Have you noticed it yet? Have you been to Walgreens to pick up a prescription only to discover that your Express Script benefits no longer work there? The reason is failed negotiation. Express Scripts basically “wrote off” their relationship with Walgreens, and the existing contract officially retired on December 31, 2011. According to some reports, Express Scripts was demanding too much from Walgreens while pocketing a huge profit from pharmaceutical sales. If there was ever a time to eliminate the middle man, it is now. I am seeing many, many companies end their expensive contracts and going it solo. Kudos to them, because I don’t care for the pricey middle man, either.

Sadly, the prescription benefits for the military are involved in this mess with Express Scripts. According to a press release, Walgreens attempted to negotiate a “meet or beat” deal with prescriptions to continue their contract with Express Scripts military client, but looks like that fell through.

So guess what Walgreens is going to do? They are offering their OWN prescription benefit plan. Currently, it’s at a discounted price. Until January 31, 2012, you can become a member in the Walgreens Prescription Savings Club for only $5 per individual or $10 for the immediate family (including pets!). After that, the prices go up to $20 and $35, respectively.

I like Walgreens. I think they are very customer-friendly and I will continue to support them. How about you? If you are wondering if your prescription plan with Walgreens and Express Script is affected, check out the links for more information, and check out Walgreens on Twitter and Walgreens on Facebook.

First, a little background:

Last year, I got a pair of the store-bought eyeglasses from a local retailer. The glasses cost $250 (*faint*), some of which was paid by my health insurance (a measly $40). But the new glasses started to corrode after NINE MONTHS of use. The finish was peeling off and the metal was turning green! The frames themselves had cost me $80 there, on SALE! When I went in to get replacement glasses, the eye doctor place told me I would have to fork out another $100, to replace the frames with the exact replica of the old (so that I could keep the existing lenses without having to pay in full for them again). I was flabbergasted. It hadn’t even been a year! There’s no guarantee? And why were such expensive glasses starting to fail?! And if I had to ordered the exact same frames, they’d just fail again! The eye doctor shrugged me off and told me that these frames were not made with stainless steel but some other “cheaper” metal (stainless steel doesn’t corrode). I asked why the eye doc never told me that when I ordered them?! She didn’t know what to say.

The Old Glasses. You can see the corrosion and tinges of green on the rims. They looked even worse on my face!

So I went to Zenni. I found that I could get brand new eyeglasses and lenses for under $75. I did a little fact-checking and sifted through Zenni’s frames. I ordered totally new glasses– lenses and frames– from Zenni.

Here’s my experience:

I got my prescription and my pupillary distance from my eye doctor (from an exam from last year. I scrupulously saved the tiny paper!). You have to have both measurements to order glasses– the pupillary distance is the measurement of the space between your two pupils. Zenni has some information on how to measure yours by yourself (and I received a small ruler when I got my glasses in the mail). I guess I am glad I got it from the “expert” doctor, because like I said, I am sensitive to the tiniest alteration in my glasses.

So after sifting through tons and tons of frames, I settled on a pair of plastic frames (I’ve had the metal frames for about 10 years now, and wanted a change). They were large, very wide circles. I wondered what Zenni would do. I guess I was testing them. You see, all my eye doctors had told me that I cannot buy large frames, because my lenses are so thick that my vision would be distorted. But I actually hate those teeny-tiny frames. I want big ones. So I ordered them, seeing what Zenni would do.

Zenni emailed me the next day. They said that because of my prescription, I could not have such large frames. They gave me some suggestions for smaller frames. I was very sad but I was pleased with Zenni for taking the time to inspect my order closely and give me advice. So…. I sifted through the frames again and ordered a smaller size. I waited three weeks for the glasses (I think they come from Hong Kong!). My total cost was $71 and some change. The frames were only $25 but the lenses were pricey and I had to get the “high index” feature or the glasses would be so heavy they’d squash my nose.

When I got them, they were in a simple bubble-wrap mailer envelope. Not a box. Hm. Well, I opened the envelope and the glasses were inside a super-thick plastic shell case. They were fine and survived the shipping. Zenni does allow you to return glasses if they are broken or are not the right prescription. But it would have been awful to wait another 3 weeks for glasses if they’d been broken….

The Zenni Optical Glasses.

Anyway, I unpacked them. When I first saw them, I thought …. OK, these are funky…. It’s difficult to tell what the frames look like online versus what you eventually get. The Zenni website has an “online” facial thing where you can virtually try on glasses. You can even upload your own photo, but I had a lot of trouble getting my profile picture the right size. The glasses looked either too large or too small on my photo.

