Friday is typically "errand day" around here, which means the usual ration of going to the grocery store and going to the post office and doing any banking or prescription pickups that are inevitable in a small town where pretty much everything is closed on the weekends.
Our little town (of about 10,000) is somewhat "quaint" in the sense that the endless parade of summer festivals still shut down a large part of town.
My day started off with leaving and noticing that our work truck was close to running on fumes so I needed to get it filled up and so I went to the nearest service station and discovered that — at current prices — it cost $120.02 to fill the tank!
That's even after using my grocery store loyalty points, which got me a dollar a gallon off the price marked at the pump.
Wow, talk about sticker shock!
I do believe that is the most I have ever paid to fill up a vehicle of ours. I do remember sometime around 2009-2010 paying close to $100 for a fill-up, but this was definitely a new record... and not a record I care for!
After that I headed off to the local independent pharmacy to pick up Mrs. Denmarkguy's and my own medications... because we live in a world where it seems that the only way to stay alive is to take various pharmaceuticals that adjust our blood pressures and diminishes stress levels and subdues our heartburn and ulcers and goodness knows what else.
So that set us back another $67.00 instead of — as it used to be — free, but due to cuts in medical benefits what used to not cost us anything now costs us a $67 co-pay a month.
After that I headed to our post office to mail an assortment of packages that are a part of both Mrs. Denmarkguy's and my own home businesses.
It's very expensive to ship things these days because due to abovementioned price of gas, the freight carriers have all instituted what is officially known as "temporary fuel surcharges"... which we all know perfectly well will never go away even if the price of gas does come down at some point in the future.
So got that taken care of and then I headed off to the supermarket to do a little bit of weekend shopping.
Even with myself being a pretty dedicated digital coupon shopper — and otherwise only buying things when they're on special — I have pretty much discovered that you cannot go to the grocery store for less than $100 these days... and of course today did not disappoint, with the bill coming out at about $113.00 for various sundry things, pretty much all of which were on sale, except for a bottle of bleach and a small piece of cheese.
Perhaps what struck me most — because I DO keep an eye on such things — was many items were about half what they cost today, just a couple of years ago.
Of course I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who will say "it's Joe Biden's fault" or maybe "it's Obama's fault" or maybe it's even "it's Bill Clinton's fault" because God forbid we should actually look at the reality of life is it's unfolding in front of us under the current administration.
Yes, I am cynical as frack... what are you going to do about it?
Anyway I look at life and — at least from a financial standpoint — it seems like we're all headed for a collision with disaster. Or, at least, we're headed for a point where we're going to be eating cat food spaghetti and living mostly on beans and rice.
Meanwhile, in a different part of the financial jigsaw puzzle, I was somewhat alarmed to discover that our annual winter fuel grant (a privately funded initiative which normally funds in February or March) is still not posted to our account as of the middle of the month of May.
This is rather strange and a little bit alarming in the sense that we currently owe about $890 to the electric company... and so far they have "forgiven" us and overlooked late fees because they have a "commitment letter" from the people who distribute funds on behalf of age 62+ low income individuals. Disturbing and strange that it's taking them five months to distribute funds they normally distribute in less than 60 days.
To me that's just another sign that the wheels are gradually coming off the wagon. You know, I have never been much of an alarmist nor do I live by doomscrolling... but sometimes you can't ignore the very obvious picture that is in front of you.
These are definitely "interesting times" in which we live!
Thanks for stopping by, and have a wonderful weekend!
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