a mess, I get sick, I lose work, I lose work, I lose money, I lose money, I get behind on my bills and rent.
I am falling apart here, just falling apart and I'm scared.
I need help, I need someone to just come and make it all better, take the burdens off of me for awhile.
I need someone to just come into my life and take over for awhile, pay the bills, buy the food, pay for the medicines and appointments, and clothes for the 2 growing boys, I need someone to just come take over, I am struggling so hard and I am terrified.

It is so hard for me to admit my failings, to admit that I need someone to help me, to just take control before I lose control and lose everything, house and job, everything, but I am losing it here folks, I'm really losing it.
I really don't know how I'm going to hold it together for much longer.
I have so many bills all due during the first 3 days of February, and I do not have the money, I just don't have it.
I'm not going to have it.
Do you see?
Do you see at all?
Have you ever been so scared that you're really going to lose it all this time?
That this is it, this time is going to be the time that you just can't hold it together any longer and you can do absolutely nothing at all about it?

I can't do anything about it.
Nothing.
I'm so lost and so scared, and just wow, I really don't know how much longer I'm going to be able to hold this life of mine together.
This life of mine.
It's not a life anymore, it's just fear, stress, and worry 24 hours a day, I'm really losing control.



 

I just got a call from the insurance company about what happened to me back in October with the DA& Pharmacy.

Because I don't have a full Medicare supplement, just a part D drug plan, I only pay a small co-pay for my prescriptions.
This pharmacy that I went to told me that I had to pay an extra $20.00 on top of my $2.40 insurance co-pay or I couldn't have my medication.
Read the blog post I linked to see what went down, but I am so very happy to report that Humana, my insurance company, is going after this pharmacy.
They are not only going to revoke their contract, but they will also be pursuing other legal options, they will be calling other customers of Humana who have used this pharmacy to see if anything similar happened to them, and then doing whatever they can to get this pharmacy dealt with legally.
I have scanned and emailed them the receipts and everything else that I had including the whole story so that they can refresh the pharmacists memory if she claims that she doesn't remember or that it never happened, they can show her that she did do it.
Totally freaking awesome.

When I was about 8 or 9 years old, my entire family used to go to all of my big brother Mike's football games both at home and away, on the weekends, as sort of like cheap family entertainment.
There were a lot of us kids, Mike, Jo, me, Frankie, Benji, and all of the other many foster kids that came and went over the years.
We'd all pile into Dad's station wagon with the way-back seat, which was where Jo and I used to sit, that was ours, we claimed it on every single road trip because it didn't face forward, it faced back, directly into the face of whatever car and driver were directly behind us.
We loved that seat because we could make faces at those drivers, stick our tongue's out, pretend to pick our noses and fling 'em, stuff like that, we were kids, it was our entertainment on those many and very long road trips to go to games, camping trips, and the holiday visits to see family in Pennsylvania.
Anyway, we would all have to go to the football games, Mom would pack a couple coolers with food and kool-aid, most of us kids wouldn't watch the game, we'd play on the playgrounds that most of the football fields had because the games were usually held at high schools.
There was this one game where there was no playground so we had to make our own fun.
There were these metal poles on like these circular cement things, they used them to hold up ropes to mark off the parking lot and spaces.

So Jo and I were playing on those things and we were sorta swinging back and forth, the cement parts were kind of round so they wobbled, it was sorta fun, and there was nothing else to play on, so yeah, we swung around on those things.
Jo had the fun idea to get it rocking back and forth and then jump off, see who could jump the farthest after getting dizzy.
We were both on the same one, we had it rocking and spinning around, and then she yelled jump and let go, I let go a second later, but I didn't get far enough away from it, my jump sucked basically.
The bad part of it though was that the cement block and metal pole had swung in my direction when I jumped, then it swung straight back the other way, I stood up and it came swinging back and the pole hit me right in the mouth.

The metal pole hit me in the mouth with incredible force, it split my lips open and smashed my right front tooth.
Mom and Dad were pissed of course, it meant a trip to the very expensive for our family dentist, and having to get my broken tooth fixed, save the nerves, and cap the chipped front tooth.
It wasn't the type of chipped tooth you could just ignore, a huge piece had broken off, so a cap to make me have a tooth that looked like the other front tooth, was pretty expensive.
That first cap lasted a very long time, until I was like 15 or 16 at least, and then it just fell off, back then caps weren't meant to last a lifetime, so Mom and dad had to buy me another one.
That one lasted until after I was married and had the kids, it fell off, I mean broke off, when I bit into an apple around age 25.
I was now on my own, totally, I was divorced and raising the boys on my own and I didn't have any dental insurance, so I didn't replace the cap.

In all of these years since, I have never been able to replace the cap on my broken front tooth.
It's been 14 years that I have gone around with a broken front tooth.
I don't ever smile in pictures, I rarely ever open mouth smile when out in public either, I am a closed mouth smiler because I am so self conscious of the broken front tooth, it looks terrible, and it's incredibly obvious.
 People try to tell me that they can't even notice it, but they say that to be nice, I know this because I took a picture of myself with an open mouth smile, and that huge chip is just *BAM!* smiling with my mouth open, showing my teeth in a big toothy smile, there is a big hole showing because of that chipped tooth.

This coming Saturday, local area dentists are doing what they call "Sarasota Smile" for about 4 hours starting at 8am.
A lot of local area dentists will see people on a first come first serve basis, doors open at 8am, close at noon, they will fix just one tooth per person, so if someone needs a tooth pulled, they will pull it.
If someone needs a drill and fill, they will drill and fill.
If someone needs a cap, they will cap it.
The problem is that it's first come first serve, and the dentist said that last year, people started lining up at 3am, by the time the doors opened at 8am, there were over 400 people standing in line starting at the door and snaking down the sidewalk and through the parking lot.
He said they are expecting even more people this year with the economy the way it is.

The dentist doing it is my sister's dentist, she called him to ask about the Sarasota Smile on Saturday, to ask what time I would need to get there to be in the first 10 people in line, he said that I would need to be there really early, like probably no later than 2am, and he asked her why she was asking, he was going to see her on Wednesday the 16th at 1pm, who was she asking for.
Jo told him that it was me, her sister, and he asked what the situation was, so she explained that I am disabled and can't afford to have my front tooth capped, that it's been broken for the last 14 years, that I have kids and just could never afford to get it fixed after having kids.
Jo told him  if it was fixed that I would probably feel better about myself, finally feel comfortable smiling normally like everybody else, be able to laugh out loud without covering my mouth with my hand so no one sees the giant chipped front tooth.
She told him that I was more than willing to go down there Saturday morning at whatever time, I would just bring a folding lawn chair with me so I didn't have to stand up or sit on the hard concrete for all of those hours, but that I would definitely wait as many hours as it took to be among the first in line so I could get my front tooth fixed up.
 
The dentist told Jo to pick me up and bring me with her on Wednesday to her appointment at 1pm.
She asked why, she told him that I couldn't afford to get it capped, that she can't afford to get it capped for me either, it's too expensive, and as it is, Jo is struggling to pay for the work that he's been doing to her for the last few weeks and this Wednesday is the final appointment, but she'll be paying off her dental bill for the next  8 months to a year once the bill is finally tallied for the root canal, 3 drill and fills, and 5 filling replacements to get rid of the old mercury fillings that she has for new and safer fillings.  (When we were kids, fillings were silver and made of mercury).
He told Jo not to worry about it, that neither she or I would have to pay for the cap, that his office will cover it.
She asked him to repeat it, she wasn't sure she heard him right, and so he said it again.
"Bring your sister Kat with you on Wednesday at 1pm. His office will do the cap on my front tooth at no charge to her or me, it will be a Christmas present from him to me."
He made my sister promise to bring me on Wednesday, she said she would, they hung up, and she called me straight away to tell me what was going on.
Here I was going to wake up and go sit down there at 2-3am and wait in line to be in the first in line to be seen and get 1 tooth worked on for free, and the dentist said that I don't have to do that, that I can go on Wednesday at 1pm with my sister, and he and his office will do it for free.
Can you believe that?? How freaking awesome is that dentist?!
I can't believe it, he and his office are going to fix my front tooth for me, wow, it's really amazing.
My front tooth has had this big huge chip for the last 14 years, I haven't smiled in a picture for 14 years, if I'm out with friends and having a good time, i will cover my mouth with my hands while I laugh so no one sees the big chipped up mes.
For the first time in 14 years, I'm going to have a full smile with fully shaped teeth.
After I got off of the phone with my sister, Mark asked me what was going on so I told him, and as I was telling him I started to cry.
14 years, 14 years I have hated the way my teeth look because of a stupid mistake that I made when I was 8 or 9 years old and bored at my older brother's football game.

The dentist said that he couldn't believe that I've gone for 14 years with a broken front tooth, job interviews, work, shopping, everything that people do every single day with a big chipped tooth, hating the way my smile looks so I just haven't truly and freely smiled in 14 years.
He said by the time I leave his office on Wednesday afternoon, I will be smiling big and free for the first time in 14 years, and it will be a beautiful.

I am so freaking excited!!

It may not be an industrial computer, but I finally (been thinking about buying 1 since school started up back in August) ordered the netbook that I've been wanting to get for Sebastian, and I have been talking about it on my other blog, and debating with myself for months and months and months.
YAY!!!
I Twittered about getting the really awesome deal that I got thanks to Verizon, I mean, really, it's a totally sweet deal, how could I not publicly thank them?

The netbook is actually a really great one for the price.
HP Mini 110 series

• • Black Swirl
• • Genuine Windows XP Home with Service Pack 3
• • Intel(R) Atom(TM) Processor N270 (1.60GHz, 512KB L2, 533Mhz FSB)
• • 1GB DDR2 System Memory (1 Dimm)
• • 160GB 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive
• • Intel(R) Graphics Media Accelerator 950 with a 5-in-1 Digital Media slot
• • 10.1" diagonal WSVGA LED Anti-glare Widescreen Display (1024 x 600)
• • HP Mini Webcam with HP Imprint Finish (Swirl)
• • Wireless-G Card
• • HP Color Matching Keyboard
• • 3 Cell Lithium Ion Battery
• • Microsoft(R) Works 9.0

When I got Fios installed back in July, Verizon told me that in 3 months, if I paid the bill on time and in full for those first 3 months, I would receive a gift certificate for $299.00 to buy anything that I wanted from a certain website, so my gift certificate came about a month ago, and I finally used it tonight.
The netbook's price was exactly $299.00, and then I bought a mouse and a carrying case for it.
The mouse was $12.79, the case was, $11.99, they had 20% off of them individually, not 20% off if I bought both together, but 20% off of them by themselves, and then I had to pay for shipping for all 3 items.
The subtotal was $324.77, shipping was $19.00, Florida tax was 24.07, making the grand total $367.84.
The $299.00 gift certificate was applied and so I only had to pay $67.85 in total.
I LOVE an awesome bargain like this!
W00t!! W00t!!


Today like around 9am or so, I am going to go to the pharmacy and pick up the scripts that are waiting for me, then go do the grocery shopping, and then tomorrow, I get to go see my other doctor and tell him about the issues that I am having with my feet and hope that it isn't diabetic neuropathy, because if it is, I know that he's going to put me on insulin and I don't want to be on insulin.
I don't have a problem with needles, no problem with needles at all.
It's that having to take insulin will further restrict me and what little freedom I have left.
Because of all of the health issues that I have right now, I am truly a prisoner in my own home because of my own freaking messed-up body.
Having to take insulin will just make me even more of a prisoner.
I know that calling myself a prisoner isn't good, but it's how I feel, my life is so restricted, I can hardly do anything because of the constant pain that I am in, being forced to watch myself, test my blood sugars constantly, will just make that feeling even stronger.
It sucks.

Just about every January or February, I buy new contact lenses.
I buy 4 boxes, each box contains 6 lenses, so I end up with 24 contact lenses, and they are the extended wear ones, the monthlies.
I end up spending about $200 a year on new contacts if they don't have any specials or instant rebates.
Like if I were to re-order my lenses right now, 4 boxes comes to $199.96, and they have an instant $30 savings, like a coupon, so the total would be $169.96, and standard shipping is 5-7 days and free.
If I only buy 2 boxes, 12 lenses, I wouldn't get any instant savings, and it would cost me $99.98, and I'd still get the free shipping, but it's a much better deal to buy 4 boxes.
Ya know, just in case I tear a lens or 2, (it's happened a few times) lose a lens, etc, so when I do decide to order come January or February, I'll get 4 boxes unless they don't have the instant savings when I do my re-order.

I've often wondered how much it would cost to get Lasik, my eyes aren't so bad that I wouldn't qualify, my prescription is rather easy, and it would be totally awesome to never have to order lenses again, take them out, put new ones in, all of the hassles about wearing contacts.
I'd probably have to do the whole lasik surgery Mexico style in order to be able to afford it.
I've heard that it's extremely costly to get Lasik here in the US.
I saw a commercial the other day where a husband and wife were talking about her getting lasik, and she told her husband that they were spending that much on contacts anyway, but I know that lasik costs well over $1,000 per eye, and sure lasik is usually a 1-time deal which is probably way less than the cost of purchasing contacts over the course of a lifetime, but it's still really expensive here in the US to get them done.
I found this info about the average costs of lasik in the US as of July 2009.

* $2,140 for all laser-based vision correction procedures (including LASIK) in which a single price is quoted.
* $1,748 for non-customized LASIK using a bladed instrument (microkeratome) and excimer lasers that are not guided by wavefront analysis.
* $2,314 for wavefront-guided LASIK using a laser-created flap.

I don't know what half of that means, but my contacts cost me way less than that, and I know better than to fall for any eye specialist who claims that lasik will only cost $499.99 per eye.
Those prices are for people who have very minimal eye correction necessary, the real prices are usually between $1,500 to $3,000 per eye, that's the general going rate, so yeah, I'd probably have to go to Mexico to get lasik done on me for a super low price.
Now, if only I could afford to take a vacation to Mexico. ha ha

I had been battling a couple issues the last 2 days, a migraine that wouldn't quit, and a swollen foot.
The swollen foot thing is always bothersome, it (left foot) swells up so much that it hurts to try and walk, it turns red, it feels like it's going to break, or the skin is going to pop open.
So I spent all of last night laying on the couch with my foot elevated and trying to get rid of the migraine.

I also spent some time being very concerned for a friend who really needs some really good but super low cost health insurance because of a health issue she is now faced with, and her doctors are only able to do so much for her with the Medicaid that she was forced to go on after her husband got laid off from work.
She really needs to get in and see a specialist, and fast, but Medicaid does things when they want to, and if they want to.
The only advice that I could give her was to be pushy with them and the doctors.
This is her health, her life, and if you wait on them to call you back, you could end up waiting weeks or months, so you really have to start being a total nag and start demanding that your health issue be treated and now, not next month, but now.

I wish there was more that I could do for her, but she's caught in the system now, and really, the only way to get help is to start demanding it, be pushy, call them every single day, start asking for the phone numbers for the specialists yourself instead of waiting for your doctor to call you back with appointment dates, call and set the appointment yourself.
It sucks that she has to do that, but if she wants to be seen and treated, then she needs to be proactive and pushy.

I have had another absolutely horrible, totally horrendous day, I am sitting here with a pounding migraine and  in tears, and I have been crying  off and on for several hours now.
I wish so much that I could talk specifically about why I'm so upset, but I can't, I am a woman of my word regardless of what other people seem to think and say.
I really wish that I knew why some people are so cruel, why are people so cruel??
Can't anyone tell me why??

I have had a really crappy week,  just wow, so freaking crappy, and I was hoping that after this morning's grocery shopping disaster, that the day would get better, but nope, it didn't.
I feel like my entire life is just me walking in one place, or walking on treadmills, I just keep on walking and walking and walking,  but never seem to get anywhere.
I never seem to go anywhere at all that is a good place to be.
I am just stuck walking in this place where a good majority of the people are full of drama and being wrapped up, mixed up, and in everyone's business.

I'm not a bad person, i live and let live, I try to do right by everyone who comes into and out of my life for however long they are in it, I try to treat others right, the way that I would want to be treated, with kindness and compassion, understanding, and caring.
But I hardly ever get treated back the same way.
I know that all of that karma stuff is so made up and so absolutely not true, because if it was, the people who come in and out of my life on the daily, would treat me just even half as well as I treat them.
I don't even really understand the how or the why over the reason for this, how it even began, 
I just don't even have the slightest clue.
All I know for sure is that someone, or several someones, really, truly, believe that I would try to destroy their ability to earn a living.
???
Yeah, that's exactly what I said!
I don't have the answer to that one at all, and believe me, I so wish that I did.
But I can tell you and know it to be true with every single fiber of my being, that I have not ever, would not ever, could not ever, interfere with another human beings ability to earn a living and provide for themselves and their families.
That's just not something that I am capable of doing.
 
Even way back when I was an assistant manager at a store and had to hire and fire people,
I had to practice my "I'm so sorry, but you're just not working out" speech for an hour or more before I could even walk into the office and do the deed, and no matter how many times the manager made me do it so that I could "get used to it"  before she would consider promoting me from just the assistant manager to either 2nd or 1st assistant manager, after doing it and waiting for the terminated employee to leave, I would run to the bathroom, close the stall door, start crying my eyes out, and then puke.
It was just so emotionally upsetting to me, it made me physically ill to do it.
I would have all of these thoughts and images in my head about their life, if they had kids to feed, if this job was the only way they could have a roof over their heads, if there was a member of the family who was sick and this job paid for their medications that kept them alive, all of those kinds of thoughts would be flooding my head, and I'd get dizzy and nauseous over those thoughts.
I am still the same way, I hate to hear about people losing their jobs, their homes, their insurance, I get upset just hearing a story about someone losing their job.
To know that there's someone out there thinking that I would in some way try to kill their ability to earn a living, is just really upsetting me.
It's my assistant manager job all over again, dizzy and queasy, that watery mouth feeling, swallowing hard, my stomach is in knots, and I keep crying.

I need to just go lay on the couch and zone out, watch a movie, or listen to music or something, anything at all, to get away from this situation, to make it stop, but anything that I do, I'm fearful that it could escalate an already tense situation and make it even worse.
I'm just stuck, stuck walking in the same place, just walking and walking, and going absolutely nowhere. 

I betcha that  bcbsnc would be just as furious about what happened today at the pharmacy as Humana is.
I've been posting about my pain medication saga on this blog and my other blog, for the last couple of days now, and had found a pharmacy with the very last of the generic medication in stock, all of the way down in North Port today.

So my friends drove me down to the pharmacy in North Port this afternoon in a massive thunderstorm and heavy rain that lasted the entire drive down there, and half of the way back home, in order for me to get the last remaining stock of the generic Oxycontin HCL 40mg ER, which is Oxycodone HCL 40mg ER.
The pharmacy that I found it at didn't have my full prescription of 90 pills, but they did have 80 of them, close enough.
So I went for it because my doc had said because of that whole mess, that he was not going to write me a new script until he figured out what would work best for me because I am allergic to the equivalent med which is morphine sulfate, (MS Contin) and I am severely allergic to morphine, and also because Fentanyl patches don't work, and the Fentanyl injections are too dangerous and I refused them.

I went into the pharmacy and handed over my script and the pharmacist filled it, ran my insurance for it, and my co-pay was going to be $2.40, and that's when the pharmacist told me that she was losing money because of the insurance.
"What?" I asked.
"Because I am accepting your insurance for this medication," the female Indian pharmacist said, "I am losing money on it."
"What does that mean?" I asked.
"Let me explain. I pay $40 for the medication, Humana is only going to pay me $20 for it, you are only going to pay me $2.40 for it, so I am losing $20.00 by accepting your insurance and giving you this medication" she said.
"Ok, what does that mean for me?" I asked.
"It means that unless you pay me $20.00 for the medication, I cannot let you have this prescription" she said.
"Uh, ok, um, I haven't gotten paid yet, let me go see if I can borrow it from one of my friends" I said, and I went out to the truck to ask Deb and Nic if I could borrow $20 until I got paid Friday night.
Nic let me borrow it but told me I was being yanked.
I said that I knew that and would deal with it later, but right now this was the last pharmacy in the whole damn state with my med, I needed to get it and would report the theft and insurance fraud when I got home.
I went back in and instead of paying the legal amount of $2.40, I paid the theft price of $22.40, got my med, and we drove back home to Sarasota.

What the pharmacist did is called price gouging for one, theft for another, and insurance fraud for a solid third.
It is against the law to accept and charge an insurance company for the medication, actually charge the patient the real co-pay amount, and ask the patient to pay another price on top of that.
I know by going to the Humana website and logging in to my account, that I can see how much the medicine costs, my co-pay amount, and how much Humana pays the pharmacy when they submit the claim to Humana.
The medication costs $670.62, my co-pay is $2.40, and then Humana pays the pharmacy $668.22.
 
That is actually what it says on the My Humana page for today's (Friday October 16th, 2009) prescription fill at the pharmacy I went to today.
At my usual pharmacy that I had been getting it at for a full year before this whole Purdue lawsuit mess, the price of the med was $789.95, because they were getting the generic version from a different pharmaceutical company than the one I got today.
My regular pharmacy was getting them from Watson Pharmaceutical, and they were round and orange-ish-yellow.
Today's pills were manufactured by Dava Pharmaceutical, the pills are round and purple.  
The different pharmaceutical companies all make their pills look different, and they charge different prices for them.

But that's really neither here nor there, what this pharmacy did was illegal.
And she knew it too.
It is an independently owned pharmacy, the husband and wife own it together, she's the pharmacist, he's the cashier, 1 cash register, 1 tiny little store.
She so totally knew that what she was doing was illegal, and she took steps to prevent being caught.
On the patient medication print-outs, there is always a strip at the top that says the name, address, and phone number of the pharmacy, it says the medication name, how much it costs, and how much the co-pay is.
This little strip is perforated to be torn off for the patients use.
The pharmacist tore it off so that I wouldn't have access to the truth.
She made 1 mistake though, she let me keep my cash register receipt that clearly says that I paid $22.40 for 1 prescription, and the receipt has the name, address, phone number, and the name of the pharmacist right at the top.

When I got home, I immediately called my insurance company to report what had happened.
The Humana rep was aghast at what I was telling her, she placed me on hold while she got a supervisor and asked what she was supposed to do for this kind of thing, and then she told me that they had all of the pharmacy's information in the system already because the pharmacist had submitted the claim, I really did pay the legal co-pay amount of $2.40, and she told me that they were sending me a form to fill out, that I would need to photocopy all of the paper work that I did have, like the receipt and the patient print out showing that she tore the patient use information strip off, and that I would need to explain exactly what happened, what the pharmacist told me, and then she told me that I needed to report it to my state's price gouging hot-line, and the police in North Port, which I did.
I left a voice mail for the hot-line in Tallahassee because that's what you're supposed to do, and I spoke to a detective at the North Port police department who told me that I would need to go back to NP and file a report and bring the evidence and my witnesses with me.
Both Deb and Nic said that they would be happy to go to NP with me and fill out the report, especially Nic because she's the one who loaned me the $20.00 to pay for it, and was just as shocked as I was that the pharmacist did that.
All 3 of us were in shock that she ripped me off for $20.00 when she had submitted the claim to Humana for the full price of $668.22, claiming that she was going to lose $20.00 by accepting my insurance.

Can you freaking believe the week I have had just trying to get my freaking medication?!?
Totally unreal right?
I mean, who the hell else would have this kind of luck?
This is the kind of stuff that happens to me all. of. the. time, and this pharmacist knew that she was the last pharmacy to have the medication, she knew that I had to have it, so she totally took advantage of those facts and she stole $20.00 from me, lied to me, submitted the claim to the insurance, so that's fraud, and she totally, illegally, price-gouged me!!
Seriously people, this kind of crap only happens to me.

Because I don't want any other person in the south west Florida area to be ripped off, I am telling everyone right here on my blog, to never, ever, go to D & A Pharmacy in North Port Florida, located at 3015 Bobcat Village Center Rd. in the Bobcat Village Shopping Plaza.
This is a picture of their store front happily provided by the pharmacy to be listed on Google.

Never go there folks.
Ever.

As I posted on Tuesday, I was having to wait for my insurance, Humana, and my doc's office to agree on either paying for my pain medicine or forcing my doc to write a new script.
Well, neither happened.
It seems that Purdue Pharma won in federal court, to be the ONLY manufacturer of Oxycontin HCL 40mg ER.
Actually, Purdue Pharma now has the patent on ALL controlled-release oxycontin until April 16, 2013.
That's right, they fought and won the right to be the only maker of all controlled release oxycontin until 2013.
That's total crap.
I was taking the generic, oxycodone HCL 40mg ER, but seeing as only the brand name is being produced, my insurance refuses to cover it because of how expensive it is.
Because the only equivalent alternative medication is morphine sulfate, my doctor did not write me a new script for medication.
He was going to write me a script for Fentanyl, either the patches or the injections, but I refused based on the fact that patches do not work for me, I have damaged nerve endings in my back still, I cannot even feel it when being touched by a hand, stung by a bee, anything on my back, so without nerve endings, the medication in the patches would never be absorbed and be able to work.
I also declined it based on the horror stories of that medication that I have heard about and seen on tv programs like Dateline and 20/20.
People suck on the Fentanyl pain patches and have a heroin like experience, and it is also highly addictive because of how strong it is when used in the liquid injection form.
I do not need a highly addictive heroin-like medication in this house.
I am already physically addicted to some of my pain meds, I don't want to be emotionally addicted to something like that, I've never done heroin, and I certainly don't want to take a medication that is like heroin.

So anyway, I do not have my regular medicines, and I am in quite a bit of pain.
It is amazing just how bad the pain is without my usual regiment of medications, all I want to do is stay curled up in a ball on the couch, every single part of my body aches, all of my joints ache like crazy.
Just doing the grocery shopping this evening was a test of sheer will power to make my body walk there, walk the aisles, and walk home.
As soon as I got home, I put everything away and curled myself up like I was sitting in an egg chair.
Curling up is the most comfortable position right now, my other pain meds are not even touching the arthritis pain that I have, it's horrible right now.
My ankles, knees, hips, pelvis, lower back, and my neck, are just throbbing in pain.
We're heading into a cold spell, well cold for Florida, and I am so feeling it.
I'm really kind of ticked off at my doctor for not trying to find an alternative medication that I can take.
I also can't believe he wanted me to take 100mg of Fentanyl, that stuff is like heroin man, I don't want that crap.
I don't want to take it, I don't want it in my house, I don't want anything at all to do with it, but he thought it was a good alternative.
I think I'm going to call Purdue Pharma tomorrow and ask them for help.
I cannot get my insurance to cover the medication, and I cannot afford to get my script filled for their name brand product.
It would take me 2 months of SSDI payments to pay for just 90 pills, it's very expensive like I said on Tuesday.
It can't hurt to ask them for help seeing as their little war over a patent has caused me to be without my meds right?
Their greed has caused me to be in pain since Tuesday, maybe, just maybe, they will help me and cover the cost of it or send me some.
I've heard stories about some of the pharmaceutical companies helping people that way, maybe they will help me.

I swear, the pharmaceutical industry and the insurance industry must be cahoots with each other.
They do everything that they can to get the most amount of money from people for the least amount of work or money being spent on their end of the transaction.

One of my medications is not being made any longer, well, let me rephrase that.
The generic of it is no longer being made, and my insurance company will not pay for the real name brand one unless my doctor calls them and gets prior authorization, tells them that it is medically necessary to have it because the generic is no longer being manufactured.
The real name brand one costs a lot of money, a wicked lot of money.
The generic version of it would cost me $789.95  for a quantity of 90 pills, if I didn't have insurance.
The real name brand one would cost me $1,325.00 out of pocket if I didn't have insurance, for the exact same amount, 90 pills.
My doctor does not want to switch me to another pain medicine unless he absolutely has to because this one works very well for me, he doesn't want to have to make me take something else that may not work as well, and then go through possibly months of trying on new medications until we find one that works.
Getting this particular one took about 5 months of trying a new one every single month until finding this one worked the best.

So basically, I went to my doc appointment today and got all of my prescriptions, 4 of them, but was only able to get 3 of them filled until Humana either decides to cover the name brand one, or forces my doctor to write a new script and start the drug try-ons until we find one that works as well as this one does.
I have been on and tried so many different pain relievers, I could write reviews of them as easily as I have written diet pill reviews on my blogs.
I really do not want to have to try a new drug, or several new drugs.
It sucks trying out new ones, they all react differently with my body, and the one pain med that I absolutely do not want to ever have to take again, not even for a week or so, is Ultram/Tramadol. (the generic is Tramadol)
That one makes me feel like total crap.
It makes me feel agitated and angry, like if anything is even normally mildly upsetting, that little thing makes me explode violently and I start screaming and yelling at anyone within earshot.
It also makes me feel dirty and gross, like slimy and disgusting, and no amount of showers makes that feeling go away, it makes me feel strung out, like jacked-up, cracked-out.
It's how I imagine smoking crack would make me feel.
It also upsets my stomach.
Most narcotic pain relievers cause you to be constipated, I deal with that by taking a stool softener every 3 days or so.
On Tramadol, (the generic) it's the exact opposite, it causes diarrhea, so the whole time I am taking it, I need to stay close to home, close to the bathroom, and I can not eat much at all because it just comes right back out, explosively.
So the doc's office is calling Humana and faxing them, a medically necessary-please approve the name brand medication form, and the doc's office will call me tomorrow to either let me know that I can go to the pharmacy and pick it up, or go back to the doc's office and get a script for a brand new pain reliever.
I am hoping that they will approve it, I really hate trying out new ones, it sucks a wicked lot. 
 
Tramadol is what Mark's doctor has him on, and poor Mark, he is suffering the exact same side effects that I get while taking them, and they really aren't helping his pain much either unless he takes 3 of them at once, but then taking that many causes him to be really agitated and have the stomach upset 3 times worse.
He went and had his MRI last week, and we're supposed to go in tomorrow for the results and a refill of his meds, but I don't have any transportation, and I am not going to spend $40 for a cab ride, so I had to call and cancel his appointment.
I am going to call and talk to a few friends, and ask them if they could give us a ride, they can pick the day that works the best for them, and I'll just tell his doc to either fit us in on that day, or they'll have to wait until I can find another ride from someone else.
Getting his test results are a huge priority for me, I need to know exactly what Mark has and how bad it is.
These results will determine whether or not Mark can go ahead and apply at the police academy and take the law classes in college. (you need to apply at the police academy and then go take the classes)
If his back is really bad, if he has a lot of spine deformities and nerve damage, it will negatively impact his life-long career choice.
If his bad is super bad, if he can't be a cop like he's always wanted to, I will have 10 times more guilt over this than I already do.
I feel absolutely horrible that my genetics, that my DNA, may have destroyed his ability to be a police officer.
The day that I heard that he has spondylosis, I came home and cried my eyes out. 
I so didn't want him to have anything medically wrong with his back, I was so hoping that his doctor would just tell him to lose weight, that because he's overweight, that's why he has lower back pain, that's what I wanted to hear, not that my DNA has been handed down to him.
I have to find us a ride,  someone that will take us there and either wait possibly for an hour or 2, or drop us off and come back to pick us up when the appointment is over.
I need to find out what's wrong and how we're going to treat it, if it can be treated by bracing or physical therapy, or if it's bad enough to need surgery.
Once I get the results from his doctor, I am going to try and fight with medicaid to get a second opinion, and that second opinion will be from my surgeon, Doc M.
Doc M. is the most qualified spine specialist in this state, Mark's doctor even said that if he thinks Mark's spine needs surgery, that he would send him to Virginia to be treated by a specialist there, he already knows that he's not qualified to do the surgery himself.
I am almost scared to get the results, I don't want it to be any worse than what it is right now, just the spondy and arthritis, I am so afraid that he's got other spine deformities, maybe scoliosis, or severe nerve damage like I have.
I do not want him to have to go through any of the years of pain and hell that I've been through, I won't be able to handle that, I don't want my son to suffer like I have. 

I absolutely hate being sick, it sucks for everyone of course, but ever since having spine fusion surgeries, getting sick is absolutely freaking miserable.
I'm pretty sure that Sebastian has the flu, or something resembling the flu.
He's had a high fever since late Friday night, he's been exhausted, achy from head to toe, no appetite at all, and just plain miserable feeling and miserable to be around.
I started to feel like crap on Saturday afternoon, I blew it off at first, blamed it on my back, but by nighttime, I felt like he did and I had a fever to boot.
My fever seems to have gone, so maybe I don't have what he has, (because he still has a fever as of bedtime) but for the entire day on Sunday, I was downright horrible.
I had a massive migraine, my entire body hurt, I was coughing a little bit, my nose was a bit stuffed up, and I didn't want to eat anything at all, not even look at food.
Mark went and bought him and Sebastian some subs from Publix for dinner, Sebastian only ate half of a half of it before puking that up, and just smelling their subs made me puke.
3 times.
I felt so freaking horrible, felt like I was going to die at any minute, that once I started feeling like I could sit up, I went to one of those get free instant life insurance quotes here websites.
I still have not bought any life insurance.
I talk about getting it all of the time, I've even made quite a few phone calls to insurance companies about it, but I just have never actually taken the time to buy it.
I know that I need it, I know that it is something that I absolutely have to have for my sons in case something bad happens to me, but buying it just freaks me out.
I don't know, it's like if I actually purchase a life insurance package, it's like I'm going to jinx myself or something.
I don't believe in jinxes and stuff, but a part of my brain says 'if you buy life insurance, you are going to die much quicker than you wanted to/plan to, like tomorrow.'
Seriously, my brain gets all stupid like, I just start thinking completely irrational.
I know that buying it is not going to cause me to die soon, but that's how my brain reacts.
Totally stupid huh?
I know it is, I know it's stupid, but I can't help it.
I know I can't be the only one who thinks totally crazy stuff like this, or am I?

My friend Christine sent me a Tweet last night about identity theft of students, it was an article on her local Boston news website that was all about the theft of students ID, their social security numbers and other information.

It's back to school time, but there's more to be nervous about than missing the bus. Children can have their identities stolen years before they could legally sign up for a credit card or take out a loan.

I then sent her a link to the ID theft of my kids, as well as thousands of other Sarasota children, not just high schoolers according to my friend Mindy, but ALL of Sarasota school district students.
Trying to protect our kid's ID is getting harder and harder, made even harder by a school district that willingly sent all of their personal information to a website that posted that information publicly for who knows how long.
One of the possible settlement agreements will be to provide identity theft protection monitoring for any students whose ID was stolen and compromised by the school and the website that posted the information, for up to 2 years after the theft was done, and to clear the student's credit reports of all the bad information.

I am still in shock that it happened at all, and I totally blame the school district for it.
There's a major class action lawsuit going on right now because of this, thousands of students information was posted publicly, anyone could have gotten access to it, and trying to clear up any bad credit by ourselves would be impossible to do.
I am really hoping that our side wins the suit and the school district and that website, have to fix every single one of the thousands of students bad credit reports for the next few years.

I have always made sure to keep the teens social security cards private, I don't give that info out to just anybody, and when someone asks for it, I always ask why they need it.
If they don't have a good reason, they don't get it, and so to have that information posted publicly and know that anyone could have taken it, makes me mad as hell.
I am so glad that someone caught it and the suit is being pursued, our kids futures is at stake here, their ability to buy a home or even get a job, is at risk because someone allowed all of that personal information to be posted.
I am absolutely furious that it happened.  

Ha ha ha!
I was just saying to a friend in email that if I believed in all of that past life stuff and karma, I would say that I was a serial killer or something really wicked bad in a previous life because I am sooo being punished in this one.

My AC died for the 3rd time in 2 years on Sunday, I got a wicked bad ear infection on Thursday and am just now really starting to feel better, and when I woke up this afternoon after not being able to even fall asleep until around 9am this morning, I realized that I lost a freaking filling.

When my sons went out to dinner with their aunt, I had them stop at Walgreen's and get me some Dentemp so I could put that in the giant and gaping hole in my way back right side molar.
I can deal with a lost filling, at least it's not as bad as when I was a kid and got smacked in the mouth by the seat from the swing sets at the school playground, and totally broke my right FRONT tooth.
Yeah, I ended up having to have a cap put on it, and that cap lasted me from the age of 11 up until about 8 years ago when it finally fell off.
I haven't had the money to have that fixed, there's no way that I can afford it.
I asked a dentist about 5 years ago when I was having a tooth pulled how much it would cost to repair that, and he told me that I was looking at about $1,000.
Yeah, I just really do not have that kind of money to spend on 1 thing, a tooth.
1 grand can pay all of my monthly bills and buy groceries for 2 weeks, so yeah, getting my front tooth fixed is not going to happen any time soon unless I win the lottery.
But you gotta play to win, and sorry, I just can't even spare $1 for a single ticket these days.

Because I was sick from an ear infection since Thursday of last week and just now really starting to feel better, I am just now starting to try and clean up the house.
When I get sick like that, I really can't do much, so the dishes pile up, the carpets don't get cleaned, things just fall apart around the house basically.

A few people have asked me why I replaced and am always replacing the AC when something goes wrong, how come my landlord doesn't do it, so I thought I would answer.
My landlord is a sheriff, he works 6 days a week and has a very young family that he goes home to every single night, so the agreement that he and I have is that if I can replace things or do the repair work myself so he can go home at night to his young kids, he'll take the receipts and deduct both the cost and labor off of my rent.
We've been doing this ever since I moved into this duplex 10 years ago, it works for us.
It just so happens that when the AC died on Sunday, he was out of town, actually out of state, so he told me to go buy one if I could, he'll take the cost off of the rent, and if I couldn't buy one, he'll replace it when he comes back on the 23rd.
There is no way that I could survive until the 23rd without the AC, it died on Sunday morning, and by 2pm, this house was as hot in here as the heat index outside, 110 degrees.
I had windows and doors open, 3 large box fans running too, and it was like living in a sauna.
So I bought a new one, I'll give him the receipt, and he'll take it off my rent along with the labor for installing it.

The next thing that I AM going to do and soon I hope, is to replace the bathroom faucet.
I found some great prices at a wholesale housewares store down on Cattleman road.
I can get a really nice faucet for under $20, so I am going to go down there with my friend who told me about the store, next month, and then my friend is going to help me install it because it involves getting down on teh floor and shutting off the water and stuff, and I definitely cannot get down on the floor. LoL

I posted about the class action suit against the school district and the Princeton Review on my other blog, and I'm still fuming about it.
I will be so freaking mad if the teen's credit is ruined because of them forcing the students to put all of their info on that site, and it wasn't just the high school students either.
According to Mindy, ALL of the kids in the district had this done because her little girl Katie's info was posted there too.
They got letters for both Katie and Jeff as well.
One of the settlements if it settles, will be 2-3 years of identity theft protection for any student whose credit got destroyed or their identities stolen and used.
I personally don't think that's enough.
I really believe that if anyone got their identities stolen and their credit destroyed, that they should get some type of monetary compensation as well.
It takes years and years to clean up your credit once someone steals it, credit monitoring isn't enough in my opinion.

I don't mean that in a snotty way, not at all, but I am lucky that I have a good part D  Medicare supplement or else I'd be like a few of my friends, broke and unable to pay for prescriptions.
I have a friend, well a couple of friends, who don't have the best medical insurance, and some who have none at all, and they get stuck paying full price for all of their medications.
One of my friends takes the exact same pain medicine that I do, and she has to pay full price for it every single month.
It costs anywhere from $589.99 to $699.99 depending on which pharmacy you go to, and she struggles like crazy every month to make sure that she has enough money to pay for just that 1 medication.
And that's just 1 of the 5 that she takes.
I'm better off than most of the people that I know in that regards.
My co-pays at the doctor's offices are fairly low, my prescription co-pays are really low on most of my medications, between $2.50 and $9.00 depending on the medication and amount.
There's only 1 of my meds that I have to pay full price for now, and it costs me about $45.00 which is a lot better than I did have to pay about 8 months ago when I had 4 scripts that I had to pay full price for.
My monthly premium for my insurance is just $21.00, which is great because it's not that expensive and it helps keep my prescription costs as low as they are.
I just wish that everyone that I know had good insurance, reasonably priced, low co-pays, and good medical care.
Health insurance should be available to everyone at an affordable rate.
I haven't read up too much on the health care plan that congress is debating over, but whatever they end up agreeing on, they need to make sure that everyone has good health insurance at affordable rates.
It's only right that people can afford good health care.

I really do need to get around to getting my yard sale up and going at some point, I have so much freaking junk that I need to get rid of.
Half of it, I don't even know where it came from.
I was going through some stuff in my room the other day, and I came across a rear spoiler or light cover thingy for a Ford Mustang.
Where the heck did I get that?!
I have no idea, I don't own a Mustang, heck, I don't even own a car.
I am going to do the yard sale at some point before the summer is over, and that car part is going in the yard sale unless one of you readers needs a light cover thingy for your Mustang.

This is a picture of one of my own rigged up home alarm systems.
It's actually one of those personal alarms, I guess you're supposed to carry it, but the extra piece that comes in the package with it is perfect for home security.

I have this one on the back door all of the time, we do not ever use the back door, so this one is always in place, and I test the battery every single month to make sure that the alarm is still as loud as it's supposed to be.


The way it is set up to work is that if someone tries to open the door or breaks the door in, that top wire you see in the picture, will come loose or out, and it makes the most deafening siren alarm sound you have ever heard in your life.




I warn the teens every month when I'm going to test the batteries so that they can plug their ears, it is that loud.

I think the noise alone would scare off an unwanted intruder, it is ear-bleeding loud, and if the door actually gets opened and that alarm sounds, every single one of my neighbors within a good 2 miles would hear that noise and know that something was going down at my house. Ha Ha

I also have one for the front door, and I put it in place every single night along with one of those hotel room door bar locks, and the regular deadbolt, as well as a 2x4 jammed up under the doorknob.
Being a single disabled mom, I want any possible intruders to make as much noise as possible so that it wakes all of us up, as well as half of my neighbors. Ha Ha
But I really think that if some idiot tried to break in, the noise from that alarm would send them running for their lives, it would be so obvious to them and everyone else that a home alarm had just been set off and that the police were probably already in route.
I keep both of my cell phones fully charged, one is on my night stand, the other is on Mark's night stand, and the police is set at speed dial #1.
I also sleep with a 2x4 next to my bed, and Mark sleeps with a metal baseball bat next to his.
We've never had anyone break in or even try, but you can never be too prepared for a home invasion in these times.
There's some crazy scary things going on out there folks.
Watching the nightly and morning news is starting to be even more frightening than some of the best horror movies ever made.
Desperate people are starting to do very desperate things.

I still haven't gotten around to fixing that broken  faucets in the bathroom sink.
It's still sitting there all busted up, it drives me crazy to look at it every time I'm in the bathroom and have to look at it.
I have GOT to get it fixed one of these days, I have to.
It looks all redneck-y ya know?
I hate bothering my landlord for stuff that I can fix, I've looked it up before, the instructions on how to do it, it looks easy enough, I just need to get the faucet and set myself down to do it.
Just need to remember one crucial step, shut off all the water first.
I forgot to do that one time, and ooooh, what a mess I made! LoL

I was asked what my ideal cruise vacation would be, and honestly, I don't ever think I'll go on a cruise for a couple of reasons.
One reason being money.
Cruises are usually pretty expensive unless you get like a major discount or if they are running a special cruise adventure, and if you take the super cheap rooms which I hear are very small.
Not liking small spaces, I don't think I could do a small room, so yeah, I would need a wicked lot of money so that I could afford one of the big rooms like a suite, not an interior room.
Those are way too small.
The second reason being that I am absolutely terrified of drowning.
I am a terrible swimmer, and I've also watched one too many movies about cruise ships sinking.
Movies like Titanic and Poseidon.
Yeah, scary stuff so I have this major fear of taking cruises.
And I know, that's totally crazy thinking, you never ever hear about cruise ships sinking, it's the stuff in movies, not reality, so I don't know why I have this fear, but I do.

But if I had the money and if I could make sure that the particular ship I'd be on had never had any accidents, fires, or other mishaps out on the big blue and very deep sea, I would probably be ok going on one of those Caribbean cruises.


















I've heard some nice things about Half Moon cay, so maybe I'd go there, or stop there as one of the ports of call that they go to.
It looks really nice, quiet, peaceful, and goodness knows that I could really use some nice and quiet, and peaceful relaxing time away from everything that's going on in my life right now.
So yeah, maybe there.
I dunno, maybe someday I'll work up the money and the courage to go on a cruise.
We were planning one about 9 years ago, we were all going to try and go to Atlantis, but our plans fell through after an old roommate stole all of the change out of my 10 gallon water jug that I was saving all of my change in for our trip.
There was almost $1,000 in that jug, and he took it all.
He went in my room while I was at work, and took all of the money out and left me a note, an IOU for the money.
He counted it up, or used one of those change machines, so the IOU said that he owed me $987.56.
He never did pay me back.

I hear from friends all of the time how much fun cruises are, and they tell me that I'd love it once I got on the ship and we were going, once I started doing all of the fun things they have on board, and I bet that would, I love doing all that fun stuff.
So yeah, maybe someday when I have the money I'll go and take a cruise.
I am pretty sure that I would really love it.
I know I would, I just have to do it some one of these days. 

Ok, so, the Elavil isn't totally working yet.
I don't know why I expected it to work quickly, I think I was hoping it would work quickly, but it definitely isn't.
When the shower head got broken this afternoon, I had a major blow out.
I just fell apart, I cried, I yelled, I just lost it and started bawling my eyes out.
I am so totally overwhelmed with everything that is going on, and I do not have a grip on it all yet.
I don't have a grip on any of it yet.

Having a problem with my tooth isn't helping matters either.
I called Humana, and they said that my insurance does cover part of dental stuff, like it will cover extractions, but not root canals, no cosmetic stuff, just basic teeth stuff.
So I called around to some local dentist offices and holy crap, I had to control myself from gasping extremely loud over how much it's going to cost to get that tooth extracted, even with the insurance, I am still going to end up paying some hefty out of pocket expenses.
And just because I was curious, I asked how much it would be to get my front chipped tooth fixed, capped or whatever it is they do, and damn, that is even more expensive.
If I lived in New Jersey, I could get $100 bucks off at least.
I was surfing around and saw an ad on MSNBC, for an orange nj cosmetic dentist who is offering anywhere from $100 off, up to $300 off, his dental services and depending on what it is you need done.
None of the dentists or cosmetic dentists here, are offering any kind of discounts on any of their services.
You would think that they would be considering how bad the economy is, and people still need their teeth taken care of, but paying full price is really tough, it's always tough paying for dentists, but even harder now with the economy in the dumper.
If dentists offered even just $100 bucks off on even the most basic service, people would feel better about going and paying to get their teeth taken care of.
Oh well, I'll just keep filling my tooth with Dentemp until I can find a dentist who will take care of it cheaply, or I'll just go down to the clinic and get it yanked out and then worry about getting my chipped tooth taken care of at a much later time.
It's been chipped for quite a few years now, so a few more years won't really be a big deal.
The pain in that one tooth is a big deal though, so I have to get it taken out very soon before it becomes abscessed.
If it gets infected, it causes all kinds of new problems that will be even more costly.

I posted a few days ago about having a yard sale sometime in the near future and also selling off all of my jewelry.
I don't have a lot, exactly 23 pieces went into the envelope, but it's all I have and I hope it brings me at least some decent amount of money, $400-$600 would be great even though I know there's at least 1 piece in there worth at least $1,000.
It'd be great if I had like some Ferrari parts for sale to make some money super fast, but I don't, so this is my only option.
I don't trust any of those places that are advertising to buy your scrap gold jewelry right now, I have heard way too many bad things about them, and if you do a Google search on each of their names, you find not only their site, but sites where people talk about being completely ripped off.
They don't even come close to half the value of your jewelry, barely a third, and in some cases, downright stealing from people for mere pennies.

There's a local place in Tampa, I thought that I would actually have to go to them to trade in my stuff for cash, but they have a "gold kit" too, so I requested one.
It came in today's mail and I have gone through every single piece of jewelry and packed it all up to stick in tomorrow's outgoing mail.
The Gold & Diamond Source in Tampa, is where I am sending my jewelry.
From the FAQ's about their buying services, "We accept ONLY precious metal jewelry and genuine precious gems & diamonds, including broken gold. Please do not send costume jewelry as we cannot return these items."

Nothing I am sending them is costume jewelry, it's all gold, a minimum of 10k, .925 sterling silver, and jewelry with real gemstones in them, and some of them even have diamonds.
A few of the pieces are broken, so I know I won't get a lot of money for them, but my finances are in really rough shape right now so this is something that I have to do.
They say they they will mail a check within 24 hours of receiving my envelope, and so because they are right in Tampa, I know that I will have a check in my hands probably no later than Saturday, probably by Thursday.

I really hate to sell my stuff, but like I said, things are really super bad right now, I am having panic attacks for like the first time in years, panic attacks so bad that my heart is practically exploding out of my chest.
I know that's not true, but that's how it feels.
It feels like I'm having a heart attack, and I know that it's the stress over money issues that is causing it.
For quite a few years now, I've been on a good track, paying all of my bills on time every single month, really doing ok, and then the surgery in September happened, depression happened, I wasn't doing as much work as I should have been doing, used to do, the AC had to be replaced in October 2008, and then again this past February, so almost $1,000 on the AC, my health, prescriptions not covered by my insurance, yeah, things just kept coming and coming, and before I knew it, I was buried under money issues again and now it's at the point where I can barely freaking breathe from the panic attacks.
I mean, I'm sitting here right now, and my heart is beating so damn fast it's unreal.

If the Gold & Diamond Source gives me at least $500 for my stuff, I'll be in a way better position than I am right now.
It's not what I need of course, and it's certainly not what everything in that envelope is worth, again, 1 item alone has a value of $1,000, never been worn, mint condition, but I have to take whatever I can get right now.

I have never even had any types of  jobs in finance, but even I know that what is being told to a certain group of bloggers is complete and utter crap.
Ok, listen up folks, PayPal, has NO minimum payment rules.
None.
They have a maximum payment rule, you can't send anyone more than $10,000, but there is no rule on how little you can send someone.
This applies to both individual persons and companies that use PayPal to pay employees or "independent contractors".
It doesn't matter if they are using mass pay or paying people individually, which is what is happening in this case, there is NO minimum payment amount that can be sent.
They DO NOT attach any fees AT ALL to the sender, not a single penny.
They do, however, take a fee from the recipient of the funds, a small percentage, and it doesn't matter if the sender sends you $1.00 or $100.00, PayPal will take that small percentage of fees from the recipient, NOT the sender.
The only time they do not take any fees is when the sender uses mass pay, but again, that's not the case with this particular issue.
You have been told that PayPal has forced a company to raise their minimum payment to $50.00.
You have been lied to.
PayPal has NO minimum payment amounts.
NONE.

Quit being blind little sheep and start questioning what you're being told.

I knew that I would not be able to get Mark that HP notebook that Buy.com had on their weekly special, it's not on sale this week plus I didn't have the money, but I really don't need to worry.
They have a whole section of their site specifically devoted to laptop deals .
That's pretty freaking awesome.
They have every possible brand, every possible size, and every possible price range, and many of them on sale at some really incredibly low prices.
So I know that when I need to get him a laptop in the fall for college, I will be able to find him a really good one at a really good price from them. They make it so incredibly easy to find just the right one, he'll even be able to pick a color on certain brands and models if he wants to.

I started shopping at Buy.com years ago, like back in 2004 or 2005.
I started shopping with them because I was doing paid surveys for a company, and at the time, they only paid in Buy.com gift certificates, they now pay through paypal and Buy.com gift certificates, so that's cool they offer a choice now, but I still take the gift certificates.
I would cash out my gift certs from the site, they only gave us so many days to redeem them at Buy.com, and then I would just let them build up until I had a lot of them, and then I'd go shopping.
I've been loving shopping with them ever since.
I love their low prices, their fast shipping, and the fact that they have free shipping on almost every single item that they sell.
Not too many other online retailers offer free shipping on so many items, heck, most don't offer free shipping on hardly anything unless you spend like a minimum of $25.
At Buy.com, I bought a $6.99 DVD, and got free shipping, so yeah, I'll shop there over other retailers any day, especially when it comes time to get Mark his laptop because those suckers are wicked heavy and if I had to pay shipping, it would be like super freaking expensive.

The surgery, not right now anyway.
My surgeon is someone I trust so much, you have no idea how much I trust that man.
He has never lied to me about any of the risks, how I would be after the surgery, any difficulties I would face when I came home, anything.
He always looks me dead in the eye and tells me the honest truth about everything, so when he looked me in the eyes on Wednesday and told me all of the risks, no matter how small, and then asked me to consider not doing and his feelings on why, I knew, I know, that I have to trust him.

Even though he would be operating above me and his surgeon partner below me, and the same entire surgical team that has been in there with my previous surgeries, measuring and adjusting, and doing everything that they can to try and make my head be straight, something is telling him, worrying him, that it would over correct and I would end up facing upward.
I could see it in his eyes, I have had so many talks with this man over the years, I know how to read him, and I know that look in his eyes was genuine worry that it would have over corrected and come out facing up.
I am going to call him tomorrow and tell him to cancel the operating room, for now, and for him to keep looking for a way to fix me with less risks, to keep talking to other surgeons in this field, maybe one of them will know how to do it better some day, maybe one of them will know how to do it without all of the risks.
Medical science is constantly changing, they are always finding new ways of doing things, so maybe they will find a new way to do this in a year or 2, or 5, who knows, I just have to hang in there and wait.
And he said he will always help me, if I end up having too much pain, he will help me, he'll do whatever he can to help me until the day comes that we find a way to fix this without so many risks to my body and life. 
Facing up would be a thousand times worse than facing down, I would not be able to live that way, there's no way, I wouldn't.
Facing down has been a nightmare that I can't wake up from, facing up would push me over the psychological edge and that would be the end of me, I would never mentally recover from that.

So now I can stop searching so hard for the best term life insurance quotes , I have time to find a good plan at reasonable rates that I can afford so that when they do find a way to fix me, if something goes wrong, there will be money to pay for my cremation.

I think I am going to have to start asking around and get some health insurance leads because I need a secondary insurance.
I have medicare as my only medical insurance, and they pay 80% of everything, and then I pay the rest, my co-pays.
I have Humana as my part D drug coverage, but I think I need another insurance.
My surgeon's office called me on Friday about the upcoming surgery, and asked me if I had a secondary insurance, I said no because I don't.
She said that my co-pay was going to be about $2,600 after medicare paid their 80%, and I'd be responsible for the rest.
I have no idea if I could even qualify for any health insurance right now because I have some pretty extensive pre-existing medical conditions, not too many insurance companies would take me on, and if they do, the monthly premiums would be very high.
I'm thinking I'd be better off without another insurance, and just make payments on the balance forever until it's all paid off.
I can't afford expensive premiums every month.
I just don't have that kind of money.

I am really glad that scientists and doctors are making great strides in Mesothelioma treatment for people who have it, but man, there are like a gazillion lawyers out there trying to make a profit from all of the poor people who have it.
If you just do a quick Google search for Mesothelioma lawyers,  you get a ton of results!
As soon as this disease started making the news, all of these lawyers suddenly started popping up.
Every single day, I see no less than 10 different Florida lawyer commercials, advertising for this.
They all want to help the victims of this disease sue the pants off of the factory or whatever industry company that may be responsible for causing them to get it.

When I was a kid, I had no idea what was so funny about people calling lawyers ambulance chasers.
Now I do, I totally get it now.
But instead of finding it funny, I find it totally sad and pathetic.
I think it's disgusting just how many lawyers start advertising with their sincere sounding messages of wanting to help these people, but lawyers for the most part, are money grubbing jerks.
I'm sure like 1 out of the 10 different law firms that are advertising for this, actually do care, but the rest of them must be seeing dollar signs because the statute of limitations on mesothelioma here in Florida is so long, the people with the disease have many years that they can file a suit against whoever they feel is responsible for it, and because it can take up to 20 years to even be diagnosed with it.

It makes me kind of sick to see all of those commercials.

Cross posted from my other blog because it relates to my surgery and personal feelings.

Mark and I went shopping this afternoon because Sebastian wasn't feeling well, and I've noticed something about who goes shopping with me and how much I spend.
If Sebastian goes, I stay on target, to my list, and don't overspend.
If Mark goes with me, I end up buying things not on my list, and spend more than I had planned too.
So guess how I did today?
If you guessed that I spent more, you'd be correct.

My total bill before coupons was $231.94
Total is coupons and in store special savings - $49.15
Total after coupons and savings applied = $182.79

I try to use as many coupons as I can, and take advantage of as many in store special savings as I can, because I only get $349.00 per month in food stamps, and with 2 growing young men in the house, that food money goes very quickly.
I try to avoid buying junk food items when I can, and I try to cook as many meals as I can without buying easy microwave foods because they cost more.
Sometimes. Publix always has a lot of easy foods on sale for super cheap, and I usually always have coupons to match those items, so sometimes I do end up buying easy foods. But anyway, whenever Mark goes with me he distracts me, he stands in front of me while I'm trying to look at and compare the costs of items on the shelves.
He's always talking to me about something totally unrelated to shopping while I'm trying to shop.
I ended up buying about 15 items not on my list today.
Ugh.
But, they were on sale, so I can't complain too much about it. It would have been nicer had I had matching coupons for those items, but oh well.
What did I buy that wasn't on my list? Chips, dip, beef jerky, some Oreo cookie things, Fun Stix I think they are called, more soda, another pound of lunch meat, some bread from the bakery, canned soup, about 5-6cans, and some canned spaghettios.

Speaking of spaghettios, next month begins the hurricane supply shopping.
I need to stock up on the canned foods that can be eaten without heating them up, and stuff like that.
I'm actually worried about hurricane season this year, not because they have predicted any yet, but because I'm having another spine fusion in June, and with the kind of luck that I have, this year will be the year that we get hit with a hurricane here in Sarasota, and I'll be in a bad state recovering from surgery, in the halo brace, possibly the trach tube, and we'll get smacked with a big one.
Sarasota is weird, in the 12 years we've lived here, this area hasn't been hit with a single hurricane, it's like we live in the outer banks twilight zone of storm free zones.
The most we've ever gotten here is a small bit of wind and rain, just enough wind to blow some trash cans around, maybe take out a really old tree, but nothing major.
But like I said, because of the kind of luck that I have, this will be the year that Sarasota gets nailed, and I'll be completely useless to deal with it, I'll have to rely on other people to help us pack up stuff and evacuate.
So far, the tropics look good, there's nothing at all out there, so let's hope it stays that way all through hurricane season which is June 1st to November 30th.

I posted back on April 16th on my other blog, how Mark accidentally broke the handle off of the bathroom faucet, it was an old faucet, really has probably been in this duplex since the house was built in the 70's, but looking at it day after day is starting to get on my nerves.















I have not told the landlord yet, I know that I should, but I hate bothering him.
It's not because he's a mean landlord or a jerk or anything, it's just he works 6 days a week as a sheriff, and he only gets one day off per week to spend with his wife and two young kids.
I think they aren't much older than 9 or 10.
And it's really not that hard to install a new faucet, just shut off the water, unscrew the old one, screw on the new one and use some plumbers' tape, and turn the water back on.
It's literally like a 20 minute job at the max, but I don't want to bother him on his one day off a week.
He is still working on the empty unit next door, they trashed it so bad in there, it's been over 7 months, and it's still not clean enough to start showing it to new tenants.
 
