My New Blog...

So I have bad news: Someone is actually willing to pay me to blog, and I have taken them up on their offer. Seeing as I am a working fool (I work very long hours at my day job) I really don't have time to update both blogs. I know most people could already tell that, since I haven't updated on here since who knows when, but just in case someone is still holding out hope that I'm going to get my lazy butt in gear and start posting again, I'm afraid to tell you that chance has just gotten slimmer than Paris Hilton. When I can blog and make guaranteed money (although admittedly that pay isn't very high, it is guaranteed pay) it's hard to make time to blog elsewhere for free, as much fun as it is to blog about whatever topic I want to--my paid blogging job is strictly about jobs and employment, nothing else. I do try to keep my blog from becoming stagnant however, by talking about such "jobs" as being paid to play video games or being an online juror or other wild ideas I read about on the 'net. Just because I have one topic doesn't mean I have to be boring!

So if you ever have a chance, please check out my blogs at Families.com--I promise to try my best not to put you to sleep! :-D

Havs

Let the fun begin: The Grocery Game

Edited to say: I sprinkled the website address throughout this blog entry, so that no matter where you were in the blog, it would be easy to click and go to the Grocery Game website. Jennifer was kind enough to tell me in the comments that I didn't put the link in anywhere, so I have remedied that. Okay, editing comment over.



Tonight, I paid $0.25 for a tube of toothpaste. I debated for a while whether or not to actually pay that much, but I decided in the end that I could spend that much on toothpaste. Afterall, I'm used to getting toothpaste for free.

No, I'm not robbing the grocery stores. :-P Instead, I'm playing something called The Grocery Game, which I will here on out refer to as the GG. And as part of playing the GG, I have been getting amazing deals, without even needing to pack a hand gun to the grocery store! Yes, I live in Idaho, but would you believe me if I said I don't own a gun? Wild but true. My sister, brother-in-law, and father all do, but I do not. Hey, look, worthless information! My blog is packed full of that, although would you believe it, this blog is actually going to be one of the helpful entries. I do try to put one up like that every once in a while, just to throw everyone off balance. ;-)

So I am going to explain how the GG works, but just as a warning, this is about to get real long. I am a woman of MANY words, and unfortunately, this isn't an exception.

The Grocery Game was started by the Teri Gault. She used to use coupons and go shopping every week like everyone else, but then she realized that stores seemed to be in a cycle in terms of sales. So she started tracking the sales at each store each week in her area (southern California) so she would know what the best price truly was for any given item. And she not only tracked the sales, she also tracked the coupons, and matched the sales to the coupons. After a while, everyone was begging her for her list every week, and she decided she ought to start a company. And thus The Grocery Game was born.

One of the wildest concepts of the GG: The most expensive grocery store is the cheapest place to buy your groceries. No, I'm not smoking something. Stick with me here; this will all make sense by the end of this blog entry, promise.

There are two types of grocery stores: Traditional grocery stores, and new-style grocery stores. The traditional grocery stores mark their prices way up, and then mark a few items each week WAY down (usually at or below their cost) which they call "loss leaders." They are hoping to have you look at those prices in the flyers, say, "Wow, what a good deal!" come into the store to buy those items, and then stay to round out the shopping for the week.

New-style grocery stores are places like Sams Club, Costco, and Wal-Mart. Their strategy is to mark all of their items fairly low, but never super low, and they rely on their customers to do all of their shopping each week at their stores, because the customers perceive them as the cheapest place in town. Well, that's actually true, except for the few items that the traditional stores have marked down to rock bottom. In those cases, the traditional grocery stores beat new-style grocery stores all to pieces. But what can you do? You can't just shop the sales at each store each week, because what if a store doesn't have any meat on sale, and your freezer is empty? You will either eat salads all week, or buy items that are not on rock bottom pricing.

In comes The Grocery Game. Teri figured out the traditional grocery stores are on a 12-week cycle in terms of their sales. They put an item on sale, and then three months later, they put it back on sale again. So to really take advantage of the good prices, you need to buy not one or two weeks worth of items when you shop, but instead buy 12 weeks worth of items. If toilet paper goes on a great sale, then you need to buy extra rolls, so you don't have to buy any more for another twelve weeks. Make sense?

This doesn't mean that you have to buy 3 months worth of groceries this week. What you do is you make up a list of needs each week--what you're completely out of and cannot wait to go on sale before buying. Also, any items like produce, milk, eggs, cheese, yogurt, etc, would be on the needs list. Then look at the GG List for the week, and see how many of your "need" items are at your list store. Buy the rest of the need items at Wal-Mart, Costco, etc. Figure out how much you'll have left in your budget for the rest of your groceries, and then head to the list store. Buy the need items first, then buy items on sale that you don't necessarily need this week but that you will need/use in the future. If you do this every week, eventually your needs list will shrink to almost nothing, and even further in the future, even your stockpile list will be small. That's when you've hit the "cherry-picking" stage--you only buy it if it's free or almost free.

There are people who have such a well-rounded stockpile, they take an entire month off from grocery shopping, other than the perishables. One gal was talking about how her hubby lost his job after she had been stockpiling for a while, and they ate off only their stockpile for two months--they didn't go grocery shopping at all except for the perishables. She talked about what a huge blessing that stockpile turned out to be in their time of need. How many of us can say that we could eat out of just our pantry for two months? I know I can't right now, but my goal is to be able to eat out of just my pantry for a YEAR. My church counsels to have a years food storage at all times, and I have finally found a way to do that. For most people, that is going overboard, and it certainly isn't necessary to play the GG. That's just what I want to do. The GG says to stock up for three months, so you don't have to shop again until the next sales cycle. That takes some time to build up to that point, but it is very, very possible.

Now, onto why the list is so gosh darn amazing. Teri color codes the items on the lists each week. I became a subscriber at Albertsons a couple of weeks ago. I went in and looked at the GG list that first week. She had every item on sale in the store on that list. There were even unadvertised sales on the list, because lots of items go on sale each week, and there isn't enough room in the sales flyer to list them all. So Teri has not only the advertised sales listed, she also has the unadvertised sales listed. She also lists all coupons that match up with those items--the amount of the coupon, the week it came out in the newspaper, which flyer it was in the newspaper, everything. She also puts in there if the item is on sale at another store nearby (like Fred Meyers, which there is a FM in the next town over for me.) FM is not a list store, but they do put out coupons each week in their sales flyers. Albertsons takes other grocery store coupons, so you can use FM coupons at Albies. I have done it several times, and the cashiers never blink an eyelash.

Teri will also put on the list when there will be a coupon dispenser right next to the item in the store. I have no idea how she knows all of this stuff, but I imagine she has made some sort of deal with the grocery stores where they tell her what they're going to be doing, in return for her sending so much business their way. This is a lady who has been on national TV and I believe she's also been on Oprah. But anyway, I haven't had her be wrong yet: If she says there will be a coupon dispenser next to the product with a buy two, get $0.75 off coupon in it, it has always been there. Absolutely amazing I tell you...

So if you combine the store coupons, the manufacturer coupons, and the sale prices, you can end up with some really good prices on items. Heck, last week, Rite Aid paid me to take some toothpaste home (hence the "should I actually pay for toothpaste" dilemma. It's hard to go from making money off toothpaste to actually paying for it. Y'all have lots of pity for me, I'm sure of it. :-P) So anyway, back to the list. Once Teri combines the sales prices and the coupons, she totals how much the item will cost you, and she also looks through her database to see how this price compares to sales in the past. She will mark an item as black if it is a so-so sale but nothing to write home about (probably a bit cheaper than Wal-Mart would be on the same item, but not by a ton.) She will mark an item as blue if it is a great sale--this means to stock up because this is a rock bottom sale! And she will mark an item as green if it's free. Yes, you read that right. There are items at the grocery store each week that are free. This week, there were four of them at Albies; last week there were three. This is free after coupons and sales combined together, of course.

Just as FYI here: There is an alternative to the GG, and it's called the Coupon Mom. I just looked at that website, and although it is similar in some ways, there are some definite benefits to the GG list. The Coupon Mom site doesn't compare current sale prices to past sale prices to make sure these sales really are a good deal. It also doesn't list any other store coupons (like using Fred Meyer coupons at Albertsons.) It also has a MUCH smaller selection of stores--Albertsons wasn't on there at all, for one thing. There are also other smaller bells and whistles that the GG site has that the couponmom site doesn't have, but nothing that will make ya or break ya. I just figured I ought to throw all that info out there to help you make a decision, if this is something you want to do. :-)

So anyway, if you do join and use the GG, you'll be shocked to realize that you are shopping at all of the stores that you previously thought were too expensive. I know I rarely shopped at Albies before I started this game, and now I'm there every week (I've been there three times in the last two weeks.) But as a general rule, the higher the prices at the store normally, the lower they mark their prices during a sale.

So in order to play the Grocery Game, you have get the Sunday newspaper each week. You have to be willing to cut out the coupons and organize them each week. You have to have some way of holding and organizing the coupons (I bought a binder, which I really like.) The price of the list is $1 for the first four weeks as a trial period, and then it's $10 for eight weeks for the first list, and $5 for eight weeks for each additional list after that (meaning, $8+$5+$5 for three lists, etc.) If you sign up, tell them that havndoug "at" cableone . net sent you (sorry about the spacing, I just don't want to get slammed with spam.) If three people referred by me stay past the trial phase and into the normal billing phase, I get 12 weeks free, or something like that?? I can't remember now. Anyway, I don't get cash or anything, but free weeks never hurt anyone. ;-) Of course, if I wasn't doing really well with it, I would never tell anyone else to do it too. :-)

I know everyone is just dying to hear about specific deals that I got, to see if the GG really is all that it is cracked up to be. I cannot get too specific (I cannot say the brand name of the item, for example) because this is all proprietery info and I could get into big doo-doo with the GG. So I am going to talk about deals, but without mentioning brand names. Just FYI: With the GG, almost everything you buy will be brand name, but you will buy it cheaper than you could buy store brand. Gotta love that. So all items listed below are a brand name item:

Cereal for a $1 a box. Also, the flavored packets of oatmeal for $1 a box. Granola bars for $1.25 a box.

