It's Annoying

Dreams & Shooting

May 152012

Two nights ago was only the second time I had to shoot someone. Dreams can be good or bad, the bad ones are called nightmares.

I grew up around guns. To say I was afraid of them would be putting it mildly. Maybe because I was a girl I had no interest in them and had no desire to even see or touch one. My father kept his guns handy and knew how to shoot. He was a pistol champion. As a child I always saw dad cleaning his pistols. He also used to mimic shooting the bad guys on the black and white TV set we had in our living room. There wasn’t much room in the four room apartment that held the seven of us, and there wasn’t really any place to go to not be around the guns.

At some point in time, I started dreaming about being shot every night. No one ever made a move to actually shoot me, or even threatened to do so in real life but the dreams became more regular and came more often. I was sure that one of these days after dreaming this night after night that it would come true. It made me want to avoid any and all firearms. It almost made me want to avoid sleep. It certainly could be called a reoccurring nightmare. Until one day they stopped, after I was married, out of my parents house and maybe because of the distance from the actual guns?

Fast Forward … 2004
Ever catch someone trying to break into your home? How about a second attempt? The first time we experienced this and tried to catch the intruder — we didn’t succeed. The second time, we were able to get a license plate number. With the help of several friends and a series of coincidences, which I prefer to think was divine intervention, we found out what was going on. A neighbor rallied the neighborhood to file a lawsuit against us, making up charges and opening a dummy corporation “representing” the homeowners association. The reason was one particular man who wanted us “out of his neighborhood”. Nothing more, and nothing less would satisfy him. He was wealthy and thought he could control everyone and everything. He made up lies about our family and spread them as gospel truth to the other homeowners. He even had another man strong arm the neighbors into signing – mostly by lies and intimidation. They hired private investigators to follow, track, record, film and to break into our home.

Because we were not guilty of any of the dozen charges he made up, we did what we felt was right. We stood our ground. This was the last thing he expected. Surely the power of a seriously wealthy man would intimidate most, but not us. We have no “dirt” to dig up, no skeletons in our closet we haven’t dealt with, no secrets to hide. I believe he found and used things like that against others in our neighborhood but with us there was nothing to find, so he resorted to making them up.

When someone is “out to get you” and makes it pubic knowledge that they are, the options are almost always either fight or flight. Since flight wasn’t going to be our choice, we decided to get our concealed carry gun licenses. We wanted to be prepared should he decide to escalate his efforts. Here in Virginia, you don’t actually have to have a concealed carry license to have or wear a gun on your side. Virginia is an open carry state. As long as the gun can be seen, and not carried into prohibited places (schools, etc) – you can holster your gun and wear it while you go about your day. The requirements for concealed carry (where your gun is hidden from view) in our area of Virginia, is to take an 8 hour class, then pass a written and a shooting test. After that, a judge has to sign off on your request to carry a firearm and your concealed carry license is issued.

Stopping Waste in Our Home – Part 2

Financial

May 062012

Wasting, wasting it’s been quite a few days talking about it. So I don’t need to tell you, I feel waste should be avoided – by now you already are on that page.

Today I am going to tell you three real ways our family avoids wasting money.

Planning our spending:
It’s impossible in our house not to plan our spending, check out the best deals and then “layer” the deals. What I mean by layering is to plan the purchase in a certain order where you can get a benefit from each layer. Layering for us starts by deciding what we want to buy, which can take time because we will want to compare value, costs and details. We will want to know this particular product is one we really need or want before we move to the next step. Once we do know ~ we go out to the internet to find sales on that particular make, model or brand. We find and check out any coupons and or rebates and even print out the rebate forms. We print the forms because not all vendors will have a link, note a rebate or even give you a hint there is one available ~ but if there is, we want to be able to take advantage of it. Then we go to one of the sites that give back a percentage of the price, or points for your purchases. We will buy our item after we calculate if points or cash back is our best option. Lastly, we pay for the items with a cash back credit card. We use credit for ease of purchase, for the benefits the credit card provides, and for the cash back from using the card. (Note: We have no annual fee cards and we pay our credit card in full each month, and the cards give back $$ or points that can be changed into $$).

Finding new ways to cut costs:
Every month I try to find one more way to save. Last month I ordered my prescription medicine from a Canadian pharmacy. If you know me, you’d realize I didn’t do this lightly or without quite a considerable amount of thought. With our income slashed to the bone, I just felt like I had to slash my prescription costs too. So I first tried at my doctors’ office asking for a lower priced medicine. When that didn’t work and my only options were the same medicine, or one that wasn’t asthma sparing – I had to stay with my old one. The old one’s price is now $128.40 for a 30 day supply (that’s over $4.00 each) – the Canadian pharmacy price is $1.21. Great right, but how do you chose one? My in-laws currently use one they are happy with, so I went there, and took them up on their referral fee offer. It gave my in-laws $25.00 off any $90 or more, and it gave me the same offer. I wound up paying $0.916 per pill delivered for mine. I chose non-generic pills because of my allergies, but generic would have been even less! You are reading this correctly… I paid $50.00 less for 3 month supply, than I would have had to pay for a 1 month supply at the local Walmart Pharmacy. So on my regular Rx, brand name pills, with the lower price, and the referral discount – I paid 72% less for my medicine. I should have done this sooner!