Anyway, I think I'm just going to go find a nice new faucet, like a nice but reasonably priced  Kohler faucets, and install it myself, or help the teens, or maybe even ask Dustin to come help me, because it would require me getting down on my knees under the sink, and shutting off the water, and doing some other work under the sink with the plumbers' tape and stuff.
I think I'm just gonna go check out the faucet selection at the hardware store, see if they have anything on clearance, and then just do it.
I just hate the idea of making my landlord do more work when he only gets 1 day off and still has the unit next door to do.
I feel guilty asking him to fix stuff, especially small stuff like this that I can fix myself.
Just buy the parts, do it, and give him the receipts, and he takes it off of the rent.
He never complains about me doing that, and he actually has thanked me several times for just doing it myself.

So I went to my doctor's appointment this afternoon, it went very well, the new pain doc and his staff are totally awesome and understanding about everything.
They gave me my prescriptions and I headed to Walgreen's.
The pharmacist pitched a fit because the doc had written on the bottom "Please fill today, medically necessary due to patient not being able to drive."
He said when a doc writes medically necessary, that means brand name, and my insurance, Humana, will not cover brand name.
So I had to go all the way back to my doc's, get them to write on it "Generic OK", and then go back to Walgreen's.

I asked the pharmacist if they had all of them (3 scripts) in generic, he said yes.
So I sat and waited.
For 45 minutes.
My name gets called, 1 of the pain meds is NOT the generic, it costs $610.00.
I told the pharmacist waiting on me that I asked for generic, the pharmacist said he had them, so why was I being given the brand name.
He started yelling at me that the generic is out, that the pharmaceutical companies have not made them in 6 months, I said that's bullshit because I picked it up here last month, and he says to me;
"Ma'am, I'm the pharmacist, I KNOW what I'm talking about, you do not, you are not a pharmacist. They are not making the generic of these any longer, we have not had them for the last 3 months, there is no way that you picked them up here. Now, are you going to pay for these or not?"

I told him 3 times through his shouting at me, to get a manager.
The manager comes over, I told her to look up my account and tell me when I last got that med filled.
She looks it up, says last month, you picked it up here.
I looked at him and asked him if he heard the manager, he said no, so I asked her to tell him what she just told me.
He says all sarcastically, "So."
I nearly flew over the counter and punched him.
I asked for my prescription back so that I could take it elsewhere because I refused to deal with a liar for 1 minute longer.
The manager was trying to apologize, I told her I didn't want to hear it.
The guy had been yelling at me, lied to me, I wanted my script so I could go somewhere else.

I went down the street to another pharmacy, asked them if they had the generic in stock, they said yes, they filled it, and then I asked them if the company had stopped making it.
Both the clerk and the pharmacist looked at each other and laughed, told me no, who told me they had, I told them Walgreen's did, and they both said "Ma'am, he lied to you. They have not stopped making the generic, as a matter of fact, they have increased production because the 30mg ones are not being made anymore."

I knew that, that's why my doc switched me to the higher ones.
But that little jerk lied to me, yelled at me, I'm freaking pissed.
I think I'm going to take my business elsewhere from now on, Walgreen's can suck it.

One of the things that you just sort of have to deal with living in Florida, is the insane amount of bugs and other creatures like lizards, that are simply everywhere.
You can have your house sealed up as tight as a drum, but lizards still find their way in, and if they are getting in, so is everything smaller than them.
I HATE bugs, the Palmetto bugs especially, which are basically cockroaches.
There are ways to get rid of them and keep them away, but come on, putting your toaster in a plastic bag every single night?
Get freaking real here folks.

I usually grab a cat when I see a bug or lizard, hold their head in place so they see it, and then run away to let the cats play with it, torture it, and eventually eat it.
This saves me money on bug sprays, roach traps, moth traps, and all kinds of other small critter traps.
But you still have to clean your house like crazy all of the time, it has to be impeccably clean, hospital sterile, if you really want to keep out every bug and roach.
It's a hard task let me tell ya.
There are days I simply cannot move, let alone sweep, mop, vacuum the rugs, wash down counters, scrub the sinks and dry them, etc etc.
I do the best that I can, but honestly, I need to win the lotto, buy a brand new house, and hire a couple of maids.
One for day shift and one for night shift.
Have around the clock cleaning going on.
I doubt that will ever happen, so I'll just have to keep doing my best when it comes to cleaning the house, and keep the cats happy so that they will keep on chasing and killing all of the critters that find their way in.

I was so sick yesterday and last night, most of this morning, and I'm just finally starting to feel better.
I don't know what it was, but man, my stomach was just wrecked, I was throwing up, cramping up, in tons of pain, and my feet that were swollen and had gone down, had started to swell again.
I managed to pull myself together to go to my new pain doctor appointment, and went for my 3:15.

It's a very strict office I'll tell ya.
They make you pay your co-pay or self pay before they see you, and there was this one guy who was $10 short of his $350.00 fee, and they turned him away, told him he had to reschedule it, they don't mess around man.
I had enough to pay my co-pay and for my scripts, but I was 2 days too early for my insurance to fill them, so I have to go back to the pharmacy tomorrow morning and pick them up before I go to my surgeon appointment at 2pm.

But anyway, the new doc is very strict but also very nice.
He took a look at my records, my CT scans from the 19th, and my blood test results, and we started there.
He said, "So you had spine fusion in 2006 from T3 to S1, wow, that's really big."
I said, "Yeah, but I just had another one, I'm now fused from C1 to S1, the whole spine."
He said, "Wow, you are the biggest spine fusion I have ever personally seen. Did you say that you're having another surgery?"
I said, "Yeah, I see my surgeon on Wednesday, and hopefully he'll have a date and a plan for what and when we're going to do. C1 and C2 collapsed after the surgery in September, my head is stuck down, I don't have much movement at all in my neck, muscle spasms in my back and legs, sometimes the spasms are so severe that if I'm sitting at my desk with my feet up and my keyboard on my lap, the spasms actually throw my keyboard clear off my lap and knock over my foot stool. But C1 and C2 were congenitally fused from birth, there's no disc space there at all, so I have no idea how he's going to fix me."
He said, "Yeah, I'm looking at your CT scan and I honestly don't know how he's going to do it, I'm not a surgeon, so I really don't know, but I can now understand why Doc R. sent you to me. You are much more complicated than the patients he usually deals with. He's a rehab pain manager, he helps people get better and get off medication, and honestly, I know you probably don't want to hear this, but I don't see you coming off of medication for another 5-8 years, maybe the rest of your life based on what I'm reading in your records. You not only have had major spine fusion and another one going to happen soon, but you have arthritis, stenosis, nerve impingement, and a lot of disc damage. It could be years before anyone even thinks of taking you off of medication, or never at all. I'm sorry."
I said, "That's ok, I already knew I was bad off."

So he wrote out my scripts, added a muscle relaxer, which I hate taking because they make me sleep for anywhere from 6-8 hours, so taking those 4 times per day, I'd be sleeping all of the time, and he added Lyrica , which is for neuropathic pain.
I didn't get to pick that one up because it needed like pre-authorization or something, and I may not pick it up at all because as of right now, the Walgreen's website says it's $82.46 for just 30 pills.
That's crazy!
I refuse to pay that much for a medication that I have no idea if it will even work for me yet.
Maybe it hasn't been processed through my Humana insurance yet, but if it has and that's how much it costs, I may not pick it up at all, or I may wait until I get my tax refund back on Thursday.
I don't know yet, have to wait and see, but as of right now, it's still not ready for me to pick up anyway.
Apparently, they still don't have the authorization for it.

So tomorrow morning, I'll go pick up my pain meds, come home, and then get ready for the long ride to Safety Harbor to see the surgeon with my sister.
I'm giving Mindy the day off...LoL
Mindy does so much for me already, and she's been working hard at her cleaning business, taking care of her family, and other things, she's exhausted, so Wednesday is her only scheduled day off, so now it's really a day off for her.
I personally think she needs a nice long vacation somewhere really nice, like maybe go out to California all by herself, stay at a nice San Diego hotel, go see a few sites, and get some much needed rest.
She works way too hard and needs a good, long break.

I've made some really decent new friends over the last few weeks.
It happened sorta by accident, I met Dustin and his girlfriend Stacey through another friend, and they have just been really awesome.
They are like totally blown away by the amount of titanium I have, Dustin calls it the 'chainsaw back' because when you look at a front view of the xrays, it looks like a chainsaw blade.
But anyway, they are both just really sweet, Dustin helped me get to my doc appointment yesterday and to the pharmacy, and today, they both just stopped by to see how I was doing.
Stacey said that after my next surgery, she'll come by anytime I need help, help clean the house, help me take showers, shave my legs, brush my hair, stuff like that, because with the halo brace on, it's going to be very difficult to do things by myself.
I had been telling Dustin yesterday while sitting in the waiting room at the docs, about how awesome my teens are and have been after my surgeries, they helped me in and out of bed, in and out of the bathroom, they have even shaved my legs, brushed my hair, they do all of the grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning, and so he told Stacey, and she was like well hell, this single mama needs help sometimes so let's help her.
I thought that was really sweet of them to even offer, and who knows, I may take them up on it sometimes if I'm having a wicked rough time after surgery.

Oh, Sebastian just went out and got the mail, and in today's mail was my settlement check from the Airborne class action lawsuit.
I got a check for $34.95.
Nice!

I'm starting to get more into the whole green thing, I'm recycling more things instead of just tossing them in the trash, I am slowly replacing all of the light bulbs in my house with CFLs as the old ones burnout, and I'm trying to use less and less electricity around the house.
I make sure that the teens turn off all lights and computers, fans etc, when they leave the rooms, I make them take shorter showers, and I make sure that they recycle what we can according to our city's recycling rules.
I'd love to get some led home lighting   around the house, like holiday lights, instead of the usual tree lights we have.
There's so many kinds of led lights for Christmas trees, indoor and outdoor lights too.
LEDs use way less electricity than normal light bulbs, they last longer, and they can be recycled when they no longer work.

I also recently joined a new website for going green, it's called Green Hangout.
There's a button for it in my sidebar, but it's a pretty cool site if you're looking for ways to go even greener.
They have forums where you can post your tips and tricks for recycling, saving electricity, water, and money.
It's a pretty good site, you should check it out and sign up, the more people that join, the more ideas we can all learn.
They have also said that they will be having contests where you can win money by posting pictures of something using a keyword that they will post, and the best picture that perfectly shows that "green" word, that person will win money.
But you can't win if you don't join the site, so hop on over and check it out, post up your recycling tips and tricks, and together we can help clean up landfills, save electricity, and make the world a better, cleaner place for future generations.

Most of my readers know by now that I receive social security disability and Medicare because of my spine and health issues, so I post about it every now and then.
I'm usually talking about the Medicare portion of it, the medical insurance and part D drug coverage.
Most of my meds are covered by Humana, the part D provider I chose, but some aren't, that's just the way it is with all insurances though.

My long time readers know how hard it was for me to even get my SSDI, I applied in April 2001, and it wasn't granted until December 23rd 2005.
I was denied twice.
When I first applied I didn't have any help, and so when I was denied, I didn't know where to go or who to get help from.
I ended up getting a lawyer to help me, but there are other places you can get help for applying and going through the process.
 
Allsup is one of those places.
They have a 97% success rate helping people from starting the application process all the way through until it's approved.
They've been in business since 1984, and they have helped over 110,000 people get the SSDI benefits and Medicare they deserve.
Having representation is so very important when you have to go through this process, you have no idea what you're doing, there's a million complicated forms, they make you go to their doctors, you have to get letters from all of your doctors, it's just so long and complicated, you really need the help.
If I had had help from the start, I probably wouldn't have been denied that first time, and if I had the right help, I probably wouldn't have been denied the second time.
If you're worried about how much having representation will cost you, don't.
The fees cannot exceed 25% of your total retroactive award benefit amount, or the cap which is $5,300.
This fee is set by SSDI, and no organization or lawyer can go above it, so you're not going to get ripped off by getting help.

I know a few people who are currently going through this process right now and struggling with all of the paperwork, and 1 of them has been denied.
I told her she needed to get help, and now that I know about Allsup, I'll be calling her as soon as I'm done with this post and telling her about them.
Every time she and I talk, she's always asking me for help with it, and just because I've been through it, it doesn't make me an expert, far from it.
I'm currently attempting to read and understand a letter they sent me a few days ago.
More mumbo jumbo legalese that I just don't understand.
All I could figure out so far is that my disability is ongoing and they will revisit my case in 2012.
That's all I can figure out from 10 pages of information.
It's very stressful dealing with all of this, so definitely get help with it if you're going to be applying or are in process right now.
You're going to need it.

The new med, the 40MG Oxycontin, is much stronger than the 30's, much stronger.
I had a very rough night with it, I was physically sick from it, puked like 4 times, couldn't eat, was wicked dizzy.
I spent almost the whole night just laying on the couch.
I think the problem with it is because I hadn't gotten any sleep in days, I was exhausted, I hadn't eaten much at all, so it hit me super, super hard.
I am adjusting much better to it today that's for sure.
I slept all night, didn't wake up till almost noon, ate a big breakfast, and so I am handling it much better today than I did last night.

I told you on Thursday about how things went with my pain doc appointment, and that he gave me a new med, and that Walgreen's said my insurance didn't cover it, so I was only able to pick up one of the meds.
Walgreen's had a new girl working behind the counter with the pharmacist, the new girl is the one who told me that my insurance, Humana, didn't cover it.
The cost out of pocket was going to be $295.00, that's basically the price of a night's stay of some luxury hotel rooms.
Way too much.
A friend of mine called me on Friday around noon to see how I was doing, I explained how things had gone, and he said, "Kat, you cannot be without that med, you'll go through the hydros faster, you'll be in pain, I'll come pick you up after work and we'll go pick it up, you can pay me back later."
So I called all of the pharmacies that I have gone to to get price quotes, some of them sell the meds for a little less, we found that Publix pharmacy had them for $283.95, about $11.00 cheaper than Walgreen's, so we went there.
He had given me the money, I sat and waited, the lady called my name, and said that will be $240.
I was like oh wow, cool, that's less than the price quoted on the phone.
So I counted out $240.00, and handed it to her, she said "No, $2.40, 2 dollars and 40cents."
I was confused and asked, and she asked me if I was Kat Cooper at my address and phone number, did I have Humana, I said yes, she told me that my insurance covered it.
I asked her to double check it because I had been told that my insurance didn't cover it.
She checked again, it did, I paid the $2.40, and we left.
I gave my friend all of his money back, and we came home.

I called Walgreen's and complained.
I told the lady who answered the phone what had happened Thursday around noon, told her to look it up, she did, I asked why I was told my insurance didn't cover it when it did.
I had to borrow money, go all the way across town to a different pharmacy where I was prepared to pay a whole lot of money for it and it ended up being that my insurance did cover it, that it wasn't right to make me go all the way across town to do that, I'm disabled, I choose that Walgreen's because it's close enough to my home to walk home if I need to.
I asked her what went wrong, did the girl enter my name wrong, did she enter the medication wrong, enter my insurance number wrong, what happened, because it was covered.
She said she didn't know, but while we were on the phone, she entered all my info and the drug, and yup, it was covered, she apologized several times, said she didn't want to lose my business, she would make sure to pass the information on to the pharmacy manager so that the new girl can be trained better or whatever they have to do because that wasn't right at all.
$295.00 is a big mistake, my insurance costs me $20.00 per month, my co-pays for meds range between $2.40-$5.80 depending on the medication, and this one was only $2.40.
That was a big mistake, it almost cost me owing somebody a lot of money, it made me have to go all the way across town, all because somebody made a big mistake.

In today's mail, I got a packet from the new pain doc I'll be seeing on the 23rd.
Yup, he's very, very strict with his patients.
I read through it briefly, he does random drug testing of his patients for any substances that are illegal, any of the prescribed medicines are showing up in the urine in higher quantities, and it does say something about drug safes or other secure locations for the medicines.
There are 6 forms in the packet that must be signed, all of them are contracts with him and his patients.
That's fine with me.
I don't take anything I'm not supposed to, but I do take some vitamins and supplements, and I will write those down for him so he knows what I take when he does the urine tests.
Heck, I may even just bag everything up that I take, and take it in so he can see everything I take.
I don't want to upset this guy, because if you screw up with him, you are kicked out of his office, he reports you to every other pain doc in town, as well as put your name on the pharmacy watch lists as a drug abuser.
So yeah, I'll take everything I do take in, let him see it all, and follow his rules to the letter.
What all do I take?
Ok, here's everything I take every single day:
Hydrocodone 10/325 x 6 per day
Oxycontin 40MG x 4 per day
Toprol XL 25MG x 1/2 per day (heart/blood pressure med)
Cal/Mag/Zinc x 4 per day (for bone growth)
BioQuench antioxidant x 1 per day (cuz my immune system sucks)
Publix brand multivitamin w/iron x 1 per day (cuz my immune system sucks)
Publix brand Tylenol for headaches as needed (cuz pan meds don't work on headaches, surprisingly)
Publix brand stool softener as needed (opiate pan relievers block you up)
Walgreen's Wal-som sleep-aid x 1 (as needed to try and sleep)

This may be long, sorry.

I went to my pain doc appointment this morning, and let me tell you, it was just a messy day.
My pain doc does sports pain, rehab kind of stuff, general pain management, helps people wean off of pain drugs.
That was my original intent when I started seeing him in 2007, to get off of the drugs.
I had my 1st surgery, expected it to be my only surgery, so our goal was to start weaning me off of them, and we were.
I had gone from taking over 300 Hydrocodone 10/325's per month, down to just 60, and we were well on our way to being off of them completely.
Since then, I've had another surgery, (September '08) and will be having another.
The pain medications I am on are very strong, I am not going to lie to anyone about what I take.
I take Hydrocodone 10/325 8 times per day.
I take Oxycontin 30mg 6 times per day.
That was until today.
See, the pharmaceutical companies that make the Oxycontin 30's, there were 3 of them, 2 of them were told to stop making them for some reason, so that leaves 1 manufacturer to create enough supply for the entire country.
They cannot keep up with the demand.
So the Oxycontin 30's are out of the question, they cannot be gotten by any of the local pharmacies, so my pain doc prescribed me a new dose, 40mg Oxycontin, timed release, for 4 times per day.
When I went to the pharmacy to get them and the Hydrocodone 10/325's quantity 180 per month,  I was told my insurance does not cover them, they cost $295.00 out of pocket, I simply don't have the money, so I only picked up the Hydrocodone 10/325s.

Also, my pain doc does sports injuries, rehab, he works mainly on smaller injuries and helping people get better so they can stop taking medication.
Because of my surgical history, because I'll be having another surgery, he decided that he cannot continue seeing me, and he referred me to another pain doc who works with people like me, surgical patients with a history and a future history of needing more pain management than he is capable of providing.
I came home and called the new doc, made an appointment, I see him on Monday the 23rd at 3:15pm, and hopefully he can help me.

There's another reason my pain doc has decided to transfer me to another doctor.
Last month here in Sarasota, a 17 year old boy broke into a house and stole the pain medication of a man dying of cancer.
He stole several bottles of heavy duty narcotics including Oxycontn 30's.
He went home and overdosed on the pills he stole.
Please remember that part, he broke into a home, stole the medication, and overdosed on it.

His parents found his body and the pill bottles.
In their grief and anger, they decided that somebody must pay for this, so they have hired a lawyer who must have found some loophole, and they are suing the doctor who prescribed the medication.

Did you get that?!
The parents are suing a doctor who prescribed medication to his patient, the patient had his home broken into by the 17 year old, the 17 year old overdosed, and so the parents are suing the doctor for negligent homicide.