A different brand of cereal for a $1.60 per box, plus a $5 coupon off my next shopping trip at this store (no matter what I buy or how much I buy) plus a $2 coupon off some more cereal. (Doug and I eat A LOT of cereal, and all of this cereal is something we normally pay $2.50 to $3.50 a box for, so this is a huge savings for us. We bought 12 boxes of cereal in one day.)

Frozen pot pies: $0.50 each.

Flavored water: On sale for $1 for a 20 oz bottle, and then I had a coupon for $0.75, making the grand total a quarter. I have regularly paid $1.50 or more at the gas stations for this exact same drink. I was pretty proud of that one. ;-)

Snack mix: $0.75 a bag (normally $2-3 at the grocery store and gas station.)

Canned dog food: 0.33 a can, normally about $0.75 at Wal-Mart.

Mousse: $0.69 a bottle, normally $1.25 at Wal-Mart (I use this stuff by the bag--gotta love the naturally curly hair!--so I was REALLY excited to see such good prices on this item.)

So that was my list store this week. I am guessing on the Wal-Mart prices, because although the List does have the normal Albertsons price listed, I don't consider that to be a "real" price because I would never buy something at that inflated price. So I have to compare to what I would buy it at, which is Wal-Mart prices.

But if you did decide to compare shelf price at Albies to what I actually paid, I have saved 51% thus far, or $143. That % would have been higher, except last week, I let my DH throw things in the cart willy-nilly (I wasn't paying attention to him, and like a five-year-old, he was throwing all of the junk food in the cart that he thought looked good) and so we only saved 30-something percent last week. We had a long talk about buying what was on the list, and nothing else, and this week we saved just at 50% at Albertsons.

We also shop Rite Aid. RA is not actually a list store, although many people have begged for it to be added, yours truly being one of them. :-P Hopefully it will be added soon. RA and Albies are the only "traditional" grocery stores in town, and I think they're a pretty good pair for me, because we buy our groceries at Albies, and our health and beauty supplies at RA. In terms of items, you can actually get some REALLY good deals at RA each week (that's who paid me to take toothpaste home last week, and gave me a free toothbrush this week) so my percentages of savings are higher at RA than Albies. The odds are stacked in RA's favor though, because H&B products A) Have a very high mark-up, so you can get super-duper prices when they go on sale, B) Have lots and lots of coupons each week in the newspaper, and C) Have really good rebates from the manufacturer to boot.

I had made the decision not to pay for toothbrushes or toothpaste again, although I obviously folded and actually bought toothpaste today, although a quarter is obviously not a big deal. But truly, why should I pay for something that I can get for free? There are people on the GG boards who refuse to pay anything at all for the following items: makeup, shampoo, conditioner, deodorant, razors, toothbrushes, toothpaste, laundry detergent, or cold medicine. These items go on sale so often that you can always get enough free ones to never have to buy any. Can you even imagine? I used to dread having to buy shampoo and conditioner because it was so expensive at Wally World. Now, I am reading where people have 20 bottles of the stuff that they got for free, and they are giving the stuff away to homeless shelters and women's shelters because it's coming out of their ears. I haven't been GGing long enough for that to be true of me, but I can't wait for the day!!! :-D

I have a receipt for RiteAid this week, and since it is not a list store, I don't have to wipe out any brand names. This is what I got at RA:

AirWick room freshner thingies (that you plug in): I had a coupon for buy two refills and get the plug in holder for free. I also had a coupon for $1 off a refill. There was also a rebate on $1 off one refill. So after all the dust settled, I paid $2.98 (after rebate) for $8.97 worth of product (one holder and two refills--I'll explain the rebates in a second, promise.)

Toothbrush: Free after rebate.

Bayer Aspirin: On sale for $1.99, minus $1.00 in store coupon, minus $0.75 manufacturer coupon = $0.25 for a 24 ct Bayer Aspirin bottle.

Just too cool, eh? Okay, RA rebates. Incredibly easy. You take your receipt, go to RiteAid.com and click on "Single Check Rebates" on the left hand side. Set up a RA account (takes about 30 seconds.) Enter in your store number, register number, transaction number, and date (which is all at the top of your RA receipt--very easy to find.) It returns with a screen with all of the rebates available for that receipt--there isn't anything else you need to do. At the beginning of the next month, you go back to RA online and request a check, or if you forget to, they will usually send one to you anyway. No UPCs to cut out, no receipts to mail, nothing to track or circle or worry about. It's done, and it comes in one check to deposit. I hate getting a bunch of small checks, so I was really thrilled to hear that. The checks come 2-3 weeks later. How easy can that be??!

Okay, so I think I probably completely overwhelmed everyone, and I'm sorry about that. Hopefully y'all don't think I've completely lost it. I know there are a lot of people who think coupons are only junk food, and to a point, that's definitely true. Junk food is probably the number one thing that you'll see coupons for, other than H&B. But there are lots of things that are on the list that are not junk food: This week there was oatmeal (regular, quick, flavored, etc,) eggs, cheese, bananas, tuna fish, pancake mix, pancake syrup, lunch meat, evaporated milk, salad dressing, tortillas, etc etc. Sure, there were lots of frozen pizzas and ice cream on the list, but there was lots of other stuff too. During the summer, fresh fruit makes it on the list. Chicken breasts are on there constantly (from what I have read.) So you don't have to suddenly eat only highly processed foods just to take advantage of the bargains, although I did buy a couple of those items (like frozen pizzas and pot pies) in case I was too tired to really cook one night, or to eat for lunch.

Anyway, that's the GG, in more detail than you probably wanted. :-P I know that most people aren't going to be as excited about this as I am, but there are people on the GG boards who have saved over $10,000 in the last year or two doing the GG. Can you even imagine what a difference that will make in your bottom line?! We have a really strict budget: $90 for all extras each week (gas, clothing, food, eating out, anything else) and even with that limited budget, I am already starting to see how big of a difference the GG is making. Doug loves to eat frozen pizzas for lunch, so we bought them at Albies for cheaper than they were at Wal-Mart, and we also got a $5 coupon for our next trip to Albies. Yes, we bought 8 of them in one fell swoop, but quite honestly, we would have bought more if we could have afforded to. That is exactly what the GG is about: Stocking up when the price is low, and eating off of it when the price has gone back up.

Once our stockpile is well-rounded, I plan on cutting our weekly budget for groceries down, and using the extra money to pay off our debt. Ladies on the GG boards have talked about how this has helped them either stay home with their kids, or save for their retirements, or whatever. I'm all over both of those things, and am very excited about what this is going to do for the DH and I money-wise. We are currently pretty far in debt, and I can't WAIT to become debt-free! :-D This "game" is all part of the game plan (oh yes, that pun WAS intended. I guess I am my father's daughter! *grin*)

So I am officially addicted. Doug says it's the one hobby that I've picked up, that we can actually afford. ;-)

Hava
Who would love to be crowned GG Queen of the World... ;-)

Radio

I know I'm a little slow to the game here (ALL puns intended!) but I finally watched Radio tonight. That was a great, amazing film. I have watched quite a few sports films, and they always come down to the last game where the team comes from behind and wins, and the main character is carried around on everyone's shoulders--you all know what I'm talking about. The last shot of the film is always the person with their fist in the air, usually with the setting sun behind 'em.

This film is amazing because it so different! Radio doesn't become a member of the football team and lead the team to victory. Heck, Radio can't even write his own name! He's still in 11th grade (at age 50-something) but that's just the point of the movie. He is loved by many, and for good reason, even if that reason isn't the usual one that causes people to heap adoration on others. I was watching some of the extras afterwards, and the director was talking about how nice it was to produce a film about someone where he didn't have to deal with agents and egos and everything else. He said here was a guy who was there because he lived in the moment and with passion (I'm paraphrasing there, but that was the general drift.)

If you want a true feel-good movie where you don't have to wade through cheap sentimentality tricks and gimmicks, this is the movie for you. I give it two very enthusiastic thumbs up.

I know my blog isn't a movie rating service, but I just finished watching this, and I couldn't help myself. ;-)

'Til next time...

Hava

Crazy Curves Character...

Did you like the alliteration there? I was going to name this, "Curves, How I Hate Thee, Let Me Count The Ways" but "Crazy Curves Character" is just so much more fun.

So in January, my friend Jackie decided to join Curves. When she signed up, they pressured her (hard) to give them three names of three other ladies they could call to tell them the GREAT news about how WONDERFUL Curves is. Also, they told her if she did supply the three names, she would get a free book. She folded, and gave them my name. They called and told me that Jackie had told them to call me (okay, fine, I guess in a way she did) and then proceeded to put the screws on me about joining Curves. I told them I might come in. They wanted a date. I gave them one. They wanted a time. My gosh, just leave me alone already! I gave them one.

HINT: I hate confrontation. Like most people hate the flu and massive traffic jams, I hate confrontation. I will be in one if I absolutely have to, but I'll do a whole lot before I get to the "absolutely have to" stage. Up to and including telling people that I'll go to a gym on a certain day and a certain time. After the Curves lady let me off the phone, I called Jackie. "JACKIE!!!! How could you give them my name??!" After profuse apologies and explanation, she said, "But you don't actually need to go to Curves, which is one of the reasons that I gave them your name. What if I had given them the name of a really heavy-set person, and that really hurt their feelings? I could never do that. So I gave them yours."

"Well, I'm going to go on Friday with you."

"Are you serious?? Why?! You were supposed to tell them no!!" Thus says the woman who is (if possible) even worse with confrontation than I am.

So long story short, I actually signed up for Curves with the intention to exercise with Jackie X amount of times per week (I think we were going for three at the beginning, although that number changed multiple times.) We never did very well with our goal because either I was sick or she was sick, and I'm REALLY not a morning person--7:00, 7:30 is okay, 5:45 is not. I tried going once by myself because Jackie was sick, and that was just about the worst experience ever. Nothing like going around the same machines twice, staring across the room at other people that you don't know, have no breath to talk to anyway, but feel the social obligation to at least chat about the superficial things in life. I left, came home, called Jackie, and told her never again. A vow I actually managed to keep, imagine that. ;-)

But then Jackie got the brilliant idea that she ought to move across the country (BAD Jackie!!) and leave me all alone. Yes, in case you were wondering, it IS all about me. ;-) There wasn't anyway I was going to do the Curves by myself, so I called at the beginning of July to cancel my membership.

"There's a $50 fee for cancelling, and it takes 30 days to put the cancellation into place. You have to come in to sign the paperwork."

I was a bit twerked about the $50 fee, but whatever. I went in to sign the paperwork.

"Oh no, we don't have anything to sign. You have to send us a letter."

Now you're just getting ridiculous. I smiled, held my tongue, went home, and sent them a polite cancellation notice. My membership was charged on the 10th of the month, and because of their shenanigans, I didn't send it out the cancellation letter until the 12th of the month. Technically, I should have been charged another month ($30) AND the cancellation fee ($50) but I figured it was so close, and it was their fault I sent it when I did, that they surely wouldn't do it.

August 10th rolls around. $30 fee taken out. No cancellation fee though. September 10th rolls around. $30 out, $50 stayed. I usually don't complain about not having money taken out, but this was obviously a problem. I called Curves and explained to the lady who answered what happened. She pulled out my chart.

"Oh, we tried to call you multiple times, but we never got an answer. I tried lots of times myself. I never wrote it down when I tried to call, but I know I did." Bull crap, plain and simple. I have a cell phone only (no landline) and my phone tells me when I missed a call, what the number is of who called, etc, and there was no way that some mysterious phone number kept showing up as a missed call. I get very few phone calls, and I would have called the number back if this was the case. And since I have voice mail she should have left me a message anyway. I knew she was lying to me, and that made me mad. She kept going.

"When you cancel, you have to come in and sign a cancellation contract. And you have to pay us $50."

I about choked. I explained (nicely, although VERY firmly) that I had TRIED to cancel in person, but they wouldn't let me! And why on earth would I write them a check for $50 to cancel? They took money out of my checking account each month quite regularly, so why not take out the $50 instead of $30?

"Oh, we can only take out the $30 by law. We cannot withdraw anything other than that amount." And this would have been very nice to tell me when I tried to call and cancel originally.

She promised me that she would call her supervisor and then call me right back. She called me back a couple of hours later.

"My boss offered that if you come in and sign the cancellation form in person, then we'll just consider each other even."

I was mad at this point, truly I was. First off, this $50 fee is fine. Whatever. If I wanted to cancel my cell phone contract, I would have to pay $150. I understand fees. I do NOT understand the 30 day part. By putting the cancellation fee with this clause, they are guaranteeing themselves that you'll pay A) this month's fee, B) next month's fee, and C) the cancellation fee. Before you can quit, you have to pay them $140. Nice for them, bad for you.

So when I got mad, I'm quite afraid I got rude. Not screaming, but certainly not on my best behavior.

"As I see it, you guys owe ME money. I cancelled, and yet you still took out TWO months of membership fees. Those fees come to $60. I owe you $50 for cancelling. So although it's nice of your boss to consider us "even" I quite frankly don't. You owe me $10. And I am NOT coming into Curves." The only way I will ever step foot inside of Curves again is if a large pile of gold is sitting in the middle of the building with my name on it, and that is the only way to get to it. Even then, I would probably promise someone a portion of the gold if they would just retrieve it for me. I'm that anti-Curves by this point.

She tried to push me, tried to get me to come in, tried all sorts of things, and I told her not a chance on this green earth. I finally told her, "Forget the $10. I hate Curves and will never come back, but whatever. But I absolutely refuse to step inside of Curves again. End of discussion. I sent you a letter, EXACTLY like I was told to do, and I refuse to redo what I did right in the first place, all because you guys can't get your act together." Yeah, I was a little upset. ;-)

She agreed, and hung up. I lost my $10, I hate Curves with a passion, but at least I won the (tiny) battle of going back there again.

The cherry on the top? The woman called me from her home a few hours later. "Hi, this is Melanie! I'm the one from Curves this morning. I know you were upset, and I'm sorry about that. I was calling because I have a home-based business that I really think you would be interested in! If you have time, I would like to tell you about it!" My jaw hit the floor. This lady was clinically insane. I agreed to let her call me on Friday to give me more info, then hung up. I promptly went into my address book in my cell phone and saved her home phone number as "DO NOT ANSWER!" She has since called me twice and sent me info in the mail on her business. (You sign up, and you only have to sign up 9 other people! Buy $700 worth of product for $350! YUCK!)

I live in a city that the State Mental Hospital is located in (no joke.) So you have to wonder: Am I dealing with a former psych patient here?? ::gulp:: ;-)

Hava, the Curves Hater

I'm feeling so lucky right now

This one has to be a quick post because my to-do list tonight is horrendously long, but I just wanted to say thank you to all people who commented on this blog and on the CS forums. It has really meant a lot to me that y'all care about me enough to take the time to write sweet things to me. :)

I had a boss who told me once: "The only person who never makes a mistake is the person who never gets out of bed. You made a mistake--so what? At least that means you got out of bed to do it." He will most likely remain my all-time favorite boss, just because he was such a great guy. And a millionaire. He let me name his baby colt who will someday turn into a racing champion, I hope! (He raises race horses as a "hobby," I kid you not.)

But that's all off topic. I just wanted to say thanks to everyone, and also to say (yet again) that I am making the goal of writing in this blog more regularly. I'm really stinking it up, in terms of how steady my posts have been. ;) That's gonna change, promise. :)

Havs

I'm alive, promise!

I have been in a bit of a funk lately. I started a new job at a personal care company in August, with the intention of only working it part-time, and working my other job, court research, part-time. After working at the personal care company for a couple of weeks, my boss came to me and begged me, basically, to work for her full time. She had to fire a gal for insubordination and pure stupidity, and she really needed me full time. She even offered me more than what I was making before. I just couldn't resist.

So I quit my court research job, and I quit doing the mystery shops. I am now back to working 9-5 Monday through Friday, exactly where I was at before. And when I say before, I mean before I started with Career Step. I signed up with Career Step in Nov of 2004. I signed up with them because I wanted to work from home, so when my hubby and I had kids, I would be able to still work and bring in an income. My husband doesn't make enough to support the two of us, let alone enough to support children.

Eighteen months later, May of 2006, I had a huge awakening: I really don't like medical terminology. There were many people on the CS forums who loved nothing more than a great medical question that they could track the answer down for. People who actually cared what the difference was between arteries and veins. I have never had any desire to be a nurse, a doctor, and after the whole Career Step venture, I found out that I apparently don't have any desire to be a medical transcriptionist either.

Problem solved: I would do GENERAL transcription instead! To an outsider, it doesn't seem like the difference would be that huge, but take it from an insider: It's gigantic! They almost don't qualify as the same field. So I got a job at a couple of general transcription companies, and life continued on. Until I realized that I was actually quite miserable being a general transcriptionist. There I was, just me and a pair of headphones, listening over and over and over again to a bunch of people talking over each other, trying to make out what each person was saying. And for some recordings, I not only had to understand each person, I also had to identify them. From an audio recording, no visuals included.

I lasted a couple of months there, maybe (can't remember exact dates now) before I had to quit general transcription also. By this point, my poor hubby really should have been considered for sainthood. I was changing jobs like they were going out of style.

While I was doing the general transcription job, I got a very part-time job doing courthouse research. I decided to expand the counties that I went to, and I eventually started doing courthouse research and mystery shopping full-time, after I quit the GT job. I was also doing some virtual assistance work for the owner of the courthouse research company, Lark. I really loved Lark (she's awesome!) and the company, but there just weren't enough hours of available work to pay the bills, which was worrying me. Then I got a call from the owner of the personal care company, begging me to come work for her part-time. Not long after, I was working there full-time, and I had to quit the research job.

So I went from "Oh yeah, I'm going to work from home making lots of money as a medical transcriptionist" to "I'm working 9-5 Monday through Friday as a secretary." Although I hadn't sat down and thought about it, I realized in the middle of a phone call yesterday with my bro (hi David!) how much this was depressing me. I felt like a failure. I had spent thousands of dollars, literally, and 18 months of my life, all for nothing.