Avoiding Debt:
Another of our ways to stop wasting our money has been to not carry any debt. I know that’s not easy, and it’s not for everyone. When we purchased our third home – we paid cash for it. We moved into a smaller place on a smaller piece of land, and a house that needed work. But it meant no mortgage – and it also meant that my husband could now work anywhere and pay our bills because they were now that “reasonable”. We just felt that any interest we had to pay to own or have anything wasn’t something we wanted to do. We preferred to save for what we needed or wanted. Not having debt is very freeing. And …all those dollars we would have paid? We saved them by not having to spend them on interest. Thousands and thousands on mortgage interest, thousands and thousands by not keeping a credit card balance, and we saved thousands and thousands by not having car payments, etc.

Stopping Waste in Our Home

Financial

May 052012

Waste is something I try to avoid at all costs. I guess we all have our own unique and sometimes quirky ways to deal with it. Today I am going to tell you a few of the ways we stopped wasting material in our home over the years, laughing allowed.

First and foremost – we try not to waste natural resources and recycle everything we can. Lots of times that means a quick wash and then into the recycle bin. At our house we have a recycle bin the size of our trash bin – and most weeks it’s fuller than the actual garbage. I would say about of 75% is either recycled or fed to the wild animals who live with us on our 5 heavily wooded acres.

We reuse jars for things like homemade jellies and jams, and other canning. The Ball® canning jar lids fit the quart mayonnaise jars perfectly. We store nails, screws, buttons, anything small and in need of some organization so that there isn’t a drawer full of junk. The huge jars we use as sort of a greenhouse when planting seedlings outside. They protect them from light frost and animals as well as storing heat right around the plant itself. And as our last example, we use them for materials that need a container they cannot penetrate. Think of this as just a small jar of paint from the gallon for touch-ups, or some stain where you don’t need the entire container. Or if you need to transport a small amount of anything to another location – glass is great for that.

We also recycle all our plastic containers, paper, newspapers, foil, used oil, wood, etc. and I hope you do too! But do you actually reuse your Dixie® type paper plates. Well, we do. Anything that doesn’t really compromise the plate, we dust off the crumbs and pile them up to use again. There’s also nothing wrong I understand with hanging up your teabags to dry and then reusing them either. Sometimes you do have to use more than one “recycled bag” though to get a good cup of tea!

More on waste tomorrow, but I’ll leave with some things you might not think are reuseable or recycleable, but are! How about metal hangers, dentures (for the precious metals they contain), cell phones, phone books, hair, golf balls, bicycles, trophies, old computer parts, floppy disks, christmas lights, and keys.

Stop Wasting Your Money

Financial

May 042012

As I said yesterday, wasting money bothers me. But truthfully, any waste bothers me. Wasting natural resourses, money, time, anything — because I view waste as unnecessary to living happily and healthily on this earth. It always saddens me when I see waste ~~~ any type of waste. Since we all view waste differently we will each approach ” doing away with it” in our own way ~~ but in this economy [... read more]

The Government Wastes Your Tax Dollars!

Government

May 032012

Wasting Money bothers me. I am appalled when I see others doing it. I am of the opinion that one can avoid this if they take the time and effort needed to search out an alternative. But I am actually a bit angered by it when I see my taxes paying for ridiculous things. Our government budget never seems to cut out any waste, they [... read more]

Allergies

Health Care

Apr 262012

Speaking from experience – this is one category that has been a source of annoyance for me for a long time. Recently, it seems there has become a new awareness of just how devistating allergies can actually be to those who have them. I am thinking specifically when talking about new awareness to the peanut and gluten allergies. I cannot fathom the stress that might accompany having [... read more]

Sometime Friends ~ Short

Uncategorized

Feb 282012

Friends are nice to have – most of the time. They are there for you and you are there for them. It’s something that helps makes the things that happen to all of us in this world easier to accept. Someone to call when you have good news or bad. Someone to spend your leisure time with having fun. Someone who is there and cares for [... read more]

Missing Blog Prizes?

Commerce

Feb 072012

What can be more annoying than to win something, but never receive it? How easily something just that simple turns from a win-win-win to a lose-lose-lose. I have read countless reasons why a prize is not delivered as promised, and each time I have to wonder what the real reason might be. Have you had this happen to you? There are more of you than [... read more]

Cable – Phone – Internet Providers

Commerce

Feb 052012

This is a guest post ~ my first of what I hope will be many. Hope you enjoy it. Do you want to know what really annoys me? It’s my cable/phone/internet provider. I know I could shop around, but it’s time consuming and I’m lazy. I prefer it all on one bill, in one place, etc. Seems everytime I have called them for support recently, I [... read more]

Superstitions & Cribs

Commerce, Health Care, Uncategorized

Jan 222012

When I first became a mother in 1978, times were hard and dollars were in short supply. I had been married for over 6 years and we hadn’t prevented pregnancy, it just didn’t happen! I got so darn sick, so fast even the doctor I saw believed it was the flu. The only one who knew differently was my mother, and she shared that information [... read more]