I don't understand how the parents, even the lawyer, can think this is the right thing to do.
The doctor didn't prescribe them to the 17 year old and then the kid died, the doctor prescribed them to his pateint who was dying of cancer, the 17 year old BROKE IN, STOLE the medicine, and died, and so how is it even remotely negligent homicide on the doctor's part?!?!
I don't understand why the judge hasn't throw out this lawsuit either, it's not right.
How is the doctor even remotely responsible for this kid dying?
The kid broke into a home, stole the medicine, took a lot of it and died.
It's not the doctor's fault at all, it's the kid's fault.
He was a dumb ass kid who stole medicine and took too much and died.
How the parents can blame the doctor is beyond me.
They need to bury their son and shut the fuck up in my opinion.
Their son was a thief and a drug addict, the doctor had nothing at all to do with what their kid did, and for them to sue the doc is just stupid.
Their kid was stupid and so are the parents.

But thanks to them, doctors are scared to prescribe the medication, they are afraid that if someone breaks in and steals it, that they will get sued as well.
So I'm being sent to a new pain doc with more legal stuff than he has, more doctor/patient contracts than he has, he may even use medicine safes that can only be opened on a timer by the patient, and if opened at the wrong time, and alarm sounds at his (the doctors) office, and the doctor calls the patient to check on why they are opening it at the wrong time.
I don't know for sure, but that may be what I am in for at this new doctor.
In the mean time, I only have one of my medications because my insurance doesn't cover the other one, I can't afford to pick it up, my tax refund still isn't in, so I may end up having to wait until I get that money to pick it up, or wait until the 23rd when I see this new doctor, and he will have to prescribe me something that my insurance does cover.
I haven't been feeling all that well between the fall and just generally sick, so my pay that I just got a few minutes ago by paypal, isn't even close to being enough to pick it up either.
Nothing I can do but wait it out, hope the one med will be enough to get me through until I either get the money or get a new script.

It started getting cold here again, while other people up north are getting snow, we're getting the cold that usually accompanies it.
I could barely move, heck, I can still barely move.
I really hate the cold weather, this is Florida dammit, it's not supposed to be or get cold here.
I had to go out a few times to get some stuff, and I only have sandals that I can wear, I still have a ton of trouble putting on any shoes, sneakers, my combat boots, so all I can wear are my sandals.
It was so cold, I was wishing I had a pair of those fluff or is it wool(?) lined UGG boots.
They aren't that pretty looking, but my feet were freezing, and I was so wishing I had a pair of winter boots that I could wear.
Those Uggs just slide on from what I hear, so they wouldn't be as hard for me to put on.
My feet are still are freezing and I have the space heater on.
No socks, I can't put those on either, so I have ths space heater aimed right at my feet and they are still so cold.

I was so miserable the last few days, my joints and muscles are all stiff and sore, and I've been in so so much pain, that I dug around in my drawer and looked in my little lock-box where I found a bottle of Somas that the pain doc prescribed to me months ago, but I hate taking them because they make me sleep and feel all yucky, but I was hurting so bad and couldn't move, so I took one and promptly passed out for 4 hours today.
When I woke up, I couldn't even think straight for like 4 hours after, I felt completely out of it, I felt strung out, and I absolutely hate that. 

I also found out today that the medicine that my pain doc prescribes me every month is no longer available.
I have my Walgreen's account set up to notify me of changes with any of the medicines that I take, price increases, when generics become available, and discontinuations.
Today, I received an alert that the pain medicine Roxicodone 30mg, is going to become far more difficult to fill by any pharmacies in the entire US.
There were only 3 manufacturers in the US, and 2 of them got shut down about 2 months ago, and the third is having extreme difficulties keeping up with the demand from doctors and pharmacies, because the compounds to make them are becoming scarce.
No explanation was given for the 2 manufacturers having to shut down, but what this means is, that the pain doc and I are going to have to find me a medication that works exactly like those did.
After getting the notice, I called my Walgreen's that I usually pick them up at, and CVS, Bee Ridge Pharmacy, and about 20 of the Publix pharmacies between North Bradenton and Venice, and just for the hell of it, asked them all if they had any leftovers in stock or if they'd be getting any more shipments of them by the 12th.
Every single pharmacy said no, they were out, not getting any more shipments, and quite a few of them explained about the manufacturers shutting down and the only one left having trouble keeping up with demand.
A few of the pharmacies even told me to tell my doc to stop writing scripts for them because there is no way any pharmacy in the whole state is going to have any left in stock at all, and if they have some right now, they probably won't by the end of the week.

That really sucks, it's the only pain med out of about 30 that we tried, that actually worked really well and didn't mess with my head at all.
I hate the pain meds that screw up my head and my thinking, I hate that strung out feeling a wicked lot, hate it with a passion, and now we're going to have to try and find another med that works really well.
Maybe he can just prescribe me the lower doses, the 15mg or the 20mg, those are still being made, and he can just have me take more of them to equal the dose that I was taking, the 30mg.
If he prescribes me the 15's, I can just take 2 of those at a time and get the same effect.
I hope that we can do that instead of having to try an all new medicine, I think I've tried almost all of them, and almost all of them just screwed with my head so bad I couldn't function, I felt paranoid, my skin crawled, no one could touch me, I couldn't put my legs together while sleeping because it made my skin feel all itchy and crawly.
I really, really hope that that's what we can do.  

I have been going through a rough patch these last few weeks, I'm stressed out and worried about the upcoming surgery whenever that will be, I had lost trust and faith in people due to some nasty people with nothing better to do than harass me online.
I'm no stranger that, but it's still never fun to deal with.
I've been tired but not sleeping, then sleeping when I should have been awake, having blood pressure issues, and just all kinds of stuff.

I lashed out at everyone around me, my kids, friends in the off line world, friends in the online world, I lashed out on the forums for my job.
I blew up, just absolutely exploded on everyone around me, I had reached my breaking point and exploded.
I felt terrible after I had done it, I deleted the thread on the work forums, I apologized to both my friends online and off, and have been trying to find other ways to deal with all of the issues that have come up in my life recently.
I've been doing a lot of laying down and listening to music, playing games, watching movies.
Maybe those things aren't exactly the way to deal with things, but they take my mind off of everything.

And then just when I needed to know I was cared about, that everything I do IS noticed, that people really do want me to be ok, people showed me that I was.
 
I told you how some friends all got together and sent me the NuWave Pro Oven that I had been wanting to get so that the teens won't have to eat junk food, and take-out or delivery food, while I recover from that upcoming surgery, and it really does rock, it's freaking awesome.
And then about 10 minutes ago, the FedEx guy knocked on the door.
Mark got up and answered it because I was laying down on the couch with 3 of the 4 kitties, (another stress reliever for me) and it was just an envelope.
The sent from address was from Publix, my local grocery store.
Inside, I found 3 gift cards for $100 each, but no note, no sent from name or address.
I laid there on the couch asking out loud, "Who sent these?!"
I couldn't figure out who sent them, I laid there racking my brain as to who could have sent them, and then I remembered an email I received earlier today in reply to 1 I sent out this morning, and this was written at the end of it;
       "Be on the lookout for something we sent over also."
So I *think* I know who sent it, I did email them, no reply yet*, but it has to be them.
They know who they are, so thank you, it helps me so so much, you don't even know.
Now I can go ahead and start stocking up on any meats that are on sale and stick them in the freezer so that the teens can cook for themselves with the NuWave oven, as well as get regular groceries too.
Money and food is always a source of stress in my life.
I have so many doctor's appointments to pay for, medicines that aren't covered by my insurance to pay for, and transportation to all of those appointments, that money left over for food is tricky.
I don't have a car and no license either, (Thanks State of Florida!) so getting everywhere I have to go is either by cab or friend with helping to pay for gas.
I swear, money issues is one of the things that keeps me awake at night.

So yeah, just when I needed it, just when I needed to know that people do care, that I don't have to lose all my faith in people for the stupid things other people do, people showed me that they do care, that I am not dealing with all of this stuff alone.

By the time I finished typing this, the people who sent the gift cards responded, it was them.
Thank you guys and staff, it is so very much appreciated.
 

As Mark was getting into bed last night, his bed make a wicked creaking noise, like it was breaking.
I said we'd have to take off the mattress and take a look at it today, I don't want him asleep and have the bed fall to the floor.
The bed frames are old, my sis bought them at a yard sale when we first moved here 12 years ago.
They were already about 10-15 years old then.
They are a solid pine set of bunk beds that can be taken apart and used as twin beds.
They've been a part for about 7 years now.

The teens are bigger now, taller, heavier, they may need new beds soon.
Their mattresses are still in good shape, but it seems that the really old bed frames are finally starting to fall apart.
Plus, the teens are bigger, taller, they are twin beds, but Mark is 6foot 2, and Sebastian is 6feet, so they are getting just a bit too tall for them.
I may have to start shopping around for new beds soon, especially if the wood is starting to break.

Have you ever thought of furthering your education, getting a degree or another degree, to help make making money easier?
There are so many online schools, but how do you chose the best one for your needs?
Well, if you're interested in project management, being able to lead teams of other people, then you might need a CAPM certificate and Saint Joseph's University might be the way to go for you.

The link I provided, shows all of the courses they offer and what the median salaries are for those positions.
They offer the following certificates for furthering your education and making more money.
Engineering Managers, Construction Managers, Management Analysts, Natural Sciences Managers, and Computer and Information Systems Managers.

If I was already a professional, had a business degree already, and was able to work outside the home, (maybe someday again) this is something I'd be interested in doing.
There's so much information there, and the fact that you can get a certificate from home, is a major bonus.
So many of us are already busy, working, raising our kids, who has the time to go to college?
But being able to get an education from home on your own time in a field that interests you, is something I'm sure a lot of people could find the time to do.
I've always wanted to get a degree, but not really sure in what.
Maybe one of these days I'll figure that out, and maybe I'll choose Saint Joseph's University to do it.

I am one of those people that loves to look at all of the things that I wish I had the money to buy, adds them to my wishlist, and then when I have the money, I make the decision among the 3-4 things I placed on my list.
But every time an online retailer says they are having a sale or they are Buy.com and always have weekly deals, I am so there checking them out.

Now that the digital converter box is is attached to the outside of the house, and all installed correctly inside, my tv is working and looking beautiful, I no longer really need to look at a new digital tv, so now I get to do some wishful shopping at other things I would like to have someday.

So now I'm looking at a laptop, this laptop to be exact, an Acer Aspire One A150.
I even like the color it comes in, the one pictured on the site, I don't know if it comes in other colors, but I like this sapphire blue one very much.
You can click the image to see it bigger, and also click the link to see other views of it.
















If I had a laptop, then on days when I'm not feeling well, having trouble moving around, sitting and stuff, I could lay in my bed and take advantage of our wireless router.

I could lay in my bed, be all toasty and warm under my comforter, have my kitties at my side, and get some work done.
My blogs have been totally neglected the last few days, and generally get neglected whenever the weather kicks me down, so having a laptop, I could work in bed.
I could post to my blogs, I could read everyone else blogs, I could stay on top of everything instead of laying in bed or on the couch feeling miserable and guilty because I'm letting people down.
I don't know if other people see me being absent as letting them down, it's just how I feel.
I have tremendous guilt when I'm not able to get my work done due to my health, or help people with things they need help with.

Anyway, I really like this laptop, and I love Acer computers anyway.
I now own 2 Acers, mine and the one I bought my sons, they are great computers, never have any issues with them, they are wicked easy to upgrade and just a wicked nice product at great prices.
Buy.com's normal price is $389.00, and right now they have it at $50.00 off, making it just $329.00.
That's a really great price, plus, as always, free shipping!
I love how they always have free shipping on almost every single item they sell, that's a huge bonus, especially in today's economy.
Paying shipping on large and/or expensive items, can be a deciding factor in whether or not people actually buy the product, so yeah, free shipping is a major bonus.

Here's just a few of it's features which make me want this Acer Aspire One A150 laptop even more;
It has a 160GB HDD, 8.9" WSVGA, 802.11b/g, Webcam, Multi-in-one card reader, and it has Microsoft XP Home which I absolutely love.
All of our computers have been Windows XP home, and it's by far the easiest version of Windows to work with.
Another feature that is awesome for me because I'm still on weight-lifting restrictions and will be for a very long time to come, (another surgery coming up soon) it only weighs 2.2lbs.
I'm still only allowed to lift things that weigh 5lbs or less, so yeah, a super lightweight laptop would be awesome for me!
All of the reviews of the Acer Aspire One A150 are really, really good too, everyone who has purchased it, according to the reviews, absolutely loves it, the only negative thing most reviews are saying is that it doesn't have a dvd drive, but all of them that said that, said they used a portable usb dvd drive, and that made it perfect to use in their opinions.

So now when I get my taxes back, I might just have to get this laptop.
Even though it probably won't be part of the weekly deals anymore, it's still an incredible buy at $389.00.
My sister just got a new Dell laptop with about the same exact features a few months ago, and it cost about 4 times as much as this one, and the features are almost duplicate except that hers does have a dvd drive.
So yeah, total no-brainer, I'm seriously thinking this will be part of my income tax refund shopping.
This and a new cell phone.

Ok, not all of the crazy drivers live to the north of me, but I'd say a very large majority of them do.
It always makes me glad and feel a bit safer to know that Mindy has good car insurance when she drives me to my appointments in Tampa and Safety Harbor..LOL

I know I just laughed, but seriously, when we were lost and driving all over half the state, other drivers were just all over the road, speeding, swapping lanes with no blinkers, motorcycle riders not wearing full gear, taking off from red lights doing wheelies, people zooming through traffic on the interstate only to end up exactly 1 car lentgh in front of us.
The people out there were crazy!

Honestly, I do not understand how people can live in Tampa and the surrounding big cities like St. Pete, Clearwater etc.
I love big cities, I love being in big cities at night, the lights, the sounds, the millions of things to do, but I do not like living in them.
I like going home at night to my nice and super duper quiet street that I live on.

I used to live in a fairly big city in Maine, Portland, but I was much younger, I was only 19 and 20 when I lived and worked there.
I loved the hustle and bustle, the constant movement of people at all times of day and night, but I lived in a really nice apartment building that was well insulated.
Once inside, you couldn't hear all that noise outside at all.
It was peace and quiet indoors, and I loved that part of living in the city.
I could go out and enjoy all the sights, sounds, and smells, and then go back home to my peaceful apartment and feel like I was far removed from it all.

But Tampa?
OMG, that place is insane!
I simply cannot stand how it is there trying to drive somewhere.
The traffic is just insane, and so so many cars I saw had damage to their front or back ends, or a door smashed in, and it's really no wonder the way that people drive there. 

I met with my surgeon again this afternoon, it was a hellish adventure even getting there.
I missed the exit by 2 exits, called people for directions, and ended up going all over fucking Tampa, Hillsborough, Land O' Lakes, Ocala, and several other places before finally arriving there over an hour late.
Lucky for me my doc is a super understanding guy, and that Mindy has the patience of a saint, because I was thisclose to murdering the next person who gave us fucked up directions.


The good news is that he can fix my neck issues, but no date yet.
He wants to wait 2 more months, talk with some other specialist surgeons in this field, he's sending me for another MRI, another CT scan, and back to my pain manager doc until we pick a date for the surgery.

The bad news is that fixing my neck comes with a great deal of risks.
I have to decide if I'm willing to take those risks, and it's a great deal to think about, actually, it's overwhelming.

He has only 2 possible ways of fixing me, and they both come with the exact same risks.
There is a 10% chance of total paralysis, about a 10% chance of not being able to breathe on my own for about 3 months, I would end up having a trach tube installed, that hole thing they put in people's necks.
Other patients who have had this type of revision surgery have had the breathing issue, but after a few months, they are able to breathe on their own again.
And I WILL be in a full halo brace for a minimum of 3 months.

If things go wrong, I would end up being cared for by others for either just a few months, or for the rest of my life.
This is a lot to deal with, it's a great deal to take in, absorb, so I'm really hoping that after he talks with other specialists, that they will have a better idea of how to proceed, maybe another idea with a little less risks.
He did multiple xrays, he also took some still photos and a short video with his cell phone camera, so he can show the other surgeons my range of motion issues that I'm having, just how far my head is stuck down etc.

So anyway, forgive me if I'm not super miss happy go fucking jolly for a few days, I need some time to take this all in and adjust to what I learned today, and be hopeful that he can come up with a better plan, a better way to fix me with less risks.

I received a Visa gift card for Christmas from a friend, and I went to use it the other day.
I went through the regular checkout as I had other purchases and was going to use the card in full to pay for part of my purchase.
Now either the cashier doesn't understand how Visa gift cards work, or she wasn't trained very well on the  POS systems that the grocery store uses.
I think she wasn't trained correctly.

I worked in retail and grocery for many years as well as many other types of work, so I know those systems really well myself.
The cashier tried like 5 times to get it to take and she couldn't get it to go.
I explained it to her, enter the amount, $25, hit credit, hit enter, done, she said no, it doesn't work that way.
She finally gave up and had to call a manager over who did it exactly as I told her to, and it was done in like 3 seconds.
I looked at the cashier, her face turned red, and the manager explained it to her exactly as i had said.
The cashier apologized, but the line behind me was now long and the people were visibly upset, but hey, not my fault, the store should have trained her how to use the gift cards instead of having to call for help when she couldn't figure it out.

As I had said, if this all turned out to be my banks fault, I would apologize to ABC Distributing in email and here on my blog, so I am.

Melissa from ABC Distributing has been working on this like she said to me in email, by phone, and even leaving a comment on my blog, and she finally got to the bottom of the excessive shipping/hold money in the amount of $146.04.

ABC's billing specialist spoke with someone from my credit card company, Demetria, and she said that they released the hold on 1/5/09.
Well no, they actually hadn't, I would have noticed it, I would have seen it, I scoured my online CC statements repeatedly because that is a lot of money to be held for so long.

After Melissa emailed me that information this morning, I logged into my CC records online, and what do ya know?
My account balance is magically $146.04 more than what I had in there last night, and really early this morning around 5:45am when I got up with the teens to go to school.
I've been obsessively checking my account balance since this whole thing started as I said in this post.
I have been super duper careful with my money since this all started, I've been checking the balance daily, on some days, I checked it nearly every hour, I went over it with a fine tooth comb, the find feature in my browser, I used a regular calculator and the calculator that comes with the accessories on my pc.
I had my son look it over, they did not release the hold on 1/5/09, they released it this morning sometime before Melissa emailed me around 9:45am.

I prefer to shop online because I don't handle large crowds too well, I absolutely hate going to places like the Westgate mall because of the large crowds of rude and pushy people, and I probably could have found these same comforters at the mall or another brick and mortar store, but I don't like having to go shopping at stores, I don't have the transportation to go shopping all of the time either, so shopping online is how I have to do things.
But when shopping online you do take a risk, and I'm usually very careful which retailers I shop with, I've only shopped at the most well known and trusted online retailers for years and years now, and this experience, while not ABC Distributings fault, it really turned me off.
I was very, very upset, I felt like I had been ripped off big time, and as I posted and other bloggers posted to their blogs trying to help me and spread the word, people who read those blogs started to leave comments about ABC Distributing , making me feel like an even bigger idiot for not doing my online shopping homework. (Thanks Charlotte)

But Melissa really did do what she said she was going to do, and that was to get to the bottom of this.
She emailed me, she called me for my credit cards phone number so they could call them, and they told her they had released the hold on the 5th, which they did not.
So my anger was entirely misplaced.
I should have been angry at my bank, and I am, they have already been called and I've yelled at them this morning after getting Melissa's email about it, and seeing the hold money appear in my account this morning, so I do owe ABC Distributing an apology for making such a huge stink over this.
What happened was not their fault, even though at the time due to the way the statements looked, it appeared that way.