I wish I could say that I have gotten past all of this, and I no longer feel like a failure, but really, I am still struggling. At least I'm starting to crawl out of my cave again. As part of my job, I am required to answer phones, and the sheer volume of phone calls coming through the office is staggering. It's difficult to get anything else done. By time I get home, I am ready to set my cell phone on fire rather than talk on it. I used to love talking to people because when I was staying home and studying all day by myself, I needed to have social interaction. Now, I'm overwhelmed with the amount of social interaction I am having each day, and at one point, I had almost completely withdrawn myself from the world, into my little shell. I spent each night after work reading forums. Anyone who has known me through cyberspace won't be surprised that I have spent a lot of time reading forums. There has been points in the last two years where I would visit the Career Step forums or WAHM forums ten or twenty times a day. But back then, I couldn't help but post on every thread I read, mostly because I'm a know-it-all. ;-) But in the last couple of weeks, I have been reading for hours (three, four, five hours a night) and yet I wasn't posting but once a day, maybe. One quick post, if I was feeling really social.

Well you know what? I'm done guilting myself! Sometimes things work out for me, and sometimes they don't, and I REFUSE to guilt myself for the next year or twenty years for not having the right personality fit for medical transcription, general transcription, and all the rest of the stuff I got into! As of right now, no more hiding for hours at a time, trying to pretend the world doesn't exist. When the phone rings, heck, I might even answer it! Well, that might be going a bit far, but at least I'll think about it. :-P

Anyway, for all of the people who were wondering what hole I fell into, and if I was okay, now you know. I'm perfectly all right, just indulging myself in a pity party. I don't have time for any more pity parties--I've got too much to do!

With that note, I'm off to balance my checkbook. That is, sadly, on the to-do list. Hopefully I can find something on this list that doesn't include selling my unborn children to pay for heat. ;-)

Hava

PS Wow, this is so neat, and yet, a little scary at the same time. I had just finished writing this post and was about to post it, when I got an e-mail from Ken. Thank you Ken, for the e-mail. Anyway, Ken sent me a link for a thread on the Career Step forums, where a bunch of my friends from there were all posting, looking for me because they were worried. Hi you guys!!! << waving madly >> Y'all are so terrific. I don't know how I was so lucky to fall into such a fantastic group of people, but I'm really happy I did. Loves to you all!!!

WAY too much irony

They talked about me and prayed over me today in Relief Society (for those not familiar with the Mormon religion, Relief Society is a meeting for just the ladies in a congregation.) When my husband came home from church and told me this, my first reaction was extreme embarrassment. I wasn't someone important enough or whatever to be prayed over. Once I got past my initial horror enough to speak, I said, "Wait a minute, how would you know?"

Considering Relief Society is a girls meeting, and Doug is most definitely a guy, this was a legitimate question.

"Because they talked about it in Sunday School." If it would have been possible to sink through the floor, I probably would have. Sunday School is a meeting for both guys and gals, so if you missed the announcement in Relief Society, you could have heard it the second time around in Sunday School. Yay me.

"Were they talking about just me, or everyone?" I squeaked out.

"All of you guys. I guess there has been five cases of ladies getting it in our congregation in the last couple of weeks." That made me feel much better. Not the fact that there were more people than just me getting sick, but the fact that everyone didn't just sit around and say how sad they felt that I was sick. For some reason, that thought was just too mortifying. But as part of a group, I was fine.

Of course, fine is a relative term. When you have West Nile Virus, everything's relative. Now anyone who missed my last blog, I want you to immediately stop reading and first feel extreme guilt that you could ever miss something as important as one of my blogs. Afterall, there are at least two people in this world who make it their very first priority every morning to check to see if the Venerable Hava posted while they weren't looking. C'mon, join the crowd, do what everyone else is doing. You're never going to be cool if you don't.

Now that you are past the guilt part (boy, that didn't last long) scroll down and read my last blog entry entitled "Irony." Now you understand why I entitled this blog "WAY too much irony." This kind of thing happens in movies and books, but apparently happens in Hava's life too. Be careful what you laugh about--isn't that some sort of axiom? It oughta be. Maybe I could tradmark it and make millions. Then I really would be laughing, promise.

It all started Friday evening, after a truly horrid day. Doug suggested we go for a walk, so I could get out of the house and stop worrying about the no-good-very-bad-day I had just suffered through. I jumped at the chance, and we left. We left for a jaunt around the block. Now you must know, our "block" is actually much bigger than a standard city block, and I'm usually pretty tired by time we make it all the way around it. But this time, about 3/4's of the way done, I started to feel really tired, much more than I usually feel. All waitresses and cashiers will know what I'm talking about: I had that feeling that you get when you've finished a shift where you have been standing on your feet for 8-10 hours and your legs just ache. At first, I ignored it. After all, I had had a long day (which hadn't included a whole lot of standing, actually) and this was a long walk, and maybe it was just a combination of those factors.

Farther down the sidewalk, the ache had intensified, and it had spread up past my thighs into my hips. It felt like I had been beat with a tire iron, and I couldn't figure out what on earth was going on. "Doug, I am really tired. I don't know why." Rounding the last corner, the house in sight, my whole body was aching all over like I had been beat repeatedly with the tire iron. By time Doug got the front door open, I was light-headed and a bit disoriented. I knew where I was, but the world seemed just a little off-kilter. The pain was overwhelming. My whole body ached--my teeth, the hairs on my head, my bones--heck, I'm sure my toenails were causing me pain. I hadn't hurt like this since I had the flu a couple of years ago. I wouldn't say the pain was stronger than that bout of sickness, but it certainly was on par with it. I got the chills and couldn't seem to warm up. I was under blankets (Doug was wonderful just as all husbands should be, and he helped me to the bedroom, helped me get in bed--all those things wonderful hubbys should do. I have never been so grateful for my spouse as I was that night) and Doug was rubbing my arms and my back while partially covering my body with his. It was warm in the house, and yet the shaking/teeth chattering/chills continued.

I asked Doug for some water, because my throat ached so bad. He got some and brought it back. I would start to get warm, then take a drink and instantly start chattering again. I finally got it through my befuddled brain that the water was cold, and was the cause of the cold boughts. I stopped drinking but it still took a while to warm up.

As all grown-up independent women do who are out on their own, I called my mom. I do not know why, but mothers can always make you feel better, even if they're half a world away. My mom was only a half a state away, but might as well have been a half a world away. In Idaho, a half a state is quite a distance. No fear though, she still made me feel better. She told me all the things mothers are supposed to tell their sick children, and ended by suggesting that I take a warm bath. My teeth were still chattering at this point, and I was definitely up for any ideas to warm up. Doug helped me out of bed (I couldn't even sit up without his help at this point, let alone walk across the room. Are you kidding me? I would have considered walking to the kitchen at that point to be an Olympic event) and helped me into the tub. After I warmed up enough to take a thermometer in the mouth (you can't have your temp taken if your teeth are chattering, FYI) we found out I was registering at 100.4. No wonder I felt so darn awful crappy.

Doug helped me out of the tub and back into bed. He gave me some Tylenol PM and I drifted off to sleep. I woke up later--I'm not sure what time it was, I was completely disoriented--and all I could think was how hot it was. I stumbled out of bed and threw the bedroom window open to let the evening breeze in. I laid back down and my last thought was, "I don't want to lay here--my pillow is covered in sweat!" I don't think I stayed awake long enough to even move my head to a different spot on the pillow; if I did stay awake that long, I don't remember it. Doug says he came in later and felt me--he said I was on fire. He said I had all of the covers off, the window was open, and I was burning up. I believe it.

I woke up Saturday morning feeling marginally better. At least I no longer felt frozen to the core or in the fires of Hades. I stumbled to the doorway of my husband's office. "You wanta take a shower?" I mumbled. For some reason, when I'm sick, my tongue is the first thing to go. I can never talk clearly when I'm sick. Luckily, Doug has had 5 years of practice to understand my mumbling, and didn't even hesitate. "Yeah, let's go."

I got as far as shampooing my hair and getting it out, when I started to feel very light-headed. "Dang it!" I thought. When I'm sick, my body seems to deal with it by having me pass out in the shower. I don't know why I do this, but once or twice every six months or so, I'll pass out in the shower. The first time this happened, Doug flipped out. He was sure I was dying. Now, he just calmly shuts the water off, helps me sit down on the floor of the shower, gets a towel off the towel rack for me and draps it around my shoulders, and leaves to get ready for the day. I sit on the floor of the tub until the world comes back from the gray/black place it had been hiding at, and it stops spinning dangerously, and then I can stand up. Until the world comes back and stops spinning though, don't even bother with trying to move me. It won't work. It's my body's way of saying, "Stop, you need to stop right now, you're sick." I listened to it, and went back to bed.

I spent most of the day either sleeping or whining and complaining to my hubby about how sick I felt. The earlier, "I feel a little bit better today" thought was completely gone, replaced by, "If I died, I wouldn't be in nearly as much pain." The meanie he is, Doug wouldn't kill me, no matter how I begged. I reminded him about the high life insurance policy we have on me, and he reminded me that wouldn't do him a bit of good if he was rotting in prison. Sheesh, you can't even buy loyalty these days.

When the people in the ward found out I had West Nile, the food started coming. Fan of the Mormon religion or not, you have to admit they have the "Sick Person Food Delivery System" down pat. Doug told me that since I was supposed to be cooking dinner, he "guessed" it counted that although I didn't cook, I was the person responsible for the food showing up. I told him that was very nice of him to say, as we dug into our green salad, homemade spaghetti, oatmeal bread, and cake for dessert. Heck, if we got to eat this nice when I was sick, perhaps I ought to be sick all the time. It almost made up for the 101.6 temperature I was running. Almost.

