Thank you Hun...

How many of you out there cringe when someone you don’t know at all calls you, Hun? Is it just me or I should say us, since Hubby feels as I do that it is too familiar and should only be used sparingly with someone you really know well enough to forget their name, kidding…like when you have a few children, really! Any-who, I prefer the more formal address with business people, title, Mrs. Miss, Ms. Mr. then last name, perhaps that is because it is how I was taught. Lower class people were portrayed in movies calling people honey or sweetie or Hun, what-have-you and so maybe that’s why I always associated those terms of too much endearment annoying us. I do believe that even some movies with street-walkers had them calling over Johns using those epithets, not that there is anything wrong with that. And Nevada knows it is fine in their book! But Hubby and I have been mostly annoyed with people in industries that you expect a bit of decorum in, like the medical profession, office workers, and even today’s service people in restaurants wanting them to act more professional. After all they are not that many diners around with 1950’s themes where I can remember waitresses talking like that, not today’s modern gender-neutral servers anyway should be trained better. At first I thought it was a southern thing, since it did appear more prevalent when we first moved down here from the northeast, over twenty-six years ago and I would find myself saying please don’t call me that and it seems I am still saying it. But now as I think back it was up north too, but when I was a youngster, back in the 1950’s and 60’s. As we all know that this area at one time took longer to catch on to things… but not for the last decade or so, we seemed with all the technology to have caught up! Fashion, music and movies all the newest and most in have been here in record speed. No one needs to live in a city to be city smart. We are all on an even playing field, at least that is what I thought, but being so backwards with the Hun thingy, still does get my goat and has lost the charm that many claim it was supposed to provoke. To me and Hubby I might add it feels rude and disrespectful, just the opposite of what it was supposed to do. Sure we watched Andy Griffith and loved the down home charms of the south and the mythical town, of Mayberry NC before moving here to Florida two and a half decades later, Aunt Bea was abuzz with shelling out those ‘Huns’ and ‘sweeties’, but that was in the 1960’s and that was then and this is now! I rest my case. On that pet peeve rant for the night, allow me to be a little bit country and little bit 2012 now listen all you sweeties and Huns, not Attila, I hope allow me to be the first to wish all of you darlings a very happy good night and ask you to kindly count all your blessings and share all your overages and we will too! And next time please be here or be square, ya hear?! PS And for all the Sandy victims of the hurricane and the Sandy Hook school you are in our thoughts and prayers and never ever forget that! Odd how they are both called Sandy.

Interesting investigating...for me...

Due to the several meanings of the term ‘investigating’, (examine, explore, look into, inspect, study, consider, probe and scrutinize) I felt that it was necessary that what I looked into was to benefit myself, although, that is not to say that others may also find it beneficial, because I hope they will. The new medication that the new gastroenterologist put me on was Nexium 40mg. in place of my previous Dexilant 60mg. both for GERD or Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease. With a few major differences, one is price, Dexilant was quite expensive and when I was not being insured I was put into a program for receiving it for free, but now with being insured even Nexium for a three months supply will be $493.31 for the first three months’ supply, but as soon as I meet my $500 deductible it will be only $4 for a three months’ supply thereafter and so will most of my other seven prescriptions too! That is now mostly around $2.99 a month and so $4 for three months is quite a bargain, NOT! Well sort of…Except of course my Copaxone, which is now free with the program, but will be $35 a month for three than $16 after for three months… or something like that. You have to be an attorney to decipher most of the double talk that I felt I was getting, imagine this insurance is for people with pre-existing conditions and if they don’t have a caregiver who speaks insurance-speak, heaven help them! And I took business law for a few years too; I know that I am not that bright, but gosh…this requires a masters and a bar passing too and I don’t mean the one down on the corner! Bud dump bum. But seriously folks… With the monthly increase causing my premiums to go now from $376 to $432 a month; I ask it is no wonder why people have left here to get socialize medicine over the Canadian border? Don’t worry though, since I was against the Viet Nam War too and I still am very proud to be an American, but we need help with this healthcare system, really! Also my Gabapentin will be more in the beginning than less as well as my Baclofen I do believe, but this is a bit confusing…NOT JUST A BIT; A WHOLE BUNCH! Any-who, that is not what I wanted to discuss, after some research on the side affects of Dexilant I uncovered my thyroid problems were on its possible side affects list and so were so many other side affects…none good, and could be blamed for enhancing the ones that my Multiple Sclerosis already had given me years before I started on the Dexilant, which was a little over a year ago. While Nexium has hardly any, including none having to do with my thyroid, and so I will hope that perhaps by my next blood work, in a few months, perhaps it will show my thyroid is just fine, an up side? Moving on… Every-time I try that intermingle thingy you all do online on Facebook with interjecting when people say things, I screw it up. My social skills are lacking, perhaps due to not actually being out in the world like I once was. My comments seem to be last or what I say is all wrong, I suspect it could be my odd sense of humor? Or maybe what my input is not in line with the ideas of the comment and my cognitive mind is not working up to par? Anything is possible I suppose. At one time I was considered quite able to hold my own with witty repartee. As a teen dating it came in handy. Even when involved in work and after in writing commentary for those fashion shows that I did for fund raising for the non-profits. Anyway, whatever it was it has seemed to have gone the way of the dinosaur in my existence and that makes me sad. Being a half wit, now that is funny! Being witless, so is that! Hey wait I still got something…hmm? And I don’t have a fever or my nose running and so … perhaps I have a wee bit of funny left and so I will have to work with that half-witless portion of my brain and make do or expand on it with the rest of my enhanced-ness, speaking of the body portion of this gal? Now who is speaking like an insurance guru? Gotcha/em, Geez, if only I really did. On that touch of showing that I am still touched… allow me to be the first to wish all of you a very happy good night and ask you to kindly count all your blessings and share all those overages and we will too! And next time please be here or be square, ya hear!?