So I am truly sorry to ABC Distrbuting for making such a huge fuss, and I apologized to Melissa in an email reply to her this morning explaining that it's such a large amount of money to lose or to be held for so long, especially in this economy, and she completely understood.

I also want to thank everyone for all of their help and support during this whole thing.
I was totally losing my mind at the thought of being ripped off, I had no idea what to do or how to do it, and so many wonderful people came here and let comments, Twittered it, blogged it, and helped me get some attention to this, which I believe, is why they investigated this so thoroughly and found the answer.
So to all of you who helped me, thank you, and to ABC Distributing, I am sorry for making such a huge fuss over something that was not your fault, and thank you for lighting the fire that made my bank really release the hold on the funds.

Once again, my body is simply exhausted, I know I over did things today, so I tried to go to bed like an hour ago.
Nope.
My eyes wouldn't shut, my brain wouldn't shut off, insomnia strikes again.
I can take naps like nobodies business on my couch, but my bed seems to make me wake up.
It's not that it's uncomfortable, it's very comfortable, but it's not like it's one of those sleep number bed deals.
It's just a standard spring coil mattress.
Oh well.

So I decided to get up and do some organizing and stuff, and went on the hunt for a really good coupon organizer.
I don't like the little accordion folder I have, it's sloppy.
I want like a binder with clear pockets so that I can put all of my coupons in it and take it with me, and then as I go through the store I can just flip through it as I see things on sale and want and need, and see if I have a coupon for that item.
You wouldn't believe how much professional coupon organizers go for, it's nuts.
So I have a brand new binder that was left over from school shopping, 1 of the teens didn't need it, and I'm going to get some clear pocket inserts from like a card or hobby shop, for like baseball cards ya know?
And I'll just make my own coupon binder.
It's way cheaper to do it that way.

I try so hard to be good with my money, I am attempting to pay off some debts slowly, not buy things that we don't need, don't buy all of those impulse food or other items in the grocery store end caps and checkout lanes, and I always try to find the best buy that I possibly can on every single thing that I do buy.

I am completely current on all of my monthly utility bills, I paid off 3 old medical bills, I canceled the 2 magazine subscriptions that I had, I have been working on paying down 5 other old bills, 4 medical and 1 really old shop by catalog debt that I had with one of those big named catalog order places. (give you a hint, it's initials are F.H.)
I have owed on that one for like 6 years, and I am paying it off now that I can start counting on a pretty typical monthly income.

I've got my budget all worked out for every month, and I'm doing really good so far.
I know I splurged a little bit when I got my reimbursement, but I also took that money and paid my rent, all of this months bills, and paid off those 3 old medical bills, so I think I'm doing better than I have been in the past.
I'm trying so hard to get my finances in order this year, really get a good grip on them, pay things off, start putting some money away if I can, so that's why this situation burns me up so bad.
Like Jade said in my comments, "because not everyone always has an extra $150 that they can afford to have tied up", and that's my issue with the whole thing.
I really can't afford to have my money tied up like that, not when I'm trying so hard to tackle my finances this year.
I've even taken Oprah up on her offer to get Suze Orman's newest book for free, "Suze Orman's 2009 Action Plan".
I'm going to download it, read it, and implement it.
I'm going to take control of my money as best I can this year, so I can't be having my money tied up, I can't be spending money on stuff we don't need, no more impulse buys, and I plan on using more coupons every single time I go grocery shopping.
I didn't take any with me last night and I should have.
Quite a few of the items I bought, I realized I had coupons for when I got back home.
D'oh!
I did save some money though, Publix was having a pretty decent sale, and I managed to save $17.87 in in-store and advertised savings anyway.
If I had brought my coupons, I could have saved an additional $13.00.
Oh well, live and learn, and get a new coupon organizer soon.

I sent an email to ABC Distributing customer service over the outrageous shipping charges they charged me for the 3 comforters, and they sent the following reply back;

"Dear Customer,
Thank you for writing abc distributing.
A copy of the shipping statement has been mailed to the mailing address provided.
Please review the information and contact us if you have any further questions or comments. We value your business.
If you have any questions in the future, please let us know.
Sincerely,
John Marquette
abc eCommerce Customer Support
abc distributing"


So they are snail mailing me an itemized statement that outlines how they came to decide the crazy high shipping charges that they have charged me for the shipping of the 3 comforters.
Two are full/queen sized, and 1 is king sized, but the 1 they shipped separately is mine, it's a queen, and they charged me $46.08 to ship a comforter and box that weighs 9.40 lbs.
I copied down the tracking number they gave me for UPS and went to the site and pasted it in.
The box weighs less than 10lbs, but somehow they determined that it should cost $46.08.
I can't wait to see that itemized statement on how they figured out that was the right amount to charge for that.


















I've sent boxes weighing 25-35lbs from Florida to Maine and it cost me less than $30, so how they got that amount for a box weighing less than 10lbs is sure going to be interesting.

Christine is mad about this as well, and to prove that I'm being ripped, she went to 2 different shopping sites and put 3 full/queen comforters in her shopping cart and went to checkout to see the shipping charges.
Go read the far better prices those sites gave her.

The even shittier thing about this if I return the comforters, all they will refund me is the purchase price, not the shipping charges.
That's how they make so much money.
Sure, you get a really good deal on what you buy, but they make their profit from the shipping charges.
So when the comforters get here, the 1st package is supposed to be here today according to ABC's shipment tracking they sent me, even though UPS has only received the billing information, but if when it gets here it's a total piece of shit and I want to return it, or all of them, I have to pay to ship them back and I will only be refunded the purchases price, not any of the shipping costs or the return shipping costs.
I'm confused about whether or not they will do reverse shipping charges if I send them back, it's confusing I admit.

To the people who recommended ABC Distributing to me in the first place, I could fucking shoot you right now.
Did you not pay attention to how much they charged you for the shipping of your bedding when you bought it?!

The first posts in this whole thing are here and here.

In the post below, I talked about the crazy high shipping charge that ABC Distributing charged me to ship just one of the comforters I bought for us, and now they are finally shipping the other 2 as one shipment, but the price is the exact same as if they were shipping them separately!





Ok, so the comforters cost me $146.04, the 1st shipping charge was $46.08, the 2nd shipping charge is $95.80, so my total for the 3 comforters is $287.92.
That is crazy!
The shipping charges are almost exactly the same price as what I bought!
$287.92 divided by 2 = $143.96
It's only off by $2.08.
The 2 comforters in one shipment are being shipped at the cost of $47.90 each!

I would return them and get my money back when they get here, but their return policy is that you can return them, but ONLY for the price of the product, NOT the shipping charge.

"What is your return policy? "
"If you are not completely satisfied with all or part of your order, simply return it to us for a replacement, credit or refund on your invoice for the purchase price."
 
Never again.
Never.
I learned my lesson big time and the hard way.
Never buy anything from ABC Distributing ever!

I'm in like this work holding pattern when it comes to all of this internet money making stuff.
I want the money, I want the success, but I don't want to be one of those over the top pushy bloggers that I loathe.

Don't get me wrong, I am happy for their success, but I hate the way they go about it.
I'm sick and tired of seeing messages on Twitter from bloggers saying enter this contest, I don't have many entries, yet when I get there to check it out, almost feeling sorry for them that they didn't get a lot of entries,  I see that they have 300+ people entered into a random drawing for 1 single item.
I'm tired of seeing people outright ask advertisers on Twitter, to send them a product to review and give away.
I'm tired of the posts about making money, tired of the posts where they discuss how much money they've made.

That is my biggest peeve of all.
To me, it is absolutely disgusting, and exceptionally tacky to post about how much money you make from all of your paid blogging income sources.
It's gross.
I always think of it like this, if you were in an elevator with 12 people, would you just start talking about how much money you make?
If you held an office job and on payday when the checks are delivered, would you open yours up, stand up, and shout to the entire office how much you made that week?
No, you wouldn't, so why do people do it on their blogs?
To brag about what a great blogger they think they are?
To try and show advertisers that they are the blogger to work with, because look at how much money other adverts spend with them?
Talking about how much you earn is tacky.
Tack-y.
And I'm not alone, I saw this tweet from someone tonight;

Enough already. Making money online. Hasn't anyone got anything else to blog about?

It's not just me feeling this way about the subject, people are starting to be so freaking over it.

But therein lies my dilemma.
I want to be a truly successful blogger, but I don't want to be pushy about it, I don't want to be obnoxious about it, I don't want to ask adverts to give me stuff.
If an advert wants to work with me, then I'd like them to contact me, not the other way around.
I'm not afraid to ask for things after they contact me, like a product to review, maybe one to give away, but I just don't have it in me to contact them first, and start that first contact off by asking for things.
No hello I am so and so, but a straight up Twitter request for products and/or accessories.
I cringed when I read that.
I cringed and said out-loud "Holy hell tacky".

My dearest readers, if you ever see me starting to be one of those really successful bloggers who lets it get to my head, and you see me straight up asking for stuff, send me an email, send me a tweet, tell me that I am becoming one of those bloggers that I loathe.
I promise I will thank you for helping me come back to my senses.

I don't know if this particular company is in business all over the country, it's probably only the south, or maybe even just Florida for all I know, but I get such a kick out of how they target their commercials for their cheap car insurance to different people.

I won't link it, but I'm sure if you've seen it, you'll know exactly which company I'm talking about.
They run 2 identical commercials, the same people, the exact same set-up, the exact same script, except when the actors say the name of the place, depending on what channel the commercial is airing on, the name of the company is different.
In 1 commercial when it's on say, channel 8, the really super awesome Tampa news station, which obviously has more money and a different viewer base, the actor says "Florida No Fault".
If it airs on channel CW44, which is definitely a different viewer base, younger, probably less money, the actor calls it Cash Register.
They call it 2 totally different company names based on the economic viewer base of the channel it airs on.
I find it totally hysterical that they do that, same actors, same script, same exact scene set-up, but 2 different names.

I have to wonder why a company would do that, but I guess the names make certain economic classes feel better when they go to purchase car insurance, they want to feel like they can afford it and will be treated appropriately when they go in to sign up for their cash insurance.

About a week ago, I posted about SSDI reimbursing me for the over payments I had made, I had no idea when they were going to pay me back or anything, but I just checked my Amscot account, I was curious if I had enough to order some take out tonight because we are all sick here, couldn't make the turkey.
Anyway, last I knew, I only had about $4 in there.
I looked and they had deposited the reimbursement, almost $3,000!
OMG!
Yay!

Now I'm off to pay back a loan to a friend she had given me, and yup, we have enough to order some Chinese for dinner tonight because we didn't make the turkey.
Woo hoo!

I have to go to the post office today, I need to cash a money order and also pick up some certified letter from the school board, but do you know what today is?
Today is THE busiest mailing day of the year at the post office.
More people ship more packages today than any other day of the year, but I have to go, I don't have a choice.
I've already put off getting this money order cashed for about a week and a half, and the certified letter from the school board, I've had that since Wednesday, and it may have to do with the whole school lunch issue.
Crap.
This is so going to suck, so I'm hoping they and some customers will take pity on me in my neck brace and allow me to cut the line.
Normally I would never hope for or ask such a thing, but I cannot stand in a line for an hour or more, I just can't.

I posted the other day about my SSDI, the taxes they take out of it, the Medicare premiums, the part D premiums, and all that stuff, that's why my caseworker told me about the SafeLink Wireless program.

Well my caseworker found a problem with my case, got her supervisor involved, and so the supervisor called me late this afternoon about how much I actually get for SSDI and how much I pay out of it for those things.
She said I shouldn't be paying for anything but my part D drug coverage, that somebody made a huge mistake.
So she needed me to fax her my latest 'award letter' stating how much I get and how much I pay, as soon as possible.
I explained that I had no access to a fax machine, but asked her if she could take a jpeg by email, and if she could, what's her email address, I could scan it and send it to her within like 10 minutes.
She gave me her state of Florida email addy, I scanned it and emailed it to her, and she emailed that she received it, and also that yup, it's just as they expected, I've been paying taxes and the Medicare premiums every month when I never should have been, so they are going to fix it ASAP, and then SSDI will have to reimburse me over 2 years of wrong payments.
I'll get a check for all those over payments I paid out.

When?
I have no idea, but it will be so freaking nice to get all of that money back when it does happen.

I've been awake since the alarm went off for the teens at 5:45, after finally going to my room and attempting to sleep at 2am.
I just wasn't tired at all.
I finally fell asleep at 4am, so yeah, a little under 2 hours of sleep last night.
Today is going to be a very, very long day.
I have not gotten more than 2 hours of sleep at any point on any day, since last Thursday.
What's going to suck is that I have a very long car ride ahead of me this morning to the docs, and the combination of the warm sun and the motion of the car, will have me dozing off every few minutes, but I can't nap on the way there.
I'm the co-pilot, I have the directions, it's my job to not get us lost.
I usually do have trouble getting us there anyway, even though I've been o his office over 2 dozen times since 2006.
Poor Mindy, I hope that she sorta remembers how to get us there, I really do suck at it, and I even have the directions on my cell phone.
I'll get us there, I always do, but my brain gets foggy about all the various roads and turns we have to take, and seeing as how she never goes up that way except to take me, she doesn't know the area well either.

I need to get in the shower, she'll be here at 9am so we can head out, and my clothes are in the dryer de-wrinkling, and also getting the cat hair off of them.
I specifically washed and dried them, folded them up nicely, and laid them on top of the dryer, and over night, Shahiro stupid kitty decided she was going to rearrange them and sleep on them, leaving new wrinkles and cat hair behind.
Damn cat.

I was watching the Today Show, and they were talking about ways people can make money during these tough times.
Today they talked about doing paid surveys online and product reviews, paid telephone surveys etc.
I've been doing this for years, not just on my blog either.
I have worked for several major survey companies since 1999, and have made some decent money from them over the years, as well as paid product reviews for all kinds of stuff.
I've just always found being a consumer reviewer a lot of fun, and I've also been involved with tv show broadcasting companies about the shows we watch.
Yup, I'm the reason certain shows get canceled on the big 3 broadcast networks. Ha! (ABC,NBC,CBS)

Okey dokey, I've got to get my but in gear and hop in that shower.
Later days!

I'm really starting to get annoyed with Walgreen's pharmacy crappy customer service.
I have been a customer for 11 years, I have been taking narcotic pain relievers for 10 of those 11 years, and getting them filled at multiple branches of their stores.
Sometimes I've gone to my closest and most frequented branch, and they won't have my med, so they call another one, and then I have to go pick up my med at that other branch, but I have always had my scripts filled with them unless there is an issue with the computers, the insurance, or they don't have my med in stock.
I'm a faithful customer thanks to my scoliosis and surgeries.

But here's what happened today.
My sister came down to take me to one branch of Walgreen's that always has a particular pain med in stock, my niece Skye was going to stay here with the teens while we went, but it should have only taken us 30 minutes tops, and I would have been able to come back and at least spend 20-30 minutes with Skye, see her smile, laugh, and fall in love with the stop motion classic Christmas movies I have.
The only movie the girls have seen is Frosty the Snowman, but I have all of the old classics, Rudolph, Santa Claus is coming to Town, and The Little Drummer Boy.
I bought them on VHS about 15 years ago, when my boys were just babies, and we have watched them every year at xmas.
It's far better to watch them on VHS when you have small kids instead of broadcast television, there are no stupid commercials in between.

Anyway, we were only supposed to be gone a half hour, tops, but after dropping my script off, being told it would be about 20 minutes, wandering around Walgreen's and buying stuff, the pharmacy tech tells me they can't fill my script for the oxys on a Saturday because they have to confirm the script with my surgeon, not his on call doctor.
I asked if this is a new policy, because I have been filling this script at their store almost every single month, on either a Saturday or a Sunday because my surgeon mails it out on Thursday, and I usually always get it on Saturday and fill it.
He said no, not a new policy, so I asked him to check last month's fill date and look up what day it was because I know it was a Saturday.
He checks, confirms that yup, it was filled on a Saturday but shouldn't have been, and now he has to report that tech for filling it on a weekend without speaking to the prescribing doctor.

So now I'm pissed, I don't have my pain meds and I need to have them because my lower dose pain meds will not be filled until Monday, and there is simply no way that I can go the weekend without the pain meds.
I cannot move without them, I can't eat or I get sick, I get wicked leg and back spasms, basically, my body goes into withdrawals, and let me tell you, it is not a pretty sight or a fun experience to go through pain med withdrawals.
You get very, very ill, very quickly, like as soon as they wear off, your body starts withdrawals and it is quite painful, and getting med sick is probably the most agonizing thing to experience.
I hate the withdrawals, and whenever we finally do decide to take me off all of the pain meds, if my doctors ever do decide to take me off of them, I will have to be given some type of help with weaning off of them, possibly even rehab because of how severe the withdrawals are.

My sister knows this, and so she asks me if there is any other pharmacy I can go to that won't have the same Saturday policy, so we head down to the Publix out on Bee Ridge and Cattlemen, and they had absolutely no problem filling them because I've been a customer there before, and the neck brace and downward facing head kinda give it away that I have a legitimate need to have the medicine.
They filled it, but it's now been another 40 minutes, we've now been gone for a little over an hour, much longer than we wanted to be gone, and my sister needs to take me home, pick up Skye, and go home herself.
She has things to do in her own life that don't involve her having to drive me to multiple pharmacies in the city because Walgreen's decided to be dickheads today.
She came down here from way up in north Bradenton, to specifically take me to get my meds.
It takes her about 30 minutes to get from her house to mine, and she was doing this as a favor to me because she knows I need the meds and don't have transportation all of the time.

When we got back here, Sebastian had already watched Santa Claus is coming to Town with Skye, she loved it just as I knew she would, I didn't get to take any pictures of her, hug her, play with her, nothing.
I very rarely get to see my nieces because of how far away from us they live, so time is very precious when they do come over, and thanks to Walgreen's being dickheads today, I missed out on another good visit with my niece.
 
I know that Walgreen's has filled this particular script on the weekends plenty of times before, not just last month, but for the last 3 months, since my surgery, and actually, well before that too because my pain doc also gives me this same exact med every month.
It pisses me off that they wasted my time.
They confirmed they had it in stock, said they would fill it, made me wait 20 minutes, then tell me they won't fill it even though they have been filling it every single month on a weekend before.
If they do indeed have a policy to not fill a certain class narcotic on the weekends, he should have never told me that they would fill the script.
He said absolutely nothing to me about having to speak to the prescribing doctor.
I'm going to just switch all of my meds over to Publix pharmacies because of this crap, and let them have all of my business from now on which is a whole lot.
I take 3 different narcotic pain meds every month, 1 blood pressure med, 1 heart med, 2 different muscle relaxers, and an antibiotic every month.
I spend a great deal of money on medications, some covered by insurance and some not.
One of my pain meds is not covered, and it costs me $238.00 every month to fill it, and the covered ones still have co-pays, so I spend about $350 per month on just the co-pay medications, the non-covered one is $238.00, and not to mention all of the general shopping I do while I wait for them to be filled which can vary from just a few dollars up to about $100 if they have things I can't get elsewhere, or don't feel like getting elsewhere.
If it isn't dumb shit like this so-called policy, it's downed computers, not being able to contact the insurance companies, refusing to fill because the insurance on file was mistyped by one of their own staff, all kinds of problems, so I'll just switch to a Publix pharmacy that I know doesn't have any of these issues, give them my business and my money, and Walgreen's can go fuck themselves.

When I got home today, I grabbed the mail and found a huge envelope from medicare.
I walked in the house, sat down, and tore it open to find a 15 page summary of every single medical test and xray, ctscan, and an item by item cost of my surgery and stay in the hospital.
I read through all 15 pages, checked out what was actually billed, what medicare is paying for, and what I may eventually be billed for.
It's frightening the amount I could end up paying every single doctor, nurse, and person who came in and cleaned my room.
Terrifying.
The image below is a picture I took of just one part of the bill, and only one part of the actual surgery.
The actual surgery bills are broken down into 8 different billing sections, it almost appears as though they billed by the hour and what they did during that hour.
This was section 3 of the surgery bill, and the total for just this one section comes to $32,850.00.
Yes, just one of the 8 billing sections is $32,850.00.
The total of my 9 day stay in the hospital comes to $579,750.00.
The total of what I may be billed comes to $225,500.00.