I slept in this morning (as Primary Pres, you can bet your bottom dollar I don't spend much time sleeping on Sunday mornings) and enjoyed a bit of time lazing about in bed. I got up and took a shower (no passing out this time, which is good, because Doug was gone to church and wouldn't have been here to catch me) and felt almost human.

I tell you what though, no more laughing at people who have West Nile. The irony has become too much, even for me. ;-)

Havs
Who is just happy to be alive...

Irony

First off, I just wanted to say that I have made a goal of putting up a blog on here on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays. We'll see if that actually happens, but that's my goal. I really love blogging and could honestly be here all day, but I just can't afford to. I just looked at my statistics for the Google AdSense ads at the top of my blog (I get paid per click on the ads) and although I never expected big bucks from it, the money made thus far has exceeded even my worst expectations. I have only made a penny thus far. They don't even send you a check until you've reached $50--at this rate, I will most likely be dead as well as my grandchildren before $50 is reached. ;-)

So now that I have firmly established the fact that this blog is in no way a money-making venture, let's move onto funnier items, like the fact that my best friend, Bonnie, has West Nile Virus. Now before everyone sends me hate mail, just a bit of background here. First off, she's going to be just fine. She doesn't feel so hot at the moment, but she is going to be just fine, no lasting effects. It's like she has the flu combined with a really bad rash. If she was in serious trouble, I wouldn't find this immensely hilarious like I do. No need to send the hate mail, scout's honor.

Secondly, Bonnie and I go walking Monday through Friday for an hour around a lake (sounds prettier than it really is, sadly enough) and we have spent many a morning discussing the fact that Bonnie is petrified of getting West Nile. She has given the whole run down to the children (any aches or fevers, any rashes, and you come running straight to me like your butt is on fire!) multiple times. She sprays them with mosquito repellent like most people eat chocolate (as much as possible as often as possible) and her kids, good-natured like they are, ignore her for the most part. I don't think she has passed this particular fear on to them, at least not that I can tell. The eye rolls and shrugs are fairly strong indicators of that anyway.

To make things worse, she watched the news a couple of weeks ago and found out that Idaho has the highest cases of West Nile in the country. She freaked out. She began spraying herself with mosquito repellent before our walks (now mind you, we are walking at 6:30 in the morning. I don't do ANYthing before our walks that isn't 1000% necessary) and even started offering to spray me down. I told her I was just fine. I don't know why, but I have never really been that worried about West Nile.

But for Bonnie, the fear has become almost irrational. In her hometown, a guy at her church got it and went blind from it. It has been Bonnie's "boogeyman" ever since. She studied it on the internet so much I'm sure she could teach the experts about the subject.

So when she called me today and told me that she had it, I just started laughing and couldn't stop. I'm sure that I'm going straight to Hades for that, but the irony was just too much.

To make up for my hysterical laughter, I dropped a present and a get-well card off at her house. Perhaps that seat in Hades can be passed onto someone else. ;-) I think the greatest part of this has been the fact that Bonnie has figured out that she has it, she's going to be fine, and life will go on. Her boogeyman has suddenly shrunk to a manageable size. Boonie can be a bit neurotic sometimes (she's my best friend, so I can say that in all fairness,) and I think this has taught her to breathe a little more.

Me? I'm just laughing. Sometimes this universe is just too much.

Hava
Who just may start wearing mosquito repellent herself...

I've entered the electronic age!

I had someone PM me the other day and ask me why I had decided to stop writing in this blog. I thought, "I haven't decided to quit writing! It wasn't so long ago that I blogged last!" I decided to check and see when my last blog was put up, and it's been "only" 2 weeks since I was last on here. ::blush::

But in my defense, I have had some major going-ons during those two weeks. Mainly some huge computer problems (I broke the screen of my laptop by closing the lid of the laptop while one of my rings was inside, laying above the keyboard) and so I was out of commission there for a bit. I bought a new laptop and thought that meant all of my troubles were over, only to find out they had just begun. Does anyone else absolutely abhor transferring info over from one computer to another? Transferring document files isn't too bad, but programs are a pain in rear end, not to mention passwords for forums, etc etc--it is my worst nightmare. This time I decided I was going to do it the "easy" way, and through a series of major boo-boo's by the tech support team at Norton Ghost and then a local computer guy that I used to trust with my computer, my life got turned completely upside down. Many people probably think I'm exaggerating, but when you rely on your computer to do anything and everything (work, write, bank online, balance the checkbook, read forums, find recipes for dinner that night) then the lack of ability to do ANY of these items is the Hava version of Chinese Water Torture. I spent hundreds of dollars and countless hours getting back into the swing of things again, but I think I am finally getting there. Hallelujah.

So in the midst of these massive computer problems, I was talking to my bro about playing songs on your computer, of all things. He couldn't believe that I didn't have a single song loaded onto my computer. I told him that I had thought I was really doing good that I had 29 CDs in my music collection. Heck, half of my music collection is still on tape for heaven's sakes! LOL!! David, being the computer geek that he is (he has four 300 GB hard drives, and is adding another 300 GB drive here in the next little bit--obviously 1200 GB just isn't enough!) viewed this like I had just waved a red flag in front of his face. He would get me to join the electronic revolution, no matter how unsuited I seemed to be for it on the surface. I have been married about four and a half years, and this latest laptop registers in as the fourth one in that time frame. Believe it or not, this last laptop was the only one that I flat out broke by doing something stupid. The rest of them just seemed to slowly disintegrate until they got to the unusable stage and I had to go hit up Best Buy again. I know computers age fast, but honestly, a computer a year is a bit much. Especially since I didn't want a new computer every year. :-P But my bad luck with computers and pretty much all other electronic equipment is legendary, which is why it's such a shock that I chose a profession that has me on the computer every day. This poor new laptop has got 15 months, on the outside, before it too starts to slowly implode. I have just got The Touch.

David has faith though. He thinks that I can make the things do what I want them to do. Sure, bro, whatever you say. I won't burst your bubble too quickly. It is easier to nod and just go along with these wild ideas. Apparently, the first step on this new road to good relations with electronics is to have a music player installed on the laptop, and actually have something loaded to play in this music player. He walked me through downloading and installing iTunes (brainlessly easy, just FYI) and then ripping my first CD. I was in awe--this was great!!! Easy even for the electronically challenged (I like that term better than "truly computer retarded" for some unknown reason) and once I started, I was hooked. CD after CD was ripped. All of mine were done in short order (that's what happens when you only have 29 CDs!) and I was loving the fact that as I went through each CD, I could uncheck the songs that I have always hated. It seems like every CD I have, there is one or two songs that I just can't stand. Love the rest of them, but just that one drives me nuts. Now, I don't have to worry about it. I didn't even put them on my computer to play in the first place. Wow, what freedom!!! I was in love.

I started hunting the house for more. I went through the hubby's stash of music and ripped all of the good ones there. Tonight I ripped my last CD (I was actually sad when the last CD popped out, I'm embarrassed to say) but the wonderful news is that as I type this blog tonight, I have all of my country songs on tap, and they are playing quietly in the background. How can life get any better than this? All of my favorite songs right there, in any order I choose. No more listening to radio ads that grate on my nerves so badly I have to turn the radio off rather than listen to them...It's freedom, music freedom.

I may be a little late to the party, but at least I make up for it with enthusiasm! :-D

Hava
Who needs to figure out what to do with the now useless CDs laying around the house... ;-)

It's official--I'm a published writer!

Okay, so this probably isn't anything to write home about, not really, but I finally have had an article accepted and published online. Will miracles never cease, it happened. To check my article out, head on over to Lazy Housewife, which if you saw my house right now, you would know why that site is so appropriate! LOL! I didn't choose the name of the article (Mother-in-Law from Mars,) or even know what they were going to publish it under before they did it, but beggers can't be choosers--my stuff has been published! :-D

Now I'm going to go take my $5 and celebrate by going wild and buying two packs of bubble gum at the store instead of one. Who knows, maybe if I get another article published, I'll be able to graduate up to candy bars! LOL!

Celebrating my victory, small as it may be,

Signed,

The published Hava

I'm in love with Books on CD

I work for a company that requires that I do some driving. I go from courthouse to courthouse, collecting records for an insurance company. I don't mind the work, but the driving is a toughie. I don't like to drive. Several reasons for my dislike: I got in a bad car accident as a junior in high school, so a part of me worries that I am going to fall asleep at the wheel again; secondly, I did a lot of driving in high school (I had to commute 45 minutes to get to school for three years) and I think I got my fill of driving then; and lastly but the most importantly, it is really boring. I cannot figure out how people like to drive. When you're on a freeway, all you do is set your cruise control to 75 mph (okay, fine, I set mine to 80, you caught me) and go in a forward motion. The only thing you have to do is make sure you don't run into the person in front of you. Not exactly thrilling beyond words.

This all changed when I discovered the world of Books on CD. I have my mother-in-law to thank for this wondrous discovery. She lent me The DaVinci Code on CD, and I started listening to it while in the truck, driving to a courthouse. I quickly got caught up in the story (as long as you consider the story to be fiction, it's a great entertaining read!) and I didn't want to stop driving! That is a first in Hava History. I am usually ready to jump out of the car 15 minutes after getting in. But that's because driving is so bloody boring. You can't read while you drive, you can't surf the internet while you drive. You can't write articles or paint your toenails or watch movies while you drive. You can't cross-stitch, cook dinner, or paint your masterpiece while you drive. And if you are doing those things while you drive, please tell me so I can avoid driving in your state.

