Petunia rambles on and on….

For a good while, I was following the price of fuel for our vehicles here, as it climbed and climbed.  At one point I was paying well over $4. a gallon.  This was in the spring and early summer, when most folks here are planning vacations, looking forward to outings with their families, going to the ocean, or camping in the mountains.  Getting out and seeing things and doing stuff.   The outrageous price of fuel was prohibitive for many; made it damn difficult for others.

Yesterday I was down to about 1/4 of a tank, and stopped to fuel up.  I went to the same station that I always go to, the same station that I photographed all during the warmer months.  Now, with flakes of snow flying, I stood out there pumping more gas into the car — and they were charging me $1.83.

At that price, I wanted to fill up the back seat —-   and then drive to places I didn’t even need to go to,  drive about like a teenager with their first brand-new license.  Instead, though, I just came home and made dinner.

A sure sign of age.

Several posts now have been about the current financial problems.  The result of all this reading is, well, that I don’t really want to read about it for a while.  Worrying is unlikely to help.  Not much else I can do about it.

Worked last night, the evening shift, because someone was out ill, then back in first thing this morning for my regular day shift.  And then to the grocery for milk, then to Day Care to get the fellows, home to fix dinner and twin wrestle, and then I got a bug up my a$$ to bake an apple pie, with TWO helpers.  They were fascinated watching the whole process, had to sniff the cinnamon about 20 times each, and we’d have a lot more apples in the pie if I was alone when I did this.  It’s in the oven now, and about every 5 minutes, I have to turn on the oven light, as the boys peer in, watching the pie bake – this strikes me as about as interesting as watching paint dry, but what do I know.

Sadly, it’ll still be in the oven at bedtime, and too hot to eat after that. 

Medical issues are moving along.  Have another appointment next week with the doctor I saw last week, and the following week I have a consult with the surgeon.  Apparently, this whole thing takes slightly less planning than D-Day, but I don’t think weather will be a factor.  I’ll take my x-rays over and the surgeon will plot out exactly what needs to be done, decide what can be done.  Decide how long I’m likely to live and thus, how much I could potentially pay so that the cost can be set for just over that. 

In the last week or so, I’ve gotten several e-mails from major chain stores, indicating that, of course, I should quickly come with my shopping list in hand to their store and to entice me in, they have announced that they are bringing back Lay-Away.

I remember Lay-Away.  Way back in the day, most of the bigger stores offered this service to their customers.  We went in, picked out all the goodies we wanted, and they were bundled together and put into storage somewhere in the back and out of sight.  And then you made no-interest payments to the store.  Maybe the total price was divided into 4 equal payments?  I forget, but we timed this so the last payment was due shortly before the holidays, and then we brought our goods  home to be wrapped and hidden from the children until the holiday.   And many used Lay-Away for purchases other than holiday gifts.  It was often used for high-ticket items, like appliances, or for school-clothes shopping, when families were outfitting several children and buying quite a bit all at once.  It spread the cost out over a period of time.  This was way long ago, when the national mentality was still “You have to pay for stuff before you can have it.”

Whoa!  Are those days ever gone!!!

Plastic was invented, and now the New Way is to pick out all the goodies, wave the plastic, bring the stuff home for the kids to break or lose, and make very small payments on a very large balance, thus paying perhaps 3 times the total cost and still make payments long after many of the purchases have been tossed.

We’ve come a long way, baby.

And I think the stores are starting to feel a bit of desperation about the quickly-approaching holiday season, and casting around wildly for anything they can come up with to increase sales.  This idea will diminish their on-site warehouse space, and increase wages, as someone must put things into Lay-Away, take and record the payments, and then go dig out the parcel when all payments are made.  Knowing this, apparently they still thing bringing back Lay-Away is a good idea.