An up and down type of day...

Looking on the brighter side of most days, these days is what I aim for, but some days make it more of a challenge. And I bet that you can all relate. Hubby over the weekend found out that his Medicare/supplement would be going up $104 a month and so he called to ask why and the explanation was one not that different from the Na, Na, Na, Na we used to say when we were kids, meaning: TOO BAD! Now I never did that, wink here, bad Tobi, but I can recall the bigger kids doing it to be mean on occasion. And then today I received my reality slap with my pre-existing federal insurance also going up another fifty-six bucks a month. Now it all would be so much worse that nearly two thousand bucks a year in loss of income, except for one bright spot in the tumult, we on social security all received a hefty COLA increase, actually a pitiful one of 1.7%! Not funny at all… This does not help us compensate for any of the new increases or even our personal COLA that continues to rise day by day! See, I bet you say, yep me too… but maybe not? Our homeowners insurances including our flood, taxes, food, all went up, and if you blink you might have noticed that gas has come down, a wee bit, hurray! Still looking for that silver lining, like everyone else! We manage our finances just fine and we’ll metaphorically have to tighten our belts, slightly, you see, so far Hubby’s pension still gets that whopping big 3% COLA every summer, at least he has been getting for the last few years that he has been retired… things change though…, but his is a state funded pension and so I will say that is another looking-up thingy! Most people would be crying with that stuff creating havoc with their finances, well as we all know they’re much more important things to cry over…And we are just cheap enough to be able to adapt! Another plus for us! Now back to what is truly on all our minds and concerns, since we all know in life what truly matters and breaks our heart way too often: Here’s some info for all of us who want to do something but have been baffled on what… Address to send Donations by Pray for Sandy Hook Elementary School on Monday, December 17, 2012 at 8:59am • Here is the official address to send all monetary donations too. This comes directly from the Newtown, CT website! Check donations may be mailed to: Sandy Hook School Support Fundc/o Newtown Savings Bank39 Main Street, Newtown CT 06470 Or may be dropped off at any Newtown Savings Bank branch location. For questions please call 800-461-0672 To pay by credit card, please follow this link (which will also give you all of the other information you need about donations). Thank you all for your support! https://newtown.uwwesternct.org/ In closing please make a fuss when it matters over things that are important and let the other stuff fall by the wayside… This is the season that we all reflect on happiness and our own personal sadness and so for the sake of yourselves and your children look for the silver linings and turn emotion into motion by doing something positive. We all search for those special gifts well caring for others tis that season so do what you know is right… and NIKE! On that note of trying to give us all a perspective in these trying times just about anything we can think of is not that easy any more… allow me to be the first to wish all of you a very HAPPY good night and ask you all to kindly count all your blessings and share all your overages, you know where… and we will too! And next time please be here or be square, ya hear?!

