I try my very hardest to pay for what I can with cash. It takes a lot of saving money for larger purchases. Lately, I have been draining all available reserves! I had a VERY expensive van repair last week. My radiator was leaking, among other things. Today I went to my dentist about my sore teeth and although (YAY) no root or cavity issues, but my bite is finally just so wonky I cannot put off a bite guard anymore. I am clenching and grinding at night and there is uneven wear. Despite my dental insurance (which is really rather good) it is costing me a small fortune and I needed to pay half of that today.

When it rains, it pours.

At this rate, I am not going to be in a situation to save up for the projects for the house, or to outright replace my vehicle. I will need to look at financing things like that. As much I as I hate to be in debt, larger purchases are just something most of us understand financing. There are a lot online retailers that pride themselves in having fair financing programs. It’s not the old days when you had to walk into a physical store to buy furniture or computers on credit.

You can find sites like LutherSales.com, where selling computers on credit is something they do daily. They have their payment options all set up and ready to go to make buying easier. Deals are especially sweet if you are active duty military or if you are a federal or municipal employee. Let’s just say they understand the working man (or woman).

I know it is not a necessity, but I keep coming back to their catalog page for digital cameras. I want a new one so much. I have a sturdy little Olympus I bought back in 2000 and it looks like it has been through a war. It takes great pictures, even at 2.1 megapixels (in fact, I get better pics than most of my friends get with newer super camera). Nonetheless, I want a digital SLR like you would not believe. Financing might be my best option now, unless I intend to wait another 7 years.

There is an odd story that has been in the headlines a lot the last week.

An Australian couple flew here looking for their adult son. He had come to the United States last month on a vacation, with plans to arrive in Tampa after a non-stop flight from Chicago on October 13.

He called his parents just before boarding his plane in Chicago and apparently told them he would contact them when he arrived in Florida and that he was going to get a cell phone and would pass the number along to them.

He did not call again after that. And, he did not check into the hotel in Tampa at which he had planned to say.

So his parents, Hugo and Faviola, became upset when they did not hear from his since. They used money they had set aside to work on their home and borrowed money form other family members. Then, they flew to the US and checked into a Tampa hotel. They have been busy talking to the police, passing out fliers, and spreading the word about their missing son. Local papers and TV station have run the story.

Recently, a hotel worker who read one of the articles recognized Dennis Mosquera’s picture and called police and the private investigator working with the parents. It seems Dennis stayed at a different hotel between Oct. 16 and 19. That same worker had recorded a contact e-mail and cell phone number.

The phone number was used to reach Dennis Mosquera today. Are you ready for his reply to this entire situation? A situation where his parents have been going out of their heads with worry and spend untold amounts of cash looking for him?

He said he was “working on his business” and hadn’t wanted to talk to anyone. The police plan only to relay to his parents that he is OK.

He’s 30. He still lives at home. He has money to travel extensively, having visited Japan and Europe last year. He sounds spoiled and thoughtless. What a tool.

I can remember in the late 90s that most doctors would still prescribe phentermine for weight loss issues. I think most of them were moving toward finding alternatives, or combing the use of phentermine with companion medications. Of course, the FDA put stronger guidelines into effect and our society has moved on to alternative weight loss aids.

Nobody ever disputed the ability of phenermine to help people lose weight. The drug suppressed the appetite unlike almost any other medication before or since. Health risks were a factor, though, and without very careful supervised use on relatively low-risk patients, most people found the use of the medication too risky.

There are companies that still manufacture phentermine and several online pharmacies still sell it. Of course, the main issue with order any medication online is that you run an increased risk of being sold counterfeit medications. There is hardly a medication that has not been faked at one time or another, and the more popular or hard to obtain medications tend to run the biggest risk of being targeted.

There is actually an entire website dedicated to comparing and contrasting online pharmacies that purport to sell phentermine. The site has an expansive blacklist of pharmacies that have been found to sell false product. In fact, if you use the tool son the site, you’ll find that only a few pharmacies have been found to be reputable. Compareop.com relies heavily on research and customer feedback. The discussion forum gives real customers a place to let other users know about disreputable retailers. The site also has an expansive listing of phentermine alternative, like acomplia.

When you decide to use a risky diet aid, one of the best things you can do for yourself to talk to other people who have used it first.

I was reading a book this past summer on the brain. I wish I could remember the author, or even the title. I’m just not good at recall when it comes to details. If I do not have them written down, I’m likely to not ever be able to bring the information to the front of my thought process.

Anyway, there was one sentence in the book that said that most fears that a child develops come from the mother. It went on to say that sometimes it is not even intentional. The child just picks up on the mother’s fears and internalizes them.

I know I got my fear of snakes from my mother. She was always wildly irrational when she saw one. I first became aware of snakes as “bad” when I was very young. I must have been about 4 (my daughter’s age) and I was looking at a family medical book we had on a low shelf of the bookshelves in the living room. I could not read yet, so I was paging through and looking at the illustrations. There was a piece of white paper covering something in the book. I knew my mom had put it there. She had even taken the time to tape around all four sides.

Anyway, I carefully peeled back a corner and eventually removed the paper. Underneath was an illustration of a coiled up black snake. My little girl brain immediately told me snakes must be terrible if they needed to be covered like that.

I have tried my best to not pass my own fears along to my daughter, but she is just so tuned into who I am and what makes me tick. She is picking up on my fear of snakes. She also reacted with a lot of fear after an incident two days ago. I walked into the main bathroom and on the mirror was a VERY large white frog. He was massive. I have seen albino frogs out in the yard, but they are always tiny. They are not as cute once they become gigantic. I have no idea how he got into the house and al of the way to the bathroom – but there he was! My brain took several seconds to even be able to compute what it was. In context, I could not align that frog with my bathroom mirror and all I saw was this lump of moving shiny white stuff.

I screamed. When someone screams for 5 seconds, it can sound like forever. Finally, my mind figured out it was a frog and visually it was as though a white fog solidified into a frog before my eyes. It’s funny how the mind works.

Gigi has been terrified of the idea of a frog ever since then. She saw her mother scream, react with fear, and appear out of control of a situation. I am sure it put a mini phobia in to her head. Now I just have to figure out how to help her get over it.