Holy. fucking. shit.

People are out there shopping today, Black Friday, and taking advantage of all of the pretty good deals retailers are having.
One of the big chain furniture stores is having a really awesome sale today, and along with showing off their newest line of clean-lined modern furniture, they are also doing a gift card deal.
If you buy $100 worth of furniture or home decor, they give you a gift card for $100.
Considering this is a furniture store, shoppers can easily walk away with up to a couple thousand in gift cards.
It's a matching dollar for dollar sale/deal, and that's really awesome.
I wish I had the money to spend just to get those gift cards for later use, they have no expiration dates and none of those no usage fees on them either.
One of the guys on the local forums went out this morning and bought a new living room set, and walked out with $2,000 in gift cards to use later or give away as gifts for Christmas.

But I never go shopping on Black Friday unless I absolutely have to.
People get really crazy trying to grab up all of the good deals, and they will trample you to death just to get in the store.
A Walmart employee was trampled to death as he opened the store this morning.
He was bum rushed by over 200 people as he unlocked and opened the doors.
A woman at the same store, was knocked to the ground and had a miscarriage after being trampled as well.
People are savages when trying to get a good bargain.
The incident was caught on store security cameras.
These people are savages.

====================

One of the reasons I keep my house so dark, as I posted about earlier, was because it saves me money.
Having your curtains and blinds open during the hot months let's heat in, making your ac have to work harder to keep you cooler.
I'm also a huge nag, just ask the teens, about turning off lights and other appliances like fans, computer monitors, etc etc, when people leave rooms.
I do have lamps in every room, but I like to keep it dark and only turn them on when we need to see something, or if someone comes by and says it's too dark in here.

And because I'm all about saving money, I have slowly been buying the new energy saving CFL bulbs, and when I replaced one in the kitchen this morning*, I noticed it had a sweepstakes thingy on the package.
You can enter to win $25,000 to redecorate your home, no purchase needed, so go ahead an enter.
If I won, I'd definitely go and buy some really nice but discount furniture to redecorate my home with.
I'd hit the sales, the build it yourself furniture stores, clearance sections, wherever I had to go to make that $25,000 stretch as far as possible so that I could do every single room.
Get both boys and myself new beds, new dressers, some new living room furniture, a new pc desk and chair for me, all kinds of stuff, and I know with that kind of money, I really could do every room in our house, and have money left over to do other things with.
I pride myself on thrifty.

*When I replaced that bulb, I noticed that I had replaced the 2nd bulb in that light awhile ago, probably about 3 months ago, and anyway, it has an old fashioned screw on light cover which collects dust and little moths and other bugs that are attracted to light.
I clean this out every time we have to change the bulbs, but with the new CFL's, they can last up to 5 years.
Yes, 5 years.
Sad to say, I admit that the only time I clean this light shade is when we have to replace the bulbs.
Can you imagine how many bugs are going to be in it in 5 years?
Ha!

Next June Sebastian will be turning 16, and will be legally old enough to get his drivers license if he keeps his grades and attendance up at school.
He's been studying and taking the practice permit tests online, and once he gets a booklet, he'll be able to study everything, and then go get his permit.
And then if Mark decides he's finally ready to drive, I'll have two licensed drivers in the house, and will be in some super serious need of some super duper cheap auto insurance to go with the super duper cheap car that we might be able to afford.
Or them to afford.

I really wish that the seasons weren't so screwed up here in Florida.
Tourists come here from like right before Thanksgiving, and go home right after Easter.
What that means is, if your teen needs a seasonal job, they have to be able to do it during the school year, during winter, whereas up north, seasonal jobs are when school is out, during the summer.
I really am putting some serious thought into both of the teens going up north for this coming summer to visit with the family, and be able to work.
They could work at the amusement park like I talked about awhile ago, make tons of money, and then come home in time for school to start, buy a nice used car off of some little old widow who kept her car in perfect condition with tune-ups and oil changes right on schedule for the entire time the car was owned, for about $500 or less.
I'm not even joking about that.

The old people here, mostly the widows, sell their perfect Oldsmobile's in mint condition for really super cheap prices just to get rd of it.
Most of the time, they don't know and don't care about Kelly Blue Book value, they just have no need for the car anymore, and want it gone.
I went car shopping with my old friend once when her van "Scooby" was acting up, and we just drove around the retirement villages and neighborhoods where only old people lived, and there would literally be at least a dozen cars for sale at any given time, all in impeccable shape, tune-ups, oil changes, all of the paperwork and receipts in the glove box organized by year, new tires, non-stained, super clean upholstery, almost like brand new cars, selling for anywhere between $100 to $700.
The widows never sold the cars for more than that because they'd get penalized on their benefits or something for earning a large lump sum of money, but they didn't need the car anymore anyway.
They bought new ones.

My friend ended up getting a Mercury, can't remember the make and model, but it was a mint condition car with less than 10,000 mile on it, for $300 cash.
It was so nice, it had an awesome working AC in it, and we loved that because that was one of the reasons she needed to get rid of Scooby, his ac croaked, and you do not want to be driving around in a van with no ac in Sarasota in the middle of July.
Talk about sweat!
Aieysh!

I've had a few friends stop by here in the last few days, and the first thing everyone says when they walk in is "OMG, it's so dark in here!"
Well yeah, I like it that way for starters, and it's also economical.

My local electric company has sent out little fliers in with the monthly bills over the hot summer months, that actually tells people to keep blinds and curtains closed during the hot daylight hours, to keep the heat out and the cool ac air in.
I have room darkening blinds, dark wooden blinds on the large front windows which take in all of the morning's sun rays, and heavy blankets on the boys bedroom windows, because their rooms take in all of the afternoon sun rays.
My ac bills in the summer have always been 3 times lower than my plex neighbors, and most of my surrounding neighbors as well who just 'love to let all that glorious sunlight in'.
Gag.

If I could afford to, I would install some nice  home theater lighting, so that when people come over, I could hit a switch, and little lights along the floorboards would come on to show them the way in, maybe some soft dim lights in the ceiling so they can see.
These same people complain about their electric bills all summer long, but when I go to their houses, they have all of the blinds and curtains open, and you just stand near one of their windows and you can feel the heat coming, burning through the glass.
The ac has to work harder to try and keep those interior walls and windows cool, and if they are sending heat in, well then you pay for it.

I think I've said the word overwhelmed at least a dozen times this past week, because it really has been overwhelming.
And amazing.
And humbling.

This year, for the 7th annual blogger boobie-thon, instead of being able to volunteer my time doing some photo editing due to my neck and spine fusion surgery, I was instead the blogger chosen for the bloggers helping bloggers portion of the donations raised.
That amount is $359, and I was extremely greatful when the paypal donations reached that amount, blown away.
But the donations just kept coming and coming, and coming, all week long, right up until the very end of the boobie-thon, with the last one coming in at 11:52pm EST on October 7th 2008.
I sat here all week, in like a state of shock, watching how much was being raised for the boobie-thon and for myself.
I stopped keeping track of the donations for me around Friday mid-afternoon, I just couldn't keep up with them.

The boobie-thon is now over, and they raised an incredible amount!
$9,300.00 this year, it exceeds the amount raised last year, and breaks the record set in 2006 .
That's absolutely awesome!
What started out as a way to get a friend a plane ticket to not have to spend a holiday alone , has grown into an annual event that has now raised over $50,000 since 2002.
The event grows bigger and better every year, with more people volunteering their time to edit photos, calculate donations, publish both to the site, and even more people are sending in their pictures, and more and more people are donating money, and even more people are spreading the word about this wicked fun and great cause.

I have always loved being a part of it, volunteering my time, and when I found out back on August 5th that my surgery was going to prevent me from doing it again this year, I was seriously bummed out.
I always have such a good time editing the photos, chatting with the other volunteers, spreading the word on blogs and forums, and just being a part of something so cool and fun to do, that is helping to raise money to find a cure for breast cancer.
Some people walk, companies sell pink products, other people collect pink lids, and "we" all show our breasts, male and female, to raise some money.

Over $50,000 since 2002.
Who would have thought.

And I am still sitting here completely overwhelmed (there I go again, but I just don't have the words to say it another way) and blown away by the incredible outpouring of support, kindness, and generosity shown to me.
My fellow bloggers, total strangers, (and hopefully new friends) donated money to me this week when I needed it.
I had my surgery on September 8th, and a month later, October 8th, a whole month without being able to work doing product reviews and writing articles on my blog, a whole month without making an income, and people so generously donated money to me to help me pay my bills.
The amount is more than enough to pay my rent and bills both this month and next month.
I finally totaled all of the donations up at the end of the boobie-thon.
$1,495.52.
Amazing, thank you.

I tried to send a personal email of thanks to every one of my donors, I checked and double checked to make sure I didn't miss anyone, and quite a few people replied to me offering words of support and encouragement while I am recovering.
I was humbled by a few of the replies I received, and truly humbled by one reply from someone only known to me by the name of The Butterfly Temptress.
Just when you think you have things rough, there's someone else out there who has it worse than you do.
Her donation was generous, and I sent her an email to say thank you, and she replied with these words;

"I am dying of an inoperable brain tumor. Knowing that you are able to be treated is music to my ears. I was so glad to be able to donate money for a person who knows what it's like to be sick, not some man in a suit who makes a half a million a year."

How quickly life comes into focus.
How quickly I realized how good I have it, I get to live.
I received a few more email replies that humbled me even more, I cannot even tell you the amount of times I sat here and cried this week.
I cried for myself, I cried for others, I cried because this past week has been an experience.
It has been a true experience of people helping people, coming together for a good cause and helping someone else out along the way.
People really are good and kind, and they do good just for the sake of doing it, not for any reward, but just because helping your fellow human being is reward enough.
Heck, I'm sitting here crying right now because this really has been an amazing and humbling experience for me.
I always try to do right by my fellow human beings, I try to help others when I can, it's not always money, but I try to give of myself, of my time, because I enjoy it, I like knowing that I helped someone with whatever it was they needed help with.
Sometimes I get so discouraged by the greed and hatred in the world, and then I read a story of someone helping someone else, and it restores my faith in people again.
This week has been one of those restoring moments for me.
Everyone who donated to the boobie-thon and me, people who sent me get well cards, a friend and her husband doing some home repairs that I can't do right now, it's been an incredible few weeks for me.
I am so lucky to have so many wonderful people in my life.

I think I've wept and rambled here long enough, I really just wanted to say thank you to everyone, and my emotions got all weepy, and well, this is what happens when I get weepy.
I run and ramble on. 
Thank you to everyone.

Mindy and Chris came back, Chris installed the new ac unit's frame, then he and Mark put the ac unit in and turned it on.
In less than an hour, the house is cold!
I thought for sure it would take a few hours to cool down, but nope, the new ac is blasting the cold and wonderfully chilly air!
Yay!

Now we're going to give it a week and see how it does.
We're going to see if it leaks, see if it can keep up with the temps, and then Chris will come back over next Saturday and take down the old rotted drywall from 2 ac units leaking, and put up the new drywall to make it look all nice.

I can't thank Mindy and Chris enough for doing this stuff.
My landlord is a sheriff, he works 6 days a week, so his one day off he spends with his family.
This house stuff is all stuff he can do, but he gets one day a week to spend with his kids so I try not to bother him about things.
And he appreciates that by allowing me to do these types of repairs myself, by taking the receipts as "rent" payments.
He deducts what I spend from my total rent.
It works for both of us.
He doesn't have to come do the work, gets to be with his family, and I don't have to fork over so much cash to him.
Yeah, I'm still spending the same amount, but the work gets done by me, or in this case, Chris, and everyone is happy.

Over the years I've done a lot of the home jobs that needed to be done here and just gave him the receipts.
I installed a new front door/screen door, I painted the walls, had the sink plumbing fixed, all kinds of home repairs, and he took it off the rent.
It has worked for us so well over the last 10 years that I've lived here now, so today's spending will be taken care of no problem, I know he'll be happy that he didn't have to come do this.
I think it would have driven him up the wall to have to have to do so much work only to have to tear it back out to put another new ac unit in.

Anyway, it's so nice and cool in here now, omg it's pure refrigerated bliss in here!
It hasn't been this cool in here in like 8 months, it's awesome!

Well, last weeks AC fixing didn't go quite as planned.
Mindy's husband Chris did all that work last weekend, installed an old ac unit they had that was working up until Thursday night.
That's when it stopped blowing cold air and started leaking water like a flood.

They came over today to see if they could get it working right, but it just didn't want to blow cold enough, and the leaking water all over my rug was an issue.
So Chris and my son Mark put our old ac unit back in the hole.
They turned it on and nothing happened.
Crap.
So we did what we had to do.

Mindy and Chris drove to Home Depot with my paypal card, and bought a new ac unit for my house.
$212.93.
I only had that money because of all of the donations that have been coming in because of the boobiethon, so I'm so so greatful that I had that money to buy the new ac thanks to everyone who has donated to me.
My landlord will take the receipt for it and knock that money off of the rent, just like he did with last weeks receipts for the drywall and other tools that they bought last weekend.
My landlord is cool like that, so he'll be knocking a total of $302.50 off of my rent for next month. (already paid October's rent)

Chris and Mark will take the old non-working ac unit out, and install the new one, and my house will be cool again.
I can hardly wait!
It is still pretty hot here in Sarasota Florida, and as I've bitched and moaned a few times now, the neck brace is like wearing a freaking turtleneck sweater.
It's hot.
Way hot.
So yay!
In just a few hours, I'll be cool again and it will be awesome.

I went and got my newest brace, and I'll talk about that in a minute.
But right now, I want to talk about the economic crisis that our country is dealing with.
Every Friday, Oprah's show is on live, and today she had a money expert whose name escapes me right now, Ally something, (bald guy, handsome, well dressed) and Suze Orman came on after his segment.
Both of these money experts told it like it is and to also not panic, to leave your money in the bank, it's going to be ok.
Suze Orman talked about ways to save money, what types of things to invest in like treasury bonds, and she named a very specific type of futures trading and the safest places to invest your money in so that when this crisis is over, you will be ok.

The whole reason all of us are in this situation, is because people who couldn't afford to buy a home, were told they could by banks who loaned them that money.
They spent more than they had, they tried to live beyond their means, they wanted the American dream, and sorry, not everyone can afford to live that dream.
I know I can't and probably never will.

I know that I'm feeling the crunch of this crisis when it comes to buying groceries.
The price of everything has been steadily on the rise for months now, and so buying food for 2 growing young men has been a huge challenge for me.
I don't want the teens to eat peanut butter and jelly and Ramen noodles until it's coming out of their ears, but I can't afford to feed them all the super expensive cuts of beef either.
Right now with me being unable to do any cooking, they are eating easy foods, microwave crap, lots of sliced deli meat sandwiches, stuff like that.
I have a feeling that things are going to get even harder for me and all of you as well.
It's going to get much much worse before it will start getting better.
This is a very difficult period of time we're all living in, and I'm trying so hard not to panic like both Ally and Suze said, but I can't help myself.
I already live at the bottom of the financial totem pole, I live well below the poverty level receiving SSDI and making a small amount through blogging every month.
I follow the income earnings guidelines set forth by SSDI but man, how I wish I wasn't disabled, how I wish I could work a real job again.
This whole crisis has me scared that things are going to get worse for me and all of us, this whole thing really sucks.

Anyway, Mindy took me down to the local Hanger office to get my new brace.
They ended up fitting me with a pediatric size 5 chin brace.
It fits the back part of my old brace, but the new front part is a pediatric size chin brace.
That should tell you how small my neck is. Ha!

It does fit better, it holds my head up nice and straight, but because of it's tiny size, my cheeks get squished up pretty bad.
I look like I'm making a kissy-fish-face all the time now.
I really hope my face doesn't "keep" that shape when the 3 months is over, that would really suck.
But it does it's job, what it's supposed to, so I'll deal with it.

I'm having a day here.
I'm on some hefty restrictions, no lifting anything at all, no doing laundry or cleaning or cooking anything that would make me have to bend over etc, but I have stuff that needs to be done and well, it isn't getting done.
And then there's the sitting/laying down restriction.
I am allowed to sit for 20 minutes every 4 hours and then lay down again.
It's boring and the tv is on a low stand, so it's hard to entertain myself with movies or tv shows. What I need is one of those tv lifts things on a remote, so I can get it to the perfect height for me while I lay on the couch.

And I'm feeling overwhelmed by the generosity of the people who are donating money to me for the boobiethon.
I still feel bad about not being able to donate my time this year, it's just something I've done that makes me feel good, and to not be able to do it this year is making me feel bad.
I can't help it, I just feel bad that I can't help this year.
But next year, I'll be right on it, back editing photos every day and helping spread the word as much as I can.
I usually also send in my photo every year, and I can't do that this year either.
I have a stitch line under my right breast from the chest tube I had to have, and I'm still covered in the sticky stuff from all of the tape and heart monitor things, all over my whole upper body.
Basically, my chest looks like crap and I'm not comfortable sending in a pic like that.
I'm not super vain, but I don't think anyone would want to see all that tape and the stitches with a big nasty scab on it too.
I can't send in a covered pic either.
I haven't been able to put a bra on since the day I went in for surgery, September 8th.
It hurts to even put on a clean t-shirt, and I did try to put a bra on, but it was a total no go, total wicked bad pain shot through my upper back and shoulders.

Anyway, I wanted to hop on here and say thank you to everyone who is donating money to me and the boobiethon, you're doing an awesome thing, and if you haven't donated yet, do it.
Save the boobies!

The ac unit is mostly done.
Mindy, her husband Chris, and her son Jeff, were here all day long fixing the ac unit.
Chris removed the old unit and holding stuff, then cut all new wood, installed that, and then put in the new ac unit.
The old hole in the wall was far too big for the ac, so all the wood was used to make it fit, to hold it in place better with no gaps.
He used some of that expanding caulk to help keep it all insulated and stuff, and then next weekend, he's going to come over and repair the drywall where the ac unit is.
It has to be taken out, it's rotted from all the times the ac leaked water and it ran down the walls.
I paid for all the supplies and he's doing the installation.
My landlord will let me take the work off the rent, it totally saves him from having to do it, he'll be happy that it got done.

Mark helped out too, he knocked down a ton of hornets nests and also helped put the ac unit in while Chris was outside pulling it through to sit the way it's supposed to.
Sebastian couldn't help much with that, he's allergic to hornet's stings, and Mark did get stung 3 times, so yeah, it's a good thing Sebastian didn't try to help.
But he did go to the store and get some stuff we needed.
It's going to take a few hours for the house to cool down, there was no ac on all day and a huge gaping hole in the wall all day long so it will probably get cool in here by midnight. LOL

I'm so tired now so it's also a good thing my sis had something come up for tonight, I am in no mood to have more to do tonight.
She's going to come tomorrow and help me with my hair, maybe do some lunch or dinner depending on what time she comes over.

I have a couple of movies that I can watch tonight from the lazy comfort of my couch.
I have Street Kings and Pathology, it's a reason to be lazy and not do anymore than I already have today.
Oh yeah, Chris also hooked up the HDTV antenna for me.
It's pulling a few channels, but my local ones still are not coming in like they should.
I'm hopeful that come February when the switch gets made, that all of those stations come in like they should.

Ok, off to find something to eat and watch a movie.
Later days.

Was talking with Shell about the teens going up to Maine for the summer to work at Funtown.
Season is the opposite here, and Funtown cannot get teens to work there anymore, so Shell was thinking about me sending the boys up there, they could stay with her during the week because she literally lives right down the street, and then stay with my folks on the weekends, and also visit with Great Gram and Aunty Heather the whole summer, and they'd be making money etc.
It's a cool idea because they'd get to visit with all the grandparents the entire summer, make paychecks, and have fun working at an amusement park.