I am nothing if I do not keep my promise of last night...

As you all know I reported earlier in the week that Hubby and I were offered very generous tickets to a Christmas concert at our very own Charlotte Performing Arts Center… Well, we went and had a marvelous time, with excellent seating. It was a night of Christmas classics and since my foot tapping ain’t what it used to be, and so I utilized my upper extremities, arms and hands in a sort of conducting re-enactment from our seats. Hubby felt that this was odd, and said I did not appear that I had all my faculties where one should have them, but he was not so flowery in his debasing, more exacting, so out of character. Any-who, we did have times when the audience was actually encouraged to sing-a-long. And yes, case in point, the first welcoming for this entitlement was just before intermission with a memorable voluminous heartfelt rendition of the Hallelujah Chorus from the Messiah by Handel, of course. This in particular was a fond memory for Hubby and me, since as high schoolers we both were in choir but in two different schools in the same county though and when our choral groups were invited to perform at the Teaneck Armory we hadn’t even met as of yet, coincidence, who knows… And so the joyous season projected from the familiar tunes that the Charlotte Chorale, seventy men and women strong, performed so well, many favorites such as Come All Ye Faithful, O Tannenbaum, O Holy Night, We need a little Christmas, and on and on… we all got to reprise our singing abilities with being brought into the fold once again with, I’ll Be Home For Christmas and then again with White Christmas… old favorites that we all know by heart, but it was very nice that they provided the lyrics to follow along. Less than a dozen of the Charlotte High School Band provided the accompaniment for the second half of the program. Angela Navarro was the lone pianist for the first half and did an excellent job has she has done many times before I am more than sure. Laurel Webber is not only the President of the Chorale but did a few solos in her magnificent soprano voice. So many were featured I could go on all night long… but the concert was just the beginning of our evening… and at each moment it was spectacular! The concert ended at dinner time so Hubby and I went over to the Fish Market at Fisherman’s Village to have something… and we chose a hot meal rather than our usual cold selections…but I am getting ahead of myself… Hubby and I as you may know are not usually out during the evening, we are in usually very early and stay there, and so seeing all the Christmas lights on our way to Fishville was absolutely thrilling we had thought, be still me heart, until we arrived at the location and were WOWED beyond our beliefs… One million lights adorned the entire complex of Fisherman’s Village in Punta Gorda, FL! To explain it would not do it justice you must see it with your own eyes, beautiful! We are hopefully planning to take the kids there when they come down to visit during the holiday and so this was a dry run… and worth the try out. Never think you are going to have a quick anything eating out during this time of the year here in destination Florida in winter with snowbirds and other families here for the holiday, so relax and know that is how it should be… enjoy the family with a new realization, zapped again with the reality how fast it can disappear! Any-who, we got home late for us maybe not for you; and I quickly sent you all that cryptic blurb… And we had a movie waiting for us to see… Men in Black 3, we have seen both of the others and so we had been looking forward to this one too, and we did enjoy the small light desert ending to our banquet of one heck of a memorable late afternoon and evening with the season still going on… The day before was the tragedy in Newtown, and it almost felt irreverent having this much joy, but let me ask you, isn’t that what death teaches all of us? Every minute is precious so make the most from everything we do…including mundane tasks can be done with love, and never ever forget to tell those you love that you do each moment they are with you and even when they are not, since there must be an app for that! And now in closing I just want to let all of you know even in your deepest sadness take time to be happy for who knows when things could change and we all must NOT have any regrets when that times comes for us, and it will… On that note of my love for each and everyone of you, allow me to be the first to wish all of you a very happy good night and to ask you to kindly to count all your blessings and share those overages which can see that you have been doing all over my Facebook page and we will too! And next time please be here or be square, ya hear?!

It is very late for this tonight...

So with this tease, I will leave you with two thoughts to sleep on…what makes having the holidays so much more entertaining and what sort of things create happiness deep within you? Those two questions will be answered tomorrow, since tonight I am way too tired to finish with the explanations that these items so rightfully deserve. Sweet dreams peeps and may pleasant thoughts dwell profoundly in your souls…

Another tragedy has befell our nation once again, too sad...

The count of dead is twenty-eight of which twenty are too young to have their lives cut so short, just babes in an elementary school that should have held them safe from this sort of thing. Six adults were teachers and school employees, one was the shooter himself, and another victim was found at a relative’s home in a town nearby. This all happened, not in a big city, but in a small town in Connecticut called, Newtown, with a population of merely 26,000, about the same size of the one I moved from in NJ. And one brother of one of the survivors in an interview said the worse crime they have had previously was cars having things taken out of them. A little bit of horrific reality check of how devastatingly things can change in a blink of an eye. Another reminder to never ever take our loved ones for granted. But with that said, most psychologist say that overly interacting with your children now may cause them to wonder what’s up, better to not allow the young ones to watch the news of this, since they need to feel safe and too many questions without answers could rock their lives negatively. I am the first person to feel honesty is always the best policy, but in the case of children I found out that it has to be age appropriate or at least intelligence appropriate, many children are more mature at different ages to handle things better than others; small doses, as with any bitter pill. As a parent it is always your own call, but you knew that. My fear is for those survivors who might have seen what actually transpired, no way to ever wipe that from your brain, years and years of intensive psychological counseling and even then… my heart cries for all of them. The information is being gathered still and has been speculated too much with incorrect info getting out before verified. What I have told you is what the local law enforcement has given out over the TV. They are still not absolutely sure who the shooter was, at first they said one person and then his brother… more exacting information should be available as the investigation continues. We as a nation lost so many possible presidents, doctors, nurse, teachers and who knows what these children would have become, it hurts all of us knowing the fact that their families will never see their dreams realized… our condolences go out to each and everyone of them. As a parent that to me is the most unimaginable misery, our children are supposed to outlive us, not us them. On that too sad note, now more than ever allow me to wish all of you to try to have a happy good night. I know it’s hard, but for your own babes and remind you to kindly count all those blessings and share all those overages and we will too! And next time please be here or be square, ya hear?

Good deals are not always online...

Sometimes you just have to go out into the world and find them. How many of you out there have the habit of shopping the net before you even go to the brick and mortar stores to shop for the same thing that you thought you priced online? Unfortunately, I have been known to do that, and me with my background in retail management, shame on me, but to be fair during my time in the field online did not exist yet. Any-who, to think again about how we all shop, mostly us lazes, who have become invested in the easiest ways out of the mob scenes, hmm? But as I must reiterate we are all doing ourselves a deep disservice. How one may ask, case in point: Just as many online items are not in stores as well as in-store items are not online. Meaning that we don’t always know what our possibilities can be without physically finding out in person, ta da! Items that I priced online started low enough and went up to every price point one could possibly imagine or afford within anyone’s budget for such things, but in the same store different items appeared that were not online that were more to the liking of this consumer and at a price that would not break the bank either, another ta da! In closing on this topic, which I must admit is actually seasonally appropriate…But if you have not realized this simplistic concept, which I am more than sure you all have, do whatever you wish with this revelation of mine…and I do believe it does call for another big TA DA, even so! If I can’t be my own cheerleader, who can? Yes, that sentence does not make any sense what-so-ever, since only YOU can be your OWN cheerleader, right? HA! What most of you may have devised by these first few paragraphs that still appear in block form, gosh I wish someone will tell me how to adjust this crazy new format on Google, because I do write this in word with paragraphing, correctly, I might add. Although, when I copy and paste it to be published and it is shown on the pre-published screen it is still paragraphed right, but then appears online as one run-on lump/block of words…so sorry, and all these months I have still not figured out how it gets it so wrong, since I know it’s not me! Sure I am grammatically incorrect and miss adding in words where there should be little things like ‘is’, ‘a’, ‘or’ what-have-yous, but I do believe I know something about paragraphing, since I seem to recall when one thought stops and another begins or some such thingy, but the new format took my one ability away from me, writing skills-wise, that is…I cannot blame Google for all the rest, and with that I do think it calls for another…nah. Hubby and I also went to lunch at the Charlotte Cultural Center in Port Charlotte and we had a lovely one, Hubby had Shepard’s pie and I had soup and salad and there we can drink our own waters without concern and with bargain prices for our lunches to boot! And of course in my new chariot/wheelchair we also perused their shops, but alas nothing yelled at us to take it home with us… On that bunch of what some may say incoherent verbal abuse of the English language, but I prefer to think of it as my BLOG, allow me to wish all of you a very happy good night and ask you kindly to count all your blessings and share all of your overages and we will too! And next time please be here or be square, ya hear?