I’ve been in Phoenix for one week, during which time I’ve consumed more than four gallons of iced tea.
Yep, it’s hot.
But more on the weather later. First I want to tell you how to enter to win a $25 Amazon card.
My favorite cash-back shopping site, Mr Rebates, is giving away the $25 Amazon card. Entering to win is easy:
Fun fact: According to the National Retail Federation, families in the U.S. will spend $10.2 billion on back to school shopping this year.
That fact may not be fun to parents on tight budgets. It’s not much fun to me, either, since I’ve long believed this kind of shopping has gotten out of hand.
Understand: I’m not saying your kids should get on the bus wearing clothes that are ill-fitting or in tatters, or that they shouldn’t have the tools they need for education. But to judge from the ads, our kids need all-new everything.
Hint: They probably don’t.
Obviously if a kid has outgrown his shoes (and they will do that!) then you’ll need to replace the footwear. Ditto jeans that are high-watery or a jacket whose sleeves stop a few inches short of the wrist. But it’s easy to fall down the rabbit-hole of overbuying.
Saturday at my niece’s house was warm and clear, weather perfect for lounging on her newly painted deck and enjoying the scents of clover and sun-heated greenery. At one point we visited the tent-like structure that acts as her greenhouse, where we found tomato and squash plants languid from thirst.
She dragged out the pocket hose and soaked all the pots. A bit languid myself by then, I requisitioned the nozzle and shot it directly into my mouth. The icy blast refreshed in a way that a glass from the sink might not have.
No matter how old you get, drinking from the hose is absurdly satisfying. That is, unless it’s a really old hose that tastes like melting plastic.
This one didn’t. All I got was the flavor of Anchorage H2O, which is better than any city water has a right to be. (Fun fact: It comes from a glacier.) The experience catapulted me back to my childhood, when playing outdoors was so important that you’d sometimes drink from the hose rather than waste time going inside.
For 10 days I took care of my niece’s dog so she could make a trip out of state. By the end of the first day I remembered why I don’t want pets: Because it means being responsible for another living creature, all the time.
As someone who’s lucky that her socks match* when she leaves the house, being unable to leave the house without first dealing with the dog was a challenge.
It was a lot like having a toddler around. Whenever I couldn’t see him or hear him I had an immediate reaction of, “Uh-oh – what’s he into now?”
As of the first day: the trash, the recycling bin and something on the counter.
Some people who visit Florida bring back postcards, or ashtrays made out of seashells. I brought a virus: sore throat, chest-tightening cough and general malaise. I’m achy and wheezy (two dwarfs whom Snow White never mentioned) and the switch in time zones messed with my sleep both there and back at home.
Worth it, though, because I got to see my father and stepmom plus my sister, brother great-nephew. I even met a reader named Cheryl, who lives in the area and met me and Dad at Dunkin Donuts for a stimulating discussion about money and life.
Finished the rough draft of the new Playbook For Tough Times while I was there, too. Now all I have to do is edit it, work with the formatter and the cover-design guy, write a press release and start in on promotion.
At that point my inability to take a deep breath will, with luck, be figurative rather than literal. However, if this crud is the same one everyone else has been talking about I could be stuck with it for weeks.
On Saturday I hung out the first laundry of the year. We’ve been putting the bedclothes out air all winter long in order to sleep in fresh air, but this was the first time in months that it’s been possible to dry stuff on the line. (It helped that I’d first tumbled those clothes in the dryer for a few minutes.)
Not that it was super-balmy, mind you. This was mid-30s weather, but a nice breeze blew and the sun was strong and constant. By midday the temperature in the greenhouse was in the 70s. Maybe I should have dried the clothes in there.
The next day DF put the comforter, blanket and top sheet out to gain the benefit of the sun and wind. He had to hang the linens lengthwise to keep them from dragging in the snow. Despite steady daytime melt, the drifts are still high near the clothesline because of DF’s use of the snowblower.
Two days after my second cataract surgery we got another dumping of snow, the first in several weeks. About nine inches fell at our place, plumping up what already lay on the ground. I don’t know how much has fallen this year and I don’t know how much of it was still there after sublimation and melt. But the back yard still looks fairly snowbound.
Last September, the Dollar Dig cash-back site sponsored a giveaway of $150 worth of Amazon gift cards. This was a real win-win, since I like giving things away and you guys like the chance to get them. (The giveaway garnered more than 140 responses.)
Now site owner Rich Chrobak has asked my daughter and me to do posts to call attention to Autism Awareness Month. Since a giveaway does tend to get more eyeballs on a site, Chrobak is sponsoring giveaways in both places.
Here you have a shot at winning an Amazon Echo Dot. On Abby’s site, you’ll be in the running for a SamsungVR headset.
But that’s not the only way Dollar Dig is involved with Autism Awareness Month. Chrobak is putting his money where his heart is: All net profits for the month of April will go to POAC Autism Services, a New Jersey nonprofit that offers support, education, training and activities for families experiencing autism.
And if you like, you can be part of this effort.
Those who follow my daughter’s blog already know what happened recently: Her husband broke one heel and sprained the other quite badly.
Tim is feeling extra-crummy about the way-preventable incident (see “The whole story” for details) and Abby’s feeling overwhelmed by needing to take on Tim’s share of household responsibilities in addition to her own, and to her full-time job.
For those who aren’t familiar with my daughter’s situation, both she and her husband have chronic health issues. Some days she has more spoons than others.
After she e-mailed me about what had happened I wrote an “oh noes!” sort of note in return. As a P.S., I said “let me know if you want me to use one of my buddy passes and come do a little heavy lifting.” She wrote back something along the lines of, “Were you serious about that? How soon can you get here?”
And that, Phoenix-area readers, is why I’m heading south once more.
Oh, the breakfast we just had. Perfectly cooked bacon, done in the oven. Sliced tomatoes. The last of the homemade rolls from the freezer, toasted and served with a choice of three homemade (not by us) jams. Tea and coffee aplenty
Scrambled eggs for me and for DF, eggs done “the way Jesus had his.” (See Matthew 11:30 for the punny explanation.) A dish of yogurt with rhubarb compote, both – you guessed it – homemade. The only reason we didn’t add in some of those Del Monte red grapefruit sections was that we forgot they were in the fridge.
The fireplace insert was churning out BTUs, its flames resurrected from the previous evening’s fire that had entertained us and also dried two racks of laundry. While I slept in DF had folded that laundry and put away the racks.
This lazy Saturday morning was seasoned perfectly by gusts of snow blown against the kitchen windows. Not new snow, but slabs of old snow and hand-sized chunks of frost blown off the roof and the neighbor’s giant larch tree. My breakfast sat more snugly and smugly each time snow scoured the panes: It’s out there and I’m in here, enjoying warmth and a leisurely breakfast.
All of which reminded me of a line from Pearl S. Buck’s “The Good Earth.”
My pay-as-you-go flip phone regularly receives calls from numbers I don’t recognize. For a while I’d pick up any that began with 206 or 425; having lived in Seattle for eight years I figured it might be an old acquaintance or former classmate.
Each time, though, it was a robonotification about a great deal on a credit card, vacation or something else I didn’t need. Nowadays I don’t pick up, and guess what? Those unknown callers never leave messages!
I’m not alone in feeling pestered. Phone-spam victims received an average of 118 sales-pitchy or downright fraudulent calls this year, according to a new study from Hiya, a free caller ID/call-blocker app.
And there’s no place like your phone for holiday fraud. Seasonal scams are up by 113 percent over last year, the study notes.
Among them: