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On my own for the day

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My husband is out of town today. Normally he has Monday’s off, but this week, he changed shifts with someone at work and he ended up having today off.

As it happens that worked out well for him, because on Sunday evening we found out that a close friend of ours father had passed away. The visitation and funeral is out of town … in my husbands home town, so early this morning he got his things together and drove out of town for the day.

I didn’t go with him because I haven’t been feeling very well for the last week or so. I’ve had awful abdominal pain .. maybe yet another Crohn’s flare. Although oddly enough I’m feeling a little bit better today (hopefully that continues!). He went early so that he could see his parents and he had to go over to his aunts. We’re storing our pop up trailer on her property and she didn’t like where it was parked so he had to move it to the back of her yard.

Anyway … because of all the phone calls last night making arrangements for todays trip our PVR is pretty full! All the new and returning TV shows started again last night and we didn’t get a chance to watch very many of the ones we taped. We only watched House, Chuck and Weeds (from Sunday night). Tonight I’m taping a bunch of shows and I don’t think my husband will be home until 10:30 or later. I’ll probably watch a few shows that I don’t think he’ll be that interested in … but I think our PVR will be at about 90% by the time he gets home! LOL So early in the TV season and it will already be full. Oh boy.

So I guess tonight I’m eating alone, walking the dog on my own, and spending most of the evening on my own too. Sigh … Oh well .. at least this trip out of town should cut out the trip we were planning for this coming weekend to take care of the trailer.

When Chris does get home I’m going to try some acnepril. I’ve been breaking out lately so I figure this is worth a try. I’ll let you know in a couple of weeks if it’s helping.

Ok … off to feed the dog!





Our Car insurance went up – and we thought it was going down Grrrr

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A week or so ago I wrote a post about how we’d just saved a lot of money on our car and home insurance by making a few adjustments on our policy.

What I didn’t know what as that when we bought our new car near the beginning of August and my husband arranged everything with our insurance company. I thought that our car insurance rates had gone down a little bit – especially after we’d made a few adjustments to our policy a week a later. Boy was I wrong!

I guess with some changes to Ontario Insurance Laws that went into effect in early September and the fact that our car is newer – even though it’s a small 4 door 4 cylinder sedan – safe, efficient and that my husband and I have PERFECT driving records – our car insurance went up by about $60 a month.

GRRRRR

Once I saw how much money they took out of our bank account for the monthly policy payment we gave them a call. Of course their computers went down shortly after we started our talk. Uh huh. Before their computers crashed they did say that our payments had been adjusted upwards to cover the slightly higher expense of the new car coverage and that it will go down in the new year when our new contract starts.

I’m going to be calling them back on Monday to clarify exactly how much we’ll be paying when the new contract starts and their computers better not go down again! If I’m not happy with our conversation I think I’ll be spending sometime checking out prices at other car insurance companies next week and see if we can get a better price. If I do find one, hopefully it will be a company that also has house insurance and gives a discount when you combine car and house coverage. Our currant insurance company gives a 20% discount for combining insurance coverage.

Our neighbors and their BIG bed

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Earlier tonight, as my husband and I were having dinner our dog started howling at the door.

We got up to investigate the noise that had startled her. It turned out that our next door neighbours were in the midst of struggling to get a brand new mattress in their front door.

They weren’t having an easy time of it. For some reason they had decided to buy a king sized bed … even though their house (identical to ours) is very small and a king sized bed will probably just about take up most of the master bedroom.

Anyway .. since they were having such a hard time getting the mattress – a latex mattress BTW, inside their house, we decided to try to give them a hand.

It’s actually a good thing that we helped because we had to lift the mattress over the upstairs banister in order to get it to the top floor. It would never have made the turn at the top of the stairs without all of us lifting it up otherwise.

So I presume that they’re now putting their new bed together. I think with all that lifting and building they’ll probably be tired enough to sleep tonight. I hope their new bed is comfortable!

Thinking about going back to work

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I’ve been feeling a lot better over the last couple of weeks.

If you’re a regular reader of this blog or perhaps my main blog you’ll probably remember that I’ve been off work on (unpaid) medical leave for almost five years due to a severe Crohn’s flare up.

During my time off my back also started to act up – probably as a result of not being as physically active as I used to be, and last year my migraines suddenly came back – really bad, with extended visual auras, 24/7 dizziness, brain fog and massive pain.

The good news is that for most of this year my Crohn’s seems to have been settling down. My back has been a lot better as well.

Then in Mid August I saw a neurologist (after having an MRI) and he suggested that I take an anti-convulsive for my migraines – yes it sounded odd to me, but the drug is supposed to help those with migraines and tada … within a day of starting the new medication (Topamax) the constant migraine that I’d had for at least three straight months started to ease off.

The new medication has lots of side effects – I feel kind of dopey, my hands and feet tingle, and everything just tilts every once is a while … but the migraines have disappeared. I’m a little headachey here and there but I think this is going to work.

If the side effects would die down and if the migraines stay away, as well as the Crohns I might either be able to return to my old nursing job in the ER or if that doesn’t suit me anymore maybe try looking for a more suitable health care career that works with health issues.

Last year I didn’t really think I’d ever return to work. Now I have new hope that I might just be back to work by the end of the year or perhaps by the start of the new year. I’d be happy if that happened!

Saving money on our home and car insurance

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I guess I didn’t mention it on this blog, but near the beginning of August our car just up and died! My mother in law was driving it when a plug or something fell out of the transmission and all the transmission fluids came out in one big gush.

After having the car towed to the garage and trying to have it fixed we learned that the transmission casing was pitted and that we’d need a new transmission. Since our car was 14 years old we couldn’t see putting close to $3000 into the car so … we bit the bullet and decided to buy another car.

I guess we could have leased a new car or looked around for a really good financing deal on a new car, but we decided to get a used car.

The new used car is a 2006 Pontiac Pursuit – very similar to the Pontiac G5’s.

I guess we’ve had our new vehicle for about two weeks and so far so good. We love driving it and it seems to have great gas mileage.

Oh and when we called our insurance company to get our car insurance changed from the old car to the new car our rates actually went down a little bit. Not much … but a few dollars a month. I think when our new contract starts in January it will be about $10 a month lower.

Oh and when we were talking to our insurance agent he had some ideas for lowering our home insurance costs too (we have home and car insurance with the same company because combining the two offers a further discount at some insurance companies) so now we’re paying approximately $10 less a month on our home insurance as well.

So when everything kicks in next year we’ll be saving more than $20 a month on our car and home insurance thanks to

1. getting a newer car
2. having a clean driving record
3. never having made any claims on our car or house and
4. making a couple of simple changes like upping the deductible on our home insurance from $500 to $1000

My husband and I are smokers (yes shame on us), however, we’re planning on quitting in September. We mentioned this to our insurance agent and he said to let them know when we quit as they offer a smoke free discount. We can get an additional 3% off our home insurance.

It might be worth calling your home and or car insurance company to see if they have any ideas as to how you might save a few more dollars each month on your coverage. I know we’re happy with our additional savings because our bills just went way up what with the new (used) car payments we’re going to be making each month, so any way we can save money or cut costs – all the better!

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