I was looking at my blog statistics (I do that randomly because I enjoy seeing how far away people are from me) and noticed that it's been more than a month since my last blog entry. Bad girl. I'm not really into spanking, but if I were, this would be a perfect excuse. Anyway.
I had a small windfall come in that has eased my financial crunch a great deal. I mean, since I'm used to living on $50 or less a month, having several months' worth of income is like being rich! I set up a budget to make sure I avoid spending it all in one place. I've been there before. When my mom died, I inherited a piece of land in Florida. It took two years to sell it, and when I did, I just went crazy. I didn't even spend it on important stuff, really, though I did buy myself a laptop and some educational courses online. Mostly, it went to food (some groceries, but mostly dining out, a LOT), and clothes for the teenager. When I think about how different the last four years would have been had I just put that money aside for a rainy day, I want to smack myself. It was gone in less than a year, and I was right back where I'd been before, which wasn't terrible, but definitely wasn't great. All that to say that I learned from that experience and from the last four years of having next to no income, and I've parceled out that money with a tight fist. It's not nearly as much, but I bet it'll last longer.
My CPAP started sounding weird a couple of weeks ago, and I hoped like crazy that it would last me a few weeks until I could get in to see a doctor (which I can do now, more on that) and schedule a titration. Unfortunately, it didn't last much more than another week, but I've had it eight years, and I've used it every single day without fail, so I guess I got my insurance company's money's worth out of it. I plan to get it fixed so I have a spare, but in the meantime, I trolled Craigslist for a machine, and found one almost identical to mine that was only $100. Now a month ago, I would have been in a huge panic, because even that $100 would have been nonexistent, but I felt free to buy the used machine without undue stress because I'd "named" all my money (that's a Dave Ramsey thing, and some of what he says makes sense) and created a small emergency fund and a larger reserve fund out of that windfall mentioned above. I went several nights without the CPAP and sleep sucked and so did the rest of my life. I was muzzy-headed, I was exhausted all the time, and worst of all, I got heartburn. I haven't had heartburn in nearly eight years. Uck! OK, maybe that wasn't the worst. It also messed with my sleep cycle again, though frankly, that's so messed up that I never know when I'm going to be able to sleep at night or if it'll be daytime. So I'm thrilled for several reasons: I found a machine so much like the one I'm used to; I could afford to buy it; the person selling it was legit; my heartburn went away again. Huzzah!
One of the first things I did when I had the money all settled was to rent a car for a week, so I could get some necessities completed on my own schedule. While I had the car, I visited my storage unit and picked up a fairly substantial load from my storage unit. I chose mostly my Amazon stuff, with an eye toward reactivating my Amazon store, but also fit other things into the nooks and crannies. Then a week or so ago, a friend picked me up in her Tahoe, and we went to the storage unit again. Between the two of us, we stuffed that Tahoe pretty full and got a really large portion of my stuff out of there. Now I know that in the near future, I WILL be able to reopen my Amazon storefront and that will increase my income again. Because I haven't had my car and couldn't ship things out, that has really cut into what little income I was used to having, so I'm thrilled that I can finally see the light at the end of that tunnel.
OK, back to that doctor thing. I applied to the local county health plan, and got approved. So while it won't be free, I can see a doctor again and get prescriptions for very little money, and that will reduce some of my stress as well. I know that my health is not great, and I've pretty much been ignoring lots of little things because I knew that unless I wanted to rack up some serious ER bills for basic health maintenance, seeing a doctor was out of the question. Now I can get in to see the doctor, get my blood numbers checked, get back on some meds (like for depression, not having meds has been a serious issue for me for the last two years) and maybe work my way up from Fair health to Good. After all, I have a grandson I want to see again, and though his little sister isn't made yet, I want to meet her, too.
I've got other stuff, but I think I'll take that into a separate post, because this one's gotten a bit long.