But with Books on CDs, you CAN read while you drive!! This is fantastic! I am huge fan of reading; I absolutely love to read, but I never have enough time to. Here, finally, I can "read" while driving. I get to my destination and I want to keep driving, so I can finish the chapter! Will wonders never cease, I have learned to love to drive again.

I am now drooling over a set of CDs that I saw at Barnes & Noble. The whole series is called the Portable Professor Series, and the one in particular that I thought looked great was Jersulam: City of God, City of Fire. I love learning about Jerusalem after my trip there, and so I continue to drool over the series every time I walk into B&N.

In the meantime though, I'll be busy learning about Martin Luther King, Jr, my latest CD on book. I love learning, love to read, and now I love to drive.

How much better could life get?

Hava

Follow the money trail...

I used to watch the Wizard of Oz growing up, and can still sing (as I imagine most Americans can) "Follow the Yellow Brick Road." But in this case, it is "Follow the Money Trail." Not quite as catchy, but much more applicable.

I hate scammers. Honestly, I just don't understand them. I have been talking about this a lot on here lately, but it's because this sort of thing strikes close to home, being in the work-from-home field like I am. It seems like almost every WAHM job out there is a scam. Luckily, the ratio isn't quite that high, but it is pretty out of whack.

One favorite is the scam where they post an ad, telling you that you are going to make $300-500 per week doing data entry from home. You don't need any training, they will train you online to do it, and all you need is to be honest and hard-working. They throw that in there hoping to throw you off the trail. After all, a scammer wouldn't be advertising for an honest and hard-working person. This must be legit! Another favorite is a constant harping on being a stay-at-home mom themselves, or being a Christian. A really smart scammer (or just one wanting to cover all of his/her bases) will include all three in their ad. You respond to the ad, happy at the thought of making $300-500 a week working part-time at a really flexible job, and the scammer replies telling you that in order to make sure that you are really excited and serious about this job, they are going to charge you a small processing fee. Truly, they don't want to do this, but they are forced to, because it costs them so much time and money and energy to have people ask for the job info and then never actually complete the job. They want to make sure you really want to do this. They are only going to charge you $5 or $10 or $20 for this information, but at $300-$500 a week, you can make that back in a day, very easily. I have even seen the ads go as high as $30. They stress that this is of course only a one time payment, but once you pay it, you don't get your money back.

You pay them your money, and in return, you get an e-mail with a Word document attached. It tells you in the document that the data entry job that you just paid money for is simply that you take the ad that you just responded to, and post it yourself all over the internet. You are entering data, yes, and now you are going to make money off the poor, unsuspecting souls who were as naive as you to take the bait. Isn't that just lovely? Simply marvelous.

I think that this scam started out with one person, posting this ad all over. Out of 100 people who took the bait and paid the money, 98 of them are upset and furious, but having no recourse, lick their wounds and slink away. 2 of them think well, I need to recoup the money that I spent, I better post this ad and at least get my money back. But then the money starts rolling in and the 2 people decide that instead, they are going to continue their scam. You now have 3 people posting these ads all over the place, and just a couple of their respondents think hey, I need to make my money back at least. The cycle just continues ad nauseum until now, if you go onto job boards like Craigs List, you will find 20-30 of these ads posted every single day, in every part of the country. It is like a bad disease that is spreading rapidly.

The medicine? Knowledge. Don't ever spend money to get a job. Follow the money trail. If the company makes their money off of you, the employee, instead of the client, then you have just unwittingly become the client. And if you are the client, then that means you just got scammed.

So the next time you are haunting the job boards, looking for the perfect job, remember as you read the listings: You've got the follow the money trail. It will never lie to you. I wish to heaven I could say the same thing about people.

Havs

A good cause

I had a friend who passed this link onto me. Rebecca Fortune is suffering from gastroparesis, which is where the stomach muscles do not work (they are literally paralysed) and so the food doesn't get digested. Since there is nowhere for new food to go, a patient with this condition will throw up when they eat again. This causes massive weight loss and will eventually cause death in extreme cases. For an in-depth explanation, please check this out.

Unfortunately, Rebecca has a very extreme case. She is also under the double-whammy of not having medical insurance. I personally don't have medical insurance, and sometimes I lay awake at night, petrified that something like this is going to happen to me. She needs to pay $30,000 for a surgery, and this will only happen through donations that you and I make. I am poor (no lottery winnings yet!) and therefore was only able to donate $5. I know it isn't much, but $5 is more than she had before. She lives here in the United States, but the gal who is collecting the donations for her lives in England, so the exchange rate is roughly 1 US dollar to .50 Pounds. All donations are accepted via PayPal, and PayPal will do the exchange for you, at no charge to you. It will ask you to donate in Pounds and then PayPal does the exchange, so if you donate $2.50 in Pounds, you are donating $5 in US dollars. I hope that made sense.

I am not one to usually go online and talk about causes this way, and I don't imagine that I'll ever do another blog like this. It isn't in me to ask for money, even if it is for other people. But something about this just struck my heart. Food and eating and dining out at restaurants is a huge given in most people's lives. Rebecca cannot enjoy any of that. She has been forced to stop eating, causing her to lose an extremely unhealthy amount of weight. There are probably people who look at her and think she is bulimic or that this is her choice. I cannot imagine trying to live with this condition. She cannot enjoy simple pleasures like eating chocolate or munching on an apple. She is literally being slowly starved to death. I cannot imagine how hard that has got to be to live with.

So, my generous readers, if you have a couple of dollars to spare, please send it Rebecca's way. And send some prayers heavenward--in the end, we've got to trust that God will work this out.

Havs

I don't like water

When I was in junior high, there was a kid that was a year older than me, and much bigger than everyone else. He was a typical teenage boy in that he loved to be mean to anyone who would give him the satisfaction of giving him a response. I was never a huge fan of his (I didn't hate him, but I did do my best to avoid him,) but then one day, in the middle of summer, I got a phone call and they told me he had died. He had gone swimming in the Snake River and had gotten sucked under in the current. He was swimming next to a dam, and it was just too strong for even him, and he was a big, strong, athletic kid. When I heard the news, I went running outside and down the road and just bawled. I may not have liked him sometimes, but this just seemed unfair. I remember screaming at the heavens, "Why God?? Why did this have to happen??" It was the first time I had ever had to deal with an early and untimely death, and it was really rough on me.

Well, I just found out that a girl I used to babysit was killed this weekend, also a casualty of the Snake River. This is so hard for me--I can't even grasp that it is right. It doesn't feel like this could truly be happening. I went to this family's house every day, Monday through Friday, and watched Ashley and her two older brothers, for two summers. I was a part of the family. I did dishes, laundry, cleaned, watched the kids--we would go to the park and play, we would walk back to my house and play there. We would go outside and pet the horses--Ashley loved horses and was endlessly fascinated by them, even the onrey ones. She was only 4 years old the first summer, and 5 years old the second summer, so she was still just a young kid, but boy did we all have fun together. I really loved that family.

This article here talks about trying to find her body, and not being able to. I still just can't believe it's true. They came to my reception when I got married, I sent them postcards when traveling over in Jerusalem--this just isn't fair. Ashley was a good kid.

I have never been a huge fan of water. Last summer, I went floating down a fast-moving river with my family in intertubes, and I got knocked off of my intertube and couldn't get back on. I screamed bloody murder for probably 10 minutes because I was petrified at the thought of drowning. I would hate to die of course, but for me, I have always had this especially strong fear of drowning. I'm not sure why, but that fear is very, very strong. I have never been a great swimmer, and I have no desire to change that.

This happening, two people dying from drowning in the Snake River--you may never see me in a bathing suit again. I still just cannot fully comprehend it. Ashley was so much fun, and a good person. She wasn't perfect by any means, but I loved her a lot. Since I was at her house every day, all day long, some times she would slip up and call me Mom. She was a very special kid to me.

Anyway, thanks for listening, everyone. I just needed an outlet to talk.

Havs

The $3000 check you should never cash

Hey, my momma responded!!! Hey Mom! Everyone wave at my mom--she's the one over there who looks an awful lot like me!!! :-D She used to go to parent-teacher conferences and the teachers would come up to her, "Oh, you must be Havilah's mom!" even though they had never even met her before. We just look that much alike. :-)

Okay, enough waving at the mom, I've got a serious rant coming on. I belong to the WAHM forum (WAHM = Work-at-Home Mom) and it seems like every day, people are posting "leads" and asking if this is a genuine job. This is a "lead" that was posted last night:

"I Received a letter in the mail today with a check for over $3000.00 from Secret Shoppers. I am suppose to go to Walmart and send a MoneyGram for the amt of $2945.00 and the serv. chrg of 75.00. And I will be pd 200 for training.

"I have 48 hours to do this. Today is Friday , with a check that is over two thousand dollars it takes a few days to clear. Has anyone done this before? I have been called twice to check if I rec. the info. from someone from the company. She even gave me a suprevisor name and number."

Wow. My jaw dropped when I read this. This jobs SCREAMS scam to me. There are so many things wrong with this, I don't even know where to start.

First of all, I am assuming that since this was a job for a company called "Secret Shoppers," I have to assume that you are supposed to do this job so you can evaluate the way that the Wal-Mart employees interacted with you. I have been looking at getting into mystery shopping, and let me tell you, there isn't a chance on this green earth that any legitimate MS company was going to pay you this kind of money ($200) to do a shop that would take all of 10 minutes. Strike number one.

