‘Tis The Season, Again! Here We Go.

Ok, so sorry, all.

I really meant to do this earlier, because I was late for the holiday shopping season last year.

Consistency is my other lesser-known name. Which is unfortunate when it comes to stuff like this.

Here we go!

Layering is my self-coined pet-term for what happens when promotions, rebates, points and the universe align.

It takes some practice. I’ve been doing this for 10 years now on one program adding a few others in recent years. I’m not gonna say it is always easy – it takes some brain work and some research.

Truly, though, what’s better than a good deal?

Free. My favorite F-word.

I will tell you with 100% honesty that I consistently earn cash back and points to buy approximately $200.00 worth of Christmas (and self) gifts!

Yes, there is a free Christmas.

No, it won’t be this year for you.

But, perhaps by the early months of 2022, you will have a nice little sum of cash and points to use for necessities. Think home goods, home improvement, a dinner for two.

Set Yourself Up for Success

1. Create an email address specifically for offers, promotions, & loyalty programs.

Why? Keeps all your offers in one place.

• No matter which email server you use, I recommend setting up an @gmail account.

Why? Some rewards programs will auto-scan email for online receipts.

If, you opt-in for that option in settings.

• Move your current loyalty accounts to the new email address.

Why? Keeps your main communication email unclogged.

• Use the links below to sign-up for programs.

Why? You will receive sign-on offers and bonuses in cash or points!

(PS, transparency: I will, too.)

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MyPoints:            https://www.mypoints.knabbler

Spend $20.00 receive 1,750 points. Sign-up by Phone & Computer using link above.

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Ibotta:                  https://ibotta.knabbler            Please, Use Referral Code: VUODLBM

$10.00 for first receipt. Sign-up by Phone & Computer.

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There are more, but let’s just work on the two I have found to be bigger earners.

Next up: step-by-step layering for (nearly) free dinner!

Advertisement

Mean Elixir-ing.

The moment I saw it, I knew I had to.

I follow two sites of “I wish I’d thought of that” brilliance. Actually, there are more than that, but these two are specifically relevant. I screen-shoot them both daily. Most of the time I resist. But….

Coca-Cola with Coffee. 

Stop wrinkling your nose and keep your “eew” to yourself.

Coke didn’t create this concoction for me. There had to be at least some sort of wide-spread weirdo-appeal factor in play. You’d best believe it wasn’t likely to have been inside pitched as a mass-marketing loss-leader.

Are you my people?

My choice: Dark Coffee

OMG. Yes! 200%. Yum.

Two things the cracked tab called to my attention.

First, the fantastic smell of coffee.

Second, audibly less fizzy release.

Sip? Yup. Sip! Mmm & Yup.

Closed my eyes trying to place the taste.

Landed in New Orleans. Ah, dark cold-brewed, chicory-cut iced coffee with a touch of simple syrup. Sigh.

This isn’t that, but I like where it takes me.

The can claims ‘powdered coffee’ made from Brazilian beans. No chicory.

High fructose corn syrup. Not simple syrup.

I decided I needed more. More than my current four cans. Well, only three and a half cans were left on Monday morning, so I took the half with me to work.

Stop judging. I like my coffee cold and my soda warm and minimally fizzy. So, a half-sipped overnight in the fridge perched it on the perfect edge.

The original IG feed that caught my eye had a cautious comment. Paraphrased, “I saw it at Sam’s and I’d like to try it, but I’m not gonna buy a case of it.” In case it wasn’t liked.

Well, I liked it. And ‘by-the-case’ sounded suitable.

I checked Costco online. Nada. Not even a hint of it.

I’m not a Sam’s club member, but a friend of mine is. Of course, I asked the favor.

To my horror, it was declared sold out at Sam’s. Sold out? Sam’s, Target, Walmart. What?

What the heck happened between Saturday afternoon and Monday morning?

Was some subliminal advertising during the big, copyrighted (don’t dare use the word) football fan show, lost on me? Of course, not.

That’d have been hilarious, though. Attention redirection from Pepsi to Coke while TheWeeknd performed on the weekend. Yes, I enjoyed that.

Yeah, off track.

I kept scrolling. Angst was replaced with anger.

People are mean. Some rat-bassbird had actually listed a 4-pack for $120.00.

Ah, that special group of people who buy stuff they don’t want and resell it at outrageous prices. Yes, it’s a cycle of retail life. Yes, folks are free to be opportunistic. I suppose I could flip and offer to assess is it as a COVID-induced attempt to supplement restricted income. But, the cruel crafties existed way before this pandemic. And assess is only one letter away from a….

Oh, no. Uh, uh. I’ll just slid my finger over to Meijer and order me up another 3 four-packs for $4.89. Mm hm, mathematically: $1.295 apiece including MI deposit. Not $20.00. Yeah, I snapped that. Inwardly, not outwardly, because that would have been bizarre. -er.

Could I justify a $10 delivery fee for just Cokes? Nah. So, I bulked up my order with a cucumber, cat food, cream cheese and some fascinatingly interesting bake or no-bake Pillsbury Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough with Oreo Pieces.  

At that point a little bit of logic chose to lope across my front lobe. Do ya really need to do this?

Nah. X’d out my cart.

I shouldn’t be consuming the contents of any sugared, caffeinated soda on a daily basis. Not on a semi-regular basis, either.  Yes, there is a zero-sugar alt version. No, I’m not planning to go there.

Here’s the close.

I’ve got three coveted cans left. An emergency stash. Or a celebratory stash. Like wine, but with the opposite not-drowsy, super-hyped effect. (Hee hee.)

So, are you my people?

synonomy

He put his notebook away – closed it, really – tucked it under his arm.

 

The next thing. It’s not linear, but I’ll try to make it make sense.

The phone call to my brother-in-law answered by my sister-in-law followed an unusual path. I set in motion a game of church-telephone, similar to the childhood one, beginning with my unconscious inability to say that word. The D-word.

Without hesitation, my sil jumped into action. She tracked down her husband in church by getting hold of someone there. Third hand, my understanding is that the message morphed from my intent of ‘gone’ to ‘gone missing.’

When told his brother was missing, my bil’s response was, “Which one?” The lovely thing about this is that, in this extended family, the pre-cursor ‘step’ was never more important than the word ‘brother.’ And, there were eight possibilities, so the question was wholly legit.

Back to the beginning of this post and the end of the last post…

A milli-second after the officer’s pad pages met in closure, my sil burst through the door and near-breathlessly huffed out, “Did he leave a note?” Other rapid-fire questions followed.

I’m not sure of the accuracy of my recall. I was too busy short-circuiting, in panic mode – trying to absorb that my emphatic word had not been absorbed.

I heard Wal*Mart and scooter and a suggestion that maybe he’d gone for an early morning ride to the store down the dirt access road at the end of our street. Trying to follow along, I pictured Jeff 4-wheeling in an electric scooter on the recently rain-soaked non-road.

I glanced at the officer, who was looking questioningly at me. I shook my head from side to side trying to convey that she wasn’t asking about a suicide note. She was asking about a where did he go? note. In an almost impossible way, I managed to squeak and scream at the same time. “No! No, he didn’t leave a note!”

Honestly, I have no idea who else might have been in the room with the three of us. Bits and pieces of garbled voices and suppositions were hovering just outside of my tunneling-vision.

Time stopped long enough for me to realize this was exchange was going wrong, way too fast.

Using the same words I’d been using all morning,  I tried a little harder instinctively adding the universal double-handed hand signal signaling ‘no’.

“No. No.” I insisted, more firmly. “He’s… gone. He’s … (pointed silence)… Gone.”

The shock dropped her to her knees with a keening wail, and it occurred to me, I hadn’t done that. Surreall,y I internally questioned myself, “Why haven’t I done that?”

I don’t recall her rising from the floor, but she must have because I’ve heard the story of the revisory call.

That’s where this segment ends for me. I don’t know what my next move was, where I went or what I did. I skip through scenes.

None are cohesive, none are in real-time. It’s all a shattered photo bleeding from one puzzle piece to another. I cannot make them fit correctly.

Quote for the Week:

 

Pill Fill & Other Stuff

I’ve mentioned this before, but the Rx tackle box really was an amazing work of art.

Sunday afternoon was pill fill day. It’d take Jeff about an hour to prepare for the week. It was also the designated time to evaluate what was needed: reorder meds, restock OTC’s. When he was done, he’d make some sort of punny fish announcement.  “All set to go fishin!” “Now, I just gotta find a pond!” “I’m ready to fish for meds!”

Jeff took somewhere between 18-20 pills a day, and used a few ointments, as well. Without fail, every week, he’d need a refill/restock on something. Occasionally, Jeff would discover he only had a few days supply left, or that he’d miscalculated and was completely out.

There was always at least one trip a week to the pharmacy. If it worked out, timing wise, Saturday morning was preferred. It didn’t hurt that we had to be in Tecumseh to open the store, anyway. It absolutely didn’t hurt that the locally owned family pharmacy was a few short steps down from a locally owned family bakery.

If not, it didn’t bother him at all to have to pick up prescriptions more than once a week. Pretty much like all else, Jeff’s necessary errand always turned into social visits.

Later on, it bothered me, because a weekday collection would mean I’d want him to find a ride, He’d ignore that request and end up driving himself, which wasn’t ideal. Plus, a round trip to Tecumseh from Adrian in our old Buick ate up a lot gas.

By the end of summer 2016, after our last race trip, our outings were limited to stores with electric carts or very small spaces. Meijer had carts. Aldi was small. Both were very close to home at 2 miles away. Also close by: a butcher shop, three gas stations, a do-it-yourself home supply store and quite a few restaurants.

It was nice that all of that was relatively close, but it wasn’t foremost in our minds when we chose our home. Back then, we were both commuting to Ann Arbor, sharing the driving and necessarily passing through Jeff’s hometown five days a week.

Way before I ever met Jeff, he always preferred offering his local hometown support. When that was no longer a convenient option, Jeff felt badly. With exception of, perhaps, the pharmacy, I don’t think we were any Tecumseh business’ mainstay.

As our purchasing center shifted, Jeff made an effort to support the local Adrian butchers, farmer’s stands and non-chain restaurants. He’d very seriously discuss with anyone, anywhere, the economic benefits and the importance of “doing what’s right” to keep America’s small towns and farms “booming.” Small business Saturday was akin to a serious holiday for him.

There was an unofficial access road that ran between our community and the Museum of Walmart,. Which, meant I could send Jeff out for an errand in the middle of the day, and not have to worry about him driving on a real roads. He could get to Aldi that way, as well.

I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, also, that going to Walmart was never a fast trip. It was our Sunday, after church, after breakfast outing with a purpose. Jeff would happily go up and down every aisle, in every section, in a motorized scooter, just to see what was new. I always went where he went.

I know all of this information seems a bit random. It’s stuff you need to know, though, to understand the chain of coming events.

Quote for the Week: