Day 80: The Claritin Saga Continues plus 1/2-Ton of Cement

Kroger — $89.20
The Clar­inex saga con­tin­ues.  To recap: we switched insur­ance car­ri­ers on Oct. 1 but due to a paper­work snafu, we didn’t receive our insur­ance cards until about the near the end of the month.  I refused to pay out of pocket for Clar­inex so I went with­out for the month of Octo­ber.  When my insur­ance card finally arrived, I imme­di­ately called the phar­macy.  But it turned out my pre­scrip­tion has expired in the mean­time.  So they tried call­ing the Dr. to get it extended or refilled.  No go.  I had to make an appoint­ment to see the doc.  I did so.  She refilled the pre­scrip­tion yes­ter­day.  Today I took in my new sub­scrip­tion.  I waited around for them to fill it.  Finally, my num­ber came up and I went up to pay.  Oops, your insur­ance doesn’t cover Clar­inex.  Are you kid­ding me?!  I went through all of this only to find out that my new insur­ance com­pany doesn’t cover Clar­inex?  Boy, I was more than a lit­tle ticked!  I explained to the phar­ma­cist that I take the Clar­inex because it’s extremely effec­tive in con­trol­ling my asthma.  But I am sim­ply not going to pay $120 per month for the priv­i­lege.  Na uh.  No way.  She sug­gested Clar­itin was the best option.  Reluc­tantly, I agreed.

Turns out that Kroger cur­rently has 30-tab boxes on sale for $18.99 – that works out to $0.633 per dosage.  A far sight cheaper than the $2/pill that Clar­inex costs.  I debated buy­ing more than one box but resisted the urge since I was still see­ing red about my lack of insur­ance cov­er­age and I balk at stock­ing up on some­thing priced at $20/pop.  Turns out my intu­ition was right (see entry below).

In addi­tion to the $20 for the Clar­itin, I picked up the ingre­di­ents the kids and I needed for our hol­i­day pie-fest — we’re join­ing some friends for a big Thanks­giv­ing Day feast and we’re tak­ing the pies.  We plan to make two pecan pies, two pump­kin pies, two but­ter­milk pies, an apple pie, and a lemon meringue pie.

• Apple­gate slice smoked turkey breast — $4.99
• Granny Smith apples — $0.60 (saved $0.59)
• Brae­burn apples — $1.03
• 24 rolls Kroger TP — $7.59
• 1/2 gal­lon Hori­zon 2% milk — $2.99 (saved $0.10)
• set of 2 Marie Callendar’s frozen pie crusts — $2.50 (saved $.29)
• 2 dozen Nest Fresh large white eggs — $7.78
• Kashi cereal — $3.69
• C&H brown sugar — $2.00 (saved $0.49)
• organic vanilla extract — $10.39
• quart Meadow Gold but­ter­milk — $1.99
• lemon juice — $2.29
• Cream of Tar­tar — $6.69
• Karo light corn syrup — $2.50 (saved $0.69)
• Dia­mond pecan halves — $6.69 (saved $0.50)
• deep dish fluted Pyrex pie plate — $2.99 (saved $3.00)
• “bring your own bag” credit — ($0.15)

Total loy­alty card sav­ings was $5.66 or only 6% off my total bill.  This was sim­ply one of those trips where I had to buy what I had to buy and I had to buy it right here and now.  The Daugh­ter got the pecan pies made today.  Since I can’t eat pecan pies, she got to use frozen crusts (which I also can­not eat).  Tomor­row The Son and I will spend all day mak­ing the rest of the pies; they’ll all be made from scratch with hand-made, from-scratch pie crusts.  We’ll prob­a­bly save the apple pie for Thurs­day morning.

MLB.com — $20.97
Two Col­orado Rock­ies World Series com­mem­o­ra­tive fac­sim­i­lie auto­graph baseballs; to be given as Christ­mas gifts — one to The Son and to a grandson.

The story behind this pur­chase is that last Sun­day The Hus­band saw an adver­tise­ment in the paper sell­ing these base­balls for $19.95/ea.  He men­tioned that it might be a great present for The Son.  I agreed and added that the grand­son might like one as well.  Today, while babysit­ting a neighbor’s sick boys, I caught up on some paper­work.  While fill­ing out the base­ball order form it occurred to me that I was about to send off a check for almost $40 to some anony­mous PO Box.  I decided a lit­tle research was in order.

Nat­u­rally, I turned to the Inter­net — and I’ve got to tell you, I’m still pat­ting myself on the back about this one.  I found the very same prod­uct on MLB.com for $7.99/ea.  The two balls plus ship­ping came to a total of $20.97 – just about half the price of the mail-order offer.  As the coup de grace, I paid for the order through my Pay­pal account which will afford me some great con­sumer pro­tec­tions beyond even a credit card pay­ment and cer­tainly much bet­ter than pay­ing with a check.

The balls are on back-order (actu­ally, it’s tech­ni­cally a pre­sale because the base­balls are still in pro­duc­tion) so the charge won’t go through until the order is actu­ally shipped.  All I have to worry about now is whether we actu­ally receive the order in time for Christmas.

Safe­way — $48.79
The tem­per­a­ture dropped 43 degrees in the last 24 hours.  By the time I got to the gas sta­tion tonight it was down­right chilly and I saw a few flakes of snow fly­ing around.  Since The Tank’s tank was hov­er­ing just above 1/4 full, I fig­ured it would be a good idea to tank up before either the tem­per­a­ture went lower or the snow got thicker.  I pumped 16.544 gal­lons @ $2.949 per gal­lon.  My odome­ter now reads 116,906.

Wal­greens — $31.98
After sur­viv­ing the lat­est episode in my allergy meds saga (see above), I went on-line and did a lit­tle price check­ing.  My Google Prod­ucts search pro­duced prices equal to but no bet­ter than the sale price I’d found locally at Kroger — good but not good enough to pay addi­tional ship­ping and deal with a ques­tion­able on-line com­pany.  So I aban­doned Google and went to Walgreens.com.  Pag­ing through the on-line ver­sion of their weekly flyer, I finally came upon a Clar­itin sale — $15.99 for a box of 30 tabs.  That beat the Kroger price by $3.00 or $0.10 per tablet.  Since a Wal­greens was right along my intended after chore route, I stopped in and scored big!  There were only two boxes left on the shelf — and one was a bonus box con­tain­ing 40 tabs instead of 30.  I took both boxes up and con­firmed the price — $15.99 per box!!  I plan to hit another Wal­greens near the house tomor­row — sure would love to find another 40-tab box or two at that sale price.

The Home Depot — $71.69
My handy­man and his son are sup­posed to show up on Fri­day morn­ing to pour the new retain­ing wall.  I sus­pect it will be too cold to actu­ally do the pour but I need to have all of my sup­plies on hand just in case the weather decides to cooperate.

The first thing I picked up were light bulbs –I needed bulbs for the two base­ment stair­way wall sconces, 60w bulbs for in the bath­room, and a weird-shaped 60w for the light fix­ture over the dining/kitchen table.

Then I headed back to the con­trac­tor sec­tion for Quikrete and hard­ware cloth.  Who knew that cement was so gosh darned heavy!?  We’d cal­cu­lated that I’d need 24 bags for the project but I knew I’d only be pick­ing up half of them today.  After all, twelve bags of cement is equiv­a­lent to nearly one-half a ton!

I was stu­pid enough to wres­tle all twelve bags onto a cart by myself — a job def­i­nitely not appro­pri­ate for a middle-aged woman with Fibromyal­gia.  Once I had my dozen bags on the cart, it took every ounce of strength I had to pro­pel it to the cashier at the front of the store   Once there, I asked for assis­tance in load­ing the bags into the car.  On the way home, I was won­der­ing how in the heck was I going to get those bags out of the car?!  I could just see The Hus­band and me break­ing our backs — and likely the bags.  Not.  That’s when it occurred to me — I had a marker I could call in.  As soon as I got home, I called the neigh­bor I’d helped out this after­noon and she sent her hus­band and her vis­it­ing brother-in-law over.  They got that cement unloaded in a flash.  I fig­ure I’ll go back for the other 12 bags on Fri­day morn­ing.  If my handy­man shows up, he’ll be able to unload.  If not, the neigh­bor and his brother will still be around

Related posts:

1. Day 82: Last Minute Thanks­giv­ing Sup­ply Dash
2. Day 112: Returns, Gro­ceries, & More Gifts
3. Day 97: Groceries
4. Day 253: Groceries
5. Day 103: This is the Day we Baked our Cakes