Strike number two: MS companies have contracted to do a shop for a company (in this case, it would be Wal-Mart.) They have to make sure that they have shoppers that can cover the shop. They would not blindly send out checks to people, hoping that these people can do the shops by the deadline. If this really was a legitimate check for $3000 (which it most assuredly is not) then why would they take the chance that you will actually be home to do the shop?? It's the middle of summer. You could be gone for two weeks on vacation. They wouldn't send the check, THEN call you to make sure you could do the shop. That simply doesn't make any sense at all.

Strike number three: $2045 + $75 does not equal $3000. If the company cannot do even simple math like that, then they obviously have something wrong with them. I don't do well with math, and I can see that there's a problem there, sans a calculator. That really says something.

Strike number four: If the company really was going to pay you $200 to do a 10 minute shop (bwaahhhahahaha!!!!) then why wouldn't they just send you a check for $200 and tell you to cash that? Why go through this whole elaborate shenanigan?

Why? Because this is a scam. Scams rely on one thing every time: People making hasty decisions. You get this check. It is staring you in the face. $3000 right there. An extremely easy way to make $200. Do it! Do it! Phone calls from people, "Are you going to do this? Here is my sup's number. Call! We're legit! We need to know if you're going to do this! Tell us your decision!" A legitimate company would not need to pressure you like that.

No decision should ever be made hastily when it comes to $3000. The need for haste, the need for pressure, comes because the company knows that if you sit down and think about what is going on, think this through logically, then you are going to see all of the problems associated with this "job" and go running in the other direction. They don't want to give you that chance to think. As I told my hubby last night, there is a better chance of aliens landing in our front yard, a tornado hitting our backyard, lightning hitting our house and an earthquake hitting our truck, simultaneously! than this being an actual job.

There is a happy ending. I posted my thoughts, and the original poster responded:

Thank you all for your help and comments. I plan on taking this check to the bank that it is endorsed from and take to my local police dept. this is so sad and unfortunately how many people have they hurt. We are all looking for legit jobs to feed our families and its companies and people like this that make us suffer the most. Thanks to having caring people such as you all to look out for one another.

THANKS SOOOOOOOOO MUCH...

At least this is one work-at-home mom who won't be taken for a ride. The next time you think you might be on the receiving end of a scam, stop, put the check out of sight, turn off your phone, and just THINK. Think it through logically. Scams don't stand up against the Think Test. It is my theory that there are 17 people in this world who have come up with all of these scams, and they are just perpetuating them all over the internet. There are thousands of scams out there, so you would think that there are thousands of scammers, but I really think there are only 17. I originally said 2, but Doug negotiated me up to 17. Don't make those 17 people's lives any easier.

Here's to ridding the world of those 17 and going back to living in peace and prosperity!

Havs

I love my job, I honestly do!

I love my Primary children. I know I complain about them a lot on here, but I do want you to know that this is just my way of venting. I wouldn’t trade my job for the world. My husband and I have been married for 4 years (we got married in the Idaho Falls Temple in April of 2002) and have yet to be blessed with any children. Since my family and his all seem to have the goal of single-handedly repopulating the Earth, this makes us feel distinctly out of place at times, like we crawled out from under a rock and was somehow made a part of two families who then had no idea what to do with us. At one point, my sister and my two sister-in-laws were all pregnant at the same time. The only thing Doug and I have contributed to the family tree is two dogs, and despite my best persuasive argument, my parents just don’t see grand puppies on the same level as grandchildren. I tried pointing out the family resemblance, but for some unknown reason, that didn’t endear my parents any more to the thought.

But despite our apparent inability to have children, I am still okay because I have my kids in church. I have children that I have seen grow up for the last 4 years, and I feel almost like a second mother to them. They run up to me on Sunday and say, “Sister Lyon, Sister Lyon, look at the scratch on my hand!” I ohh and ahh over their scratches and their drawings and their stories about their newest toy that their parents wouldn’t let them take to church, and somehow in the midst of all of that, I have been blessed with the capacity to love them all, even the difficult ones like Christopher. I love to receive drawings on Sunday and big hugs and I even get to enjoy many of the kids during Sacrament Meeting. The kids all know that I carry a huge box of crayons with me to church on Sunday (96 count, no weasely 12 count for me) and that I have an endless supply of paper, so I will usually get 2-4 kids snuggling with me during Sacrament Meeting while their parents get to take a well-deserved break.

I love my job and wouldn’t trade it for the world. Just don't make me take Christopher home with me.

Troublesome Children

What do you do with the children that test your patience to the limits? Not just push the boundaries every once in a while, but out and out push you to the max? I have had the *ahem* great joy of dealing with several children who do just that.

One of my children in Primary that has pushed me past any previously known boundaries is Christopher. Chris is your typical preteen boy--he loves to push the envelope, he loves to cause problems, he has zero interest in the topic at hand, and his pride and joy in life comes from figuring out the absolute best way to wreak the absolute most havoc in the absolute least amount of time. His tricks include yanking chairs out from underneath children as they went to sit down, getting up and stealing the visual aides and running off down the hallway with them, pulling on girls’ hair, raising his hand to answer the question and then instead of answering why he loves Jesus, going off on the statistics that he got on his video game that morning. He would frequently say (usually in the middle of me speaking) “Is it time to go home yet?” He would sing the words to the songs, but not the words that we were teaching him…on and on and on.

My first strategy was to just ignore him. If I ignored him, maybe he would get bored from the lack of attention, and instead find some other way to pass his time. He did, unfortunately, do just that, and the “other ways” that he found ended up being even more disruptive and destructive than his previous antics. Ignoring was not an option.

I tried sitting him in time-out--didn’t work. I tried talking to his mom--she didn’t do a thing. I tried giving him his very own notebook to draw in while the lesson was being taught, and although that worked for a couple of weeks, he quickly got bored and started back into his old habits.

So how did I deal with Christopher causing so many problems? Easy--I simply waited for him to graduate from Primary, thus passing the buck on to the Young Mens. At the time, this was a sound strategy, guaranteed not to fail. Time does steadily tick on, and some day (May of 2005 to be exact) Christopher was going to turn 12, thus advancing him from Primary to Young Mens. Unfortunately, my hubby got called into Young Mens almost directly after Christopher graduated from Primary, dumping the problem entirely into his lap. So now my hubby spends his Sundays complaining about Christopher, just as I used to spend mine. I just nod and smile.

Life is good.

Times flies when you're having...

...well, fun would be a stretch, but how about working your tail off? I think that more accurately describes my current life. I am juggling about 17 things right now, and every once in a while, a plate comes crashing down and hits me hard on the head. I am getting this permanent bruise going on up there, and someday, I'm going to learn to wear a hard hat. Difficult to fit headphones over, but I'll give it my best shot.

But anyhow, I put some blogs together because I was trying to apply for a job working as a blogger (how great would that be!) but the company has not responded yet, and this was sent into them on Monday. They usually respond within the day. So I think that it's a no go. But I can't let these perfectly good blogs go to waste! (Yes, I also save all of my leftovers from dinner, only to have to throw them out three months later when aliens from space come into my kitchen, looking to reclaim their own. What's your point?) I was putting together blogs about being a Primary President (the blog I was applying for was Families.com and they actually have an LDS section, with a subsection for Primary) and although I wasn't going to post any LDS content on this blog, I am much too lazy to see all of this work go to waste. For those of you who are not LDS/Mormon, the Primary is simply the organization for the children in the congregation. The Primary President is the person in charge of all of the little munchkins who do their best every Sunday to remind all of the adults that Thou Shalt Not Kill is one of the 10 Commandments. Having said that, here's the first of three...

When I first got called to be the Primary President, I thought for sure the Bishop had lost it. After all, I had to be one of the youngest Primary Presidents to ever be called--wasn’t there some sort of age limit that kept 22 years old from being Primary Presidents??

Although I was in shock, a small part of me had known this was coming. When my husband and I got married and moved from Logan, Utah to Blackfoot, Idaho, I was called to be the Primary Music Leader within a month of us buying our house. I filled that calling until the Primary Presidency was rearranged, at which point I was called to be second counselor in the Presidency. I was in shock when I got that calling, because I figured only incredibly talented and loving and perfect people could be in a Primary Presidency. Why were they calling me?

I found out much later (when I was being called to be Primary President, actually) that Sis. Yancey, who called me to be her second counselor, had actually had just as many doubts about me becoming her second counselor as I had had doubts about me becoming her second counselor. In fact, she argued with the Lord and told him that she didn’t want me to be her second counselor. And then the Lord told her that I was going to be the next Primary President, and it was Sis Yancey’s job to teach me how to do that.

Luckily for both of us, Sis Yancey kept all of this a secret. I imagine if I had been told that I was going to be the next Primary President when I was being called to be the second counselor, I probably would have gone running screaming in the other direction. I probably would have had my house sold by the end of the week and made the move to China by the end of the month. I just wasn’t ready for that kind of responsibility at that point.

In fact, I didn’t feel ready for that kind of responsibility when I actually did receive the call to be President. Luckily the Lord knows me and all of my shortcomings, and He knew that He couldn’t just throw something like this at me. In the months before Sis Yancey’s move to New Zealand, I would have random thoughts pop into my head: “I will handle that (situation) differently when I am in charge.” Or, “When Sis Yancey leaves, it will be up to me to keep things going.” Then I would draw back and think, “Where on Earth did that thought come from?? I’m not going to be in charge. Sis Yancey isn’t going to leave.”