Funtown has not changed at all in all of these years.
I went to their site and looked at the attractions, and they still have all of the same rides and stuff they had when I was a kid.
They have added some new stuff, but all of the old and fun rides I rode as a kid are still there.

One of the coolest ones that is still there and has been since 1976, is the Astrosphere.
This is just a Scrambler ride, but it's inside a dome that displays weird and semi-scary images on the dome, has a laser light show, and has played the exact same song since 1976, "Fire on High" by ELO. (Electric Light Orchestra)
This ride is famous, everyone in all of New England knows this ride, people wait in line for hours to get on and ride it, and it is so cool to me that it is still there.
Check out this video that someone made of it and put up on youtube.


 

So I'm like a week late paying all my bills, so I got myself up and started paying them.
I had called each of my utilities before going in for surgery and notifying them they would be paid late, they were all ok with it.
I paid FPL and the water bills without any problems, as usual.
And as usual, Verizon was just crap.

I logged in to my Verizon home screen where it said current now due $61.45, but total now due of $31.42.
I know that the $31.42 is the correct amount, my bill is never over that, the bill summary even says that's what I really owe, so I type in $31.42 and click pay now.
It advanced to the next screen where it said the amount you are paying is different from what you really owe, the page refreshed, and the amount filled in for me to pay was at $61.45.
I tried 3 more times to change it to $31.42, it kept changing it back, so I said fuck it and paid $61.45.
Then I called Verizon who said it was some sort of website glitch, I now I have a credit on my account of $30.03, we're so sorry.
They said they would have their IT department look at it, but I have a credit, your account is in great standing with us, yadda yadda, whatever.
Their website forced me to pay that $61.45, it wouldn't let me change it.
I don't care if my account is in great standing and I have a credit, I am sick of their fucking shit every single month when I try to pay the phone bill and the DSL bill screw-ups that have been non-stop for years now.
I'm so over it yanno?
Every month they are sorry, every month they promise me they will fix it, and every month it still isn't fixed.
Verizon sucks major ass and I really need to find another phone and internet option that isn't them and isn't Comcast cable.

While on the phone with them, they tried to sales-pitch me on their Direct tv package shit.
Dudes, I'm calling your company every month because of bill fuck-ups with my phone and DSL, and you want to add another item to screw up on every month?
I don't fucking think so.

We are being barraged here (the whole country probably is) with constant reminders about the change to all digital broadcasting in February 2009, and seeing as today was a holiday, ABC ran a half hour infomercial about the switch and the converter boxes.
They said that if you bought a newer model tv, it should already be ready for the HDTV and LCD broadcast signals, and to just get an LCD mount for it on your wall, and you should be good to go.
That it should be ready and all good to go to pick up all the new digital signals.

Well I don't have money for the new tvs, and I already have the converter box and an amplified antenna, but it's not picking up the signals due to our house being made of concrete.
I need to either get a roof mount antenna, or one that can be mounted on the wooden shutters, but I think I might try a different idea.

I am going to buy a Philips Amplified UHF/VHF/HDTV Antenna, and mount it on the inside of my front windows.
It's flat, and it will only need to pick up the signal through the glass, not the concrete.
That may work.
If not, I'll mount it on the outside, attach it to the shutters, and run the cable through the front windows and screen, and hook it to the converter box.
I'm hoping that will work because all of the other indoor/outdoor antennas I've seen, are freaking huge, and I don't want a huge antenna on the front of my house.
I don't want anyone to see it and possibly see it, plus with it's flat profile, it will be less likely to get knocked off during a storm or hurricane.
It's not priced too badly, but I need to wait on it for now.
September is not the month to be buying non-necessities for the house, I still have until February 2009, so once the surgery is over and I'm doing well in my recovery, I'll pick one up and do the installation.
I don't want anyone to have to come do it for me, I like doing this kind of stuff myself

Don't forget to say "Rabbit rabbit White rabbit" upon waking up this morning, and on the morning of the first day of the month every month.
It's an old superstition, and I really don't believe in superstitions, but I do it for fun.
Seeing as how I don't know exactly what time I'll be waking up tomorrow, er, today, I figured I'd just post it now.

Who knows, maybe it really is good luck, and I could sure use some good luck this month.
I'm having surgery exactly 1 week from today, I could use to make some big time money this week before I go which means I need to get back to work pronto, no more lazy bones-feeling like not doing anything, and hey, maybe I'll win some money or maybe a Caribbean cruises vacation or something for the teens and I to go on after I'm recovered.

A vacation is sorely needed I tell ya.
I'm tired, stressed out, worried about money and bills, and the teens at school.
I really don't want this surgery to affect them like the last time, I don't want them to miss any days for any reason.
I do want them to come see me, but not until after school each day, come at night only.
That way my sister doesn't miss any time at work either, she really can't afford to take time off, so if she goes to work, and they go to school, then come visit me after, everyone will be doing what they need to do, and I'll be getting rest and doing my physical therapy/up walking the halls and all that stuff so I can come home on schedule.

It's late and once again I'm wide awake, so I think I'm going to go dive into my work, get as much done as I can.

I woke up feeling like I got hit by a truck.
I slept weird too.
Like all twisted up and stuff, so now my lower back and right hip are just killing me, and I can't get in to see my pain doc until Monday, before 11:45am.
Because at noon he's going back out of town.
But at 10am, I have an appointment with the new primary care doc for the pre-surgery physical, which I have no idea how long it's going to take.
So this means I'm going to have to call my surgeon to cover the refill on my pain meds again.
For the 3rd time, because my pain doc keeps going out of town.
My surgeon is going to start thinking something funny is going on.
Yeah, not quite so fucking funny when every time I need to make an appointment, he's going out of town.
And so I'm stressed out and in pain, and I can't see my pain doc because I have to go to that physical, I don't have a choice.
I have no idea how long the physical is going to take because duh, it's my new doctor.
The appointment could end up being 2 hours long, or like most doctor's, you sit and wait for a full hour or 2 before you even see the doctor.
And it's a full physical which means full naked, gyno, swabby, poke, prod, touch and pee in this cup appointment.

Seriously.
I'm way stressed out about all of this stuff right now.
In 18 days, I get my neck sliced open, have a couple vertebrae and discs removed, new rods installed, and I never turn my head left or right again.
18 days.
It may seem like that's a long time, but it's not, and it's creeping up on me faster than I know how to handle.

And I swear, if one more person says they'll pray for me, or let go and let god, trust in god, god will take care of you, I'm going to fucking explode!
This bill collector called me at 8am this morning, wanted to talk about an old hospital bill I owe, and when I said sorry, I can't pay that right now, they asked why, I explained why, I let it all out on the girl, and she says to me, and I quote, "I can stave off the collection phone calls for about a week, and I'll pray for you. Wow, I don't even know how you're feeling, but I imagine. I promise, I'll pray for you."

You'll pray for me?!
These calls are recorded for customer quality results, and man, I hope they recorded that one.
You are never to get personal with the customer, never ever, get personal with the customer when you are calling them to collect a debt. I know the rules, I used to work for Georgia Power and Gas, that was one of the major big time rules, never, ever, get personal with the customer, stick to the facts.
Fucking twit.
I hope they recorded that call and heard me tell her to shove her prayers up her ass.

So I took my awesome comfy sandals to the little Korean lady to fix, and just as I suspected, she refused to fix them.
"No fix, need new shoe! No fix!"
So while I was at Walgreen's getting Susan her birthday first aid kit, (she's going to love this thing!) and we needed a new one for our house too, I found their flip flop aisle and tried on a few pairs.
I found a cheap and comfy pair that will have to do until I can find another pair of those awesome Dr. Scholl's that my freaking cats chewed up.
Then Sebastian and I headed into Publix to get all of the stuff we needed, and then headed back home by cab because we bought more than we could carry.

We waited for the cab for over 40 minutes.
Sam had told me 10-15 minutes on my initial call, so after 25 minutes, I called back.
He said the driver would be there in 2 minutes.
I waited 10 and called back.
By this point Sam was furious that the driver he sent for me kept picking up flags instead of getting the calls, he was yelling into the radio, screaming at the guy in English and Arabic, and when the cab finally showed up, I was sweating bullets.
My blood pressure was up from the heat, I was minutes away from passing out.
When we got to my house, I went to pay him, and he said, "No, this trip is on me, it's my fault you waited for 40 minutes. Sam won't let me take your money, he said that it's on me."

Hahahaha!
Dumbass.
If he had just gone after the call like he was supposed to instead of picking up flags, Sam would have let him take my money.

That phone call I got the other day at 8:05am, where I yelled at the guy and then hung up, was from one of those debt collection agencies.
I owe like $250 on a really old phone bill.
Oh well.
I've been trying to pay off my debts as best I can, but with all the medical stuff, it's been very difficult, and it's only going to get harder from here on out.

I had been paying on that old bill, I had been sending them $20 a month, and I know that's not a lot, but it's all I could afford to send them.
They agreed to the terms, and I've still been paying it, but they called again today because the want to change the terms of the agreement.
I told them that I cannot pay it all off or send them more every month, it's just not possible, and the guy said that I'll have to make it possible.
I said nope, I have the agreement in writing, I'm not paying more than that, if you are refusing to take the payments we agreed upon, then that's your choice, but I'm sticking with it, and I'll keep sending the $20 per month.
You can try to fight me for more, but we have it writing, so  that's all there is to say, have a nice day, and then I hung up.

On Sunday, my sis is taking the teens and her girls, and a few friends to one of those franchise kids play places for Susan's birthday party.
She asked me if I want to go.
I honestly don't know.
I would hate to miss her party, Susan is my little bud, but I'm not feeling well, I have a ton of stress and a ton of work to do.

I have a million things to do at home here, plus I have a bunch of actual work to do, and I really need that money.
In order to get all that money on payday, I need to have them all done by Monday morning.
I'm sure I can do it if I just start working and don't stop.
I really need that money, and I really want to be there for Susan.
I'm sure I'll go.
I'll make myself a deal, if I can get more than half my work done, I'll go, and then I'll have to do all the rest of them done by Monday morning.
I can do it if I don't get sick again.

I'm still not feeling great, I think it's the stress of everything, it's upsetting my stomach, making me not sleep, but making me excessively tired.
I have mega amounts of stress right now.
So much to do, things to take care of, plans to make, money to not make.
Ugh!
It's piling up on me, my mind can't stay focused, and I haven't been able to even keep myself feeling ok or not worried about stuff long enough to get my work done.
It will get it done, but I really need to get my head on straight first.
I honestly think I need to just sit down and have myself a long decent cry, to let all of this stress go as much as I can.

I need to go get in the shower, I have an appointment with Dr. Riegel today at 2pm, thank him, all that jazz, and tell him I can't pay him today.
I am totally broke until Wednesday.
Nothing I can do about it right now, I'll have to tell them I'll pay them on Wednesday, they can take the payment by phone or something.

Sorry to be such a downer, but I just have so so much on my mind, back to school, medical shit, all of it is picking away at my brain, and I'm tired and stressed out because of all of it.

Mentally speaking I mean.
I've been in a slight state of depression for the last few days, my lack of posting I'm sure alerted some of you that maybe something was wrong.
I just don't feel happy, it's not one thing, it's multiple things.
It's stress over money and bills, anger over the child support shit, the lack of sleep, the constant idiots who call me at the crack of dawn nearly every freaking day, a lot of things.
The stupid asshat who called me at 8:05am this morning got quite an earful, I hope he enjoyed it.
I don't know who he was and I don't care.
I yelled and screamed, and then hung up.
And I've been doing that with nearly everyone who calls lately.
I'm just in a place.

Anyway, I'm off to my surgeon to find out about my neck and shoulder pain.
Be back later.

I'd really like to know what the point was of fighting for and trying to get, and "winning" a higher child support amount, if it's not going to be enforced?
I got the court papers today.
It said that starting immediately, meaning August 1st, 2008, the day he "gets paid" and makes a deposit to the child support, that the new amount of $77 per week was going to start.
It didn't.
I checked it today and he did make a payment alright, but it's an amount that he chooses to pay, not the court ordered amount of $77, it's $37.20.
I thought court orders were supposed to be enforced?

What do I have to do, pack up a few Briggs and Riley suitcases for myself and the teens, and actually go up there to speak to a judge?
Do I have to beg the judge to enforce his own order?!
This is ridiculous!
What was the point of all of that, the hearing delays, and the paperwork, and all the evidence that I had to supply, because he refused to turn his in, they refused to make him, nobody investigated, and they only have what they have because I sent it to them?!
This just makes me so mad.
Child support court and enforcement is a complete joke in this country.

No, that's not the first words out of my mouth today.
My first words words were yelling at people who started calling my phone at like 8 o'clock in the damn morning, and people kept freaking calling.
I want you all to know, I hadn't slept in 39 hours.
Yes, 39 hours.
I was awake from 9am on Wednesday until 3am today, Friday.
Heck, that might be more than 39 hours, but my math sucks and I'm still exhausted.

Mark has been really good about washing his face with the new acne product stuff I bought him, it's starting to clear up a bit.
Looking much better.

I'm just messed up today, my body hurts, I have a lot on my mind, stressed out about all kinds of things, and I'm sorry I yelled at you if you were one of the unfortunate people to call me and wake me up, but damn, it's summer vacation, NONE of us get up by 8am unless I have a doctor's appointment.
Most of the time, I sleep until 9am, unless I couldn't sleep which wakes me at 11am, and ya know what?
Just don't call here before 1pm, how's that?
That works for me.

The child support hearing lasted all of 10 minutes, 5 of which were spent on hold waiting for the magistrate to call the room to order, and putting me on speaker phone, swearing me in, and all that hoopla.

Present in the courtroom today was myself, the Maine DA, someone from children and family services who was there to verify that I was indeed the ex-Mrs. Cooper, social security number xxx-xx-xxxx, and to state the names and ages of my minor children that are in my full-time custody.
I named them, Mark and Sebastian Cooper, ages 15 and turning 17 in a few weeks.
Also present was my ex's lawyer, I think. I heard a low mumble "present your honor",  when the name Bob Montblahblahblah, was announced, and the judge who spoke his name so fast I didn't catch it, but it will be on the finalized child support modification paperwork which I will get in the mail within a few weeks.

Because my ex-husband did not appear in court or by phone, and did not turn in his paperwork at all, or not in enough time for the judge to look it over, (again, something was mumbled about interrogatories, we have the ex-wife's, do we have Mr. Cooper's? something was mumbled) the judge would not back-date the child support amount to January 1st 2008, the date the DA officially filed for the modification with the courts, because even though it's such a low amount,  Mr. Cooper has 3 other minor children who he is current on paying child support for, that paying that amount may cause him to fall behind on those child support payments.
Whatever.

So based on the income and asset information the DA does have on my ex, the child support was raised from $21 per week to $78 per week.
From $84 per month, to $312 per month.
It is a huge improvement, but really, after 15 years at $21 a week whenever he felt like working, whenever he felt like paying, it's still not a truly acceptable amount.
It will help a lot, it won't be so much of a struggle now to buy them all of the things they constantly need like the sneakers they grow out of every 3-4 months because they are growing like the giant redwoods, and the clothes they grow out of for the same reason, and all the school supplies they always need for class projects, and those odd items that the teachers require or your student does not get a credit that they need in order to graduate, and the gazillion other items that teenagers need to have all of the time.

The new child support order is to go into effect immediately, as in tomorrow's child support deposit which will be placed on that lovely Florida state child support card they made me get, *eyeroll* and the funds will be available on Tuesday by mid-day, if he actually follows the court order.
If the new amount is enforced every single week, the $312 a month will definitely help to pay for the things that Mark and Sebastian always need.
Mark is at 6foot 2inches now, Sebastian is at a solid 6feet, and they are not done growing yet.
Just over the very short summer vacation, they have both grown 2 shoe sizes, and each of them has grown another pant and shirt size, so yeah, the new amount will be a major help to provide all of the things they need.

That's all I've ever wanted, to get some help paying for the things that two growing young men always need.
I wasn't fighting for this modification as a way of getting back at my ex-husband, I simply wanted him to help pay for the things that HIS sons need.
I didn't make these babies on my own, they have a biological father that they never see and they don't want to because of the very last words he ever said to Mark.
And ya know what?
I don't blame my son for never wanting to speak with his bio-dad again.
Those words stung him so bad, it crushed him that day, and if anyone even brings up his last visit with his bio-dad, he becomes immediately enraged, and will get up and walk away to go and be by himself, to calm himself down.
He's tried over the years to email his bio-dad, to try and get past that day, and every time he messaged him on myspace or sent an email, he wasn't believed, his bio-dad always thought it was me.
No, it wasn't, and every single time he got turned away, it was just another knife in his heart.
There are so many scars there now that attempting to repair that broken relationship will be an impossible feat.
Both the boys have their bio-dad's myspace pages and ways to contact him, they have their own email accounts on their own computer, and are free to try and contact him whenever they want to, if they want to.
Neither one of them have tried in almost 3 years now.
They don't even look at those myspace pages, and we don't discuss him at all in this house unless they bring him up.
I let them say whatever they want, spill all of their feelings out, do what they have to do, and I just listen.
I gave up trying to help repair those relationships a long, long time ago.

I didn't mean for this to turn into one of "those kinds of posts", but when I see them hurting, when I hear them talk about that last visit, and how he cares about his other 4 kids more than them, it kills me inside.
I can't take their hurt away, I can't make it any better, nothing I say will ever erase the memories they have of him saying the things he did to them.
They knew nothing about the child support modification and hearing today, if and when the new support payments come in, I'll let them know that I did my best to get it increased, and we'll go start the school shopping after 2 full payments come in, which will be right in time for my SSDI to come in, and we'll be able to go get them new shoes, clothes, backpacks, and all the basics they will need, and then when we get the specialized lists, we'll use the next week's payment to get most or at least some of those specialized items. 

And then every 3 months, new sneakers, pants, and shirts.
I wish upon a star every single night that they stop growing soon.
I look like a midget standing between them, and I gained 3 full inches in height after my back surgery. *LOL*

Mark got a couple cards in the mail for his birthday, and just like he asked for, he got some money.
He decided that he didn't want me to cook dinner last night, he was going to order a bunch of wings from Wings n' Weenies, and he'd treat the family to dinner.

He ordered a half and half box, 50 wings, 25 hot and 25 bbq, and we all sat down and ate the very tasty wings while watching Rocky V.
Then after, we all went back to our chosen playthings to do.
Mark went back to the Xbox, Sebastian went back to his on line video game, and I went back to surfing the net, reading blogs, and playing on the local forums.

We all went to bed pretty late, that may have also contributed to this morning's barf-o-rama.
I woke up and just wasn't feeling right.
I was really hot, had that clammy feeling, but I blew it off.
The yucky feeling started to feel worse, so I went back to the couch to lay down.
Then it hit me like a freight train.
I got up off the couch as quickly as possible and ran to the bathroom.
I barely made it in there in time before the vomit started to rise up my throat.
I must have been in there puking for a good 10 minutes, and it was all bbq chicken wings.
I know it was the chicken because I did have some ice cream later in the night, but all that came out was bbq wings.

They were mighty tasty last night, but they don't taste so good coming back out.

Just when I think I've finally found a product to treat Mark's acne problem, he gets another massive breakout.
I need to find him the best acne treatment available, but doesn't cost me an arm and a leg to pay for.
He has such a bad breakout today too, it's worse than I've ever seen his face.
Poor kid, but at least he's still on summer vacation and none of his friends will see his face.

I've had a long weekend of feeling like total crap.
I was sick from my meds all weekend long.
I ran out of one, couldn't call my doc because it was the weekend, and that made me have to use one of the other meds I take by itself.
It has a completely different effect when taken by itself.
The bad feelings are wearing off finally, so I should be back to normal by tomorrow.