But she did leave, she moved across the world, leaving a mighty huge gap in the Primary structure. The first counselor moved at almost exactly the same time to Las Vegas, leaving me the only one left in the Primary Presidency.

So when the Bishop asked me to talk to him “real quick” in his office, I had an inkling of what would happen. Deep down, I knew that I was going to be the next Primary President. I just ignored that knowledge and instead clung to the idea that they would magically find somebody else to do the job. Anybody else. I was too young, and too dumb, and too unorganized, and too…everything to do something like this. I had no children of my own--certainly that was some sort of requirement to become a Primary President

And yet, I have not only survived these last two years, I have thrived. Through the Lord, everything is possible, and I am living proof of that.

MalePregnancy.com??

Okay, I need help here. I was doing a transcription file tonight, and a teacher was talking about how he is trying to teach his students that you cannot always believe everything that you see on the Internet. And he uses www.MalePregnancy.com as his example. Of course, I instantly had to stop transcribing and go look this site up, because curiosity killed the cat, that just sounded very--intriguing? Bizarre? Strange? All of the above.

Anyway, the site isn't a thrown together, hack site that is obviously a fake. Instead, it looks frightening real. Was the world spinning a little faster than I thought it was, and we do now have a male that is pregnant? That doesn't seem possible, but somebody sure has spent a lot of money putting a website together that looks incredibly realistic.

I just wanted to see if any of my astute and intelligent *wink* readers could help me out here. Fact or fiction?

Havs

I'm an old woman

No, truly, I am. I know that my driver's license only says I'm 25, but nights like this make me feel much older. The hubby and I walked over to the lake where the fireworks were going to be set off, and had quite the night. There was a live band at the park which sounded like they were trying to be in direct competition with Jimmy Hendricks minus the ability to play a guitar or sing well. They didn't play any patriotic songs at all, and when the fireworks started, they didn't stop. Their music wasn't in any way related to the fireworks, it didn't correspond with it or crescendo/decrescendo with it, but instead it was almost like there were two concerts going on at the same time--one a boring fireworks display and one a discordant rendition of Sweet Home Alabama. They finally quit about 10 minutes in to the fireworks starting, and I'm not sure if that helped, because then all you heard was either the boom of the fireworks (when you were lucky) or the group of teenagers sitting close by who were all flirting and laughing (when you were unlucky.)

As the fireworks exploded overhead, my mind wandered. I mentally put together a to-do list for tomorrow. I wondered how my dogs were doing at home (they abhor loud noises, which makes the 4th of July the worst sort of torture for them.) I went over items that I wanted to cover on my WAHMJobs.net website. And then I would think, "Oh yeah, there's fireworks going off up there." I would glance at the exploding red, blue, and white display in the sky and before I even had a chance to register what I was seeing, I was back to mentally rearranging my front yard's flower beds.

Pretty soon my mental meanderings were interrupted by yet another group of teenagers. I thought the ones sitting next to us who were all flirting and laughing and talking incessantly were pretty bad, but they were nothing in comparison to the group who came walking up behind us. Two of the members of this preteen group were in some sort of heated argument, and I would quote that argument for you, but 95% of the words in that argument were pretty nasty swear words, unrepeatable by any standards. I leaned over and whispered in Doug's ear, "Are we sure we want to have kids?" He whispered back, "No," and I laughed. The soon-to-be juvenile delinquents (they very well could be delinquents now, but they are too young to be considered juveniles) wandered off after a while, and I did my best to concentrate on the admittedly very boring fireworks display still going on overhead. This year's showing was nothing to write home about, to state it politely.

I whispered to Doug, "I think I am an old woman." He whispered back, "You want to go?" God bless him, he is just amazing. I would have given my eye teeth to be able to leave just then. We stood up and started walking home. About a 100 feet down the path towards home, the finale began. We stopped and turned and watched it together, snuggled arm in arm with each other. The finale only lasted about 20 seconds, and then we turned and walked home together.

I may be an old woman, but at least I married an old man. We can be the youngest old couple to ever walk the Earth.

Hand me my cane, will ya? I've got some teenage kids I need to go thump some good manners in to.

Sweet Silence

Apparently, my hubby thinks I talk too much. Now, if you asked people who know me well, they could definitely...Um, never mind.

I told the hubby that of course I talked too much, because I was home all day with just the dogs, and so by time he gets home, all of my thoughts for the entire day have bottled up inside of me until they just have to come bursting out, and he just happens to be on the receiving end of the flood. I told him that I only had the dogs for company, and they never listen to me half the time anyway. Based on the amount of holes dug in my backyard and shoes chewed up in my closet, I should probably up that estimate.

But anyway, we got to our destination (the mall) and I decided to conduct a scientific study: To discover whether I am the only wife who does all the talking in a relationship. As I walked around the mall and surreptiously watched other couples, I came to the sad realization that not only was it normal for the wife to do all of the talking, but based on what I saw, it was the only way that husband/wife relationships worked. I did not spy a single couple where the hubby talked even half of the time, let alone dominated the conversation. I wasn't sure if I should be happy because I wasn't the only one this way, or if I should be embarrassed because the female population doesn't seem to have an off switch.

We left the mall and headed over to the grocery store. There, finally, I found a couple where the hubby talked all the time, and the wife didn't talk at all: They happened to be standing in line and the husband was arguing with the cashier as to whether the orange juice was $00.88 cents a can or $00.66 cents a can. The cashier left the checkout stand and personally checked the price himself. He came back with the sad news that the husband had been looking at the wrong sign, and the price was in fact $00.88 a can. The wife never said a word, and I wasn't sure if it was because she was mortified because her spouse was making real jerk of himself over 22 cents, or because she just tended to be quiet no matter what.

I vote for the quiet no matter what, not only because it ups my scientific study from 100-0 to 99-1 (yay! One couple!) but also because it's hard when you're embarrassed by your spouse, and I hoped she didn't understand what an idiot he looked like. In this case, ignorance truly is bliss.

After the shopping expedition, it was time to head home. We loaded up the groceries and headed back out to the freeway. As we got on, my hubby made the fatal mistake of bringing up the "too much talking" subject again. I finally said, "Is this a challenge?" He laughed, a deep belly laugh, and patted me on the knee in that condescending way that men have, and said, "Honey, you could never stay quiet for more than 3 minutes." I just looked at him, raised my eyebrows, and smiled, that easy-you-are-about-to-eat-mud smile, and then leaned back in my seat and closed my eyes. I wasn't going to talk to him if it killed me.

It almost did. I never truly realized this about myself (get ready for a belly laugh here, peoples!) but I actually DO talk a lot!!! About every three seconds, I thought, "Oh, I--" and then would stop myself. I couldn't say anything. I was sure I was going to pass out from the exertion of keeping my mouth shut. It truly was hard work! As we pulled into the driveway 20 minutes later (some sort of a world record for me, I am positive) Doug turned to me. "I never thought you would last this long." There was wonder in his voice, and just a bit of respect. I turned to him and smiled sweetly. I didn't say a word.

We unloaded the groceries and brought them inside. The dogs did their Happy Puppy Dog Dance that they do every time we come home (I haven't seen you for days and days! I missed you so much! Please give me a belly rub! Please please please please,) and I realized that my not speaking meant I couldn't even say hello to my dogs! That was hard for me. I petted them, and then as quickly as I could manage, I went back to my room and hid on my computer. If Doug wasn't around to talk to, it would be a lot easier to not slip up.

I made it for two hours before I had to call a friend and talk to her. Doug and I talked that night in bed and he told me how proud he was of me for making it two hours. He learned that sometimes silence truly isn't sweet, because he would rather have a wife talking his ear off than a wife who hides from him so she doesn't make the mistake of talking to him. And I realized that perhaps, maybe, there is an infinitesimal chance in this wide universe that I do, in fact, talk too much.

Just don't tell the hubby I said so.

Havs

I almost got sucked in

I was reading a thread on a WAHM forum about a company called Tiny Details, a company that has you assemble products from home. I went to their site and checked them out, and they seemed very legit. I know, I know, how could there ever be an assembly job at home that was legit? But this one DID sound legit (famous last words).

They have these kits that they send in the mail to you (postage paid both ways!) for miniature items. These are those really tiny replications that you can buy to put into a dollhouse. I know that miniatures are really big, so it only made sense that this was a hot item that could do well. Also, since it a craft, most people want a "handmade" craft, so this company was providing their clients (stores) a way to offer that to the customer. This wasn't a "assemble CD cases from home" sort of thing where the product could easily be done by a machine (and with higher quality), but was instead a large assortment of really cute items that could go into a dollhouse: books, Victorian calling cards, food items, magazine racks, etc. I read through the list and they seemed easy enough. I was reaching for the credit card, when I thought, "You know, I should just double-check this."

Here are the BBB reports on this company:

BBB Report #1
BBB Report #2

Here are some threads that I found that discussed Tiny Details in more depth:

WAHM forum thread #1
WAHM forum thread #2

By this point, I felt pretty stupid. I am not one to fall for scams easily. I have been around the block a few times, and when I heard about people falling for a scam, I just shake my head and think, "How could you not tell that was a scam? It was so obvious!" And yet, I almost handed over my credit card to a company that (as far as I can tell) absolutely no one has made any money with!

If someone like me, who is fairly intelligent (or so I like to think! *wink*) and can usually spot a scam from 100 feet away, almost fell for this, how many other people out there are also being taken in by them?

*Sigh*

Havs