Inspecting the new glasses, I thought the color would be lighter and the frames a little less thick. It was a radical change from the lightweight, gold-rimmed metal glasses I’d been wearing. Remember me ranting about the glasses fad toward Drew Carey goggles a while back? Yeah, these are Drew-Carey-ish. I put them on and immediately I thought “geek.” Which isn’t too bad… I AM a geek. (See my tech blog, TheOlderGeek.com about that). My husband liked them and thought they looked good. I was unsure, but I will say that I am ALWAYS unsure when I get a new pair of glasses. So I decided to just WEAR them and look radically different and see how they were for me.

Geeks R Us. lol

I am very pleasantly surprised with these glasses!!! Yeah, I look like a geek. But I can see clearly with them and I think I see better with these than the store-bought eyeglasses that cost me THREE TIMES more. I have been wearing these glasses for weeks (maybe months, by now) and I love the glasses. I think the quality is superior to the store-bought kind.

So there you have it. I am very impressed with Zenni and I will definitely be ordering from them when I need a new set. I was floored that Zenni so adeptly handled my high prescription.

Now, yeah, I’m getting small compensation to mention Zenni in this post. They did not ask me to write a review, just to mention them. They did not pay for my glasses nor did I get any discount. I paid full Zenni price for my glasses, just like you would. So know that my review and my opinions are completely mine and I am not influenced by any compensation. It was kind of scary at first, spending so much on a pair of VERY important glasses and not knowing what I’d get. I had read up on Zenni, reading some of the reviews and seeing what some people liked and disliked about their experience. You can imagine my delight that the glasses are great. I am just amazed that Zenni was able to do such a high prescription so well without ever seeing me. I am impressed. But next time, I’m not going with the Drew Carey geek glasses… I hope to choose something a bit more feminine, if I can.

Thanks for reading!

…well, not with eyeglasses. All four kids got new glasses at the eye doctor’s place and the prices are OUTRAGEOUS. Not only that, but the insurance company would only pay for the “budget” kind, so the available selection was very small. My daughter paid $85 out of her own pocket to have the thin lenses, too, because the insurance company wouldn’t pay for it. Why the heck are prescription glasses so darn tootin’ expensive?! And why are the insurance companies so stingy? You’d think they’d cut the “mental health” or “family planning” coverage a little bit so folks like us could get some quality glasses without having to sell the car or get a second job….

So you really don’t get what you pay for, not with retail prescription lenses. If I got what I paid for, we’d have nice glasses in solid gold, sheesh.

Well, there’s a new option for folks like us– Zenni Optical. They are determined to offer very, very low cost glasses. These aren’t the funky, nerdy “Oh your kid is on the bottom-rung of the insurance ladder” glasses, either. Zenni has stylish frames and they are very nice.

My husband ordered frames from Zenni a few years ago– he’s still wearing them and they’ve performed very well. He now needs bifocals and has to reorder. I tried to order new glasses myself, but my prescription is so strong that the glasses would have cost the same as my insurance deductible glasses. Looking back, I should have ordered from Zenni, anyway– the ones I got from the glasses retailer are falling apart. :-p

Anyway, I keep hearing good things about Zenni Optical. People not only save money on prescription glasses but they get very nice glasses, too. Check them out to see the selection and see how you can order your own pair.

Apparently, it’s a urine test. The mom can take the test as early as two months to determine the baby’s gender! When I had my kids– oh my word over a decade ago– this was impossible. Has technology advanced so much to determine the gender of the baby? When I was a young person, some of my friends played this kooky needle and thread game to figure out if the baby would be a boy or girl. I don’t remember exactly– you dangle the needle over the wrist; if it moves in a circle, it’s a girl; if it moves in a line, it’s a boy. And that was as technological as we got back then.

And that, my friends, is why the ultrasound was invented.

I had ultrasounds for all my kids. The hubs always wanted to know the baby’s gender, but I always wanted to be surprised. So for half the kids, we found out; for the other half, we kept it a mystery. But today, there’s some concern about the safety of ultrasounds (oh sure, NOW they tell me!). No one really knows if the baby or mom is affected in anyway by the radio waves or isotopes or alien space xeon rays or whatever they do to make that image on the screen. When I had them, the images were very blurry. Even the technician would squint and hem and haw as he tried to figure out what was what. Anyway, I probably would have had fewer ultrasounds if I’d known that no one knows whether they are bad for you!!

Which leads me back to the urine test. This could be a very good, safe gender predictor method. IF it works. I am SO tempted to try this out for myself, just to see if it works. But then again, NO WAY NOT IN A MILLION YEARS.

If you get it, let me know. I’d love to know if it works!!

Do you have any idea how expensive vitamins and nutritional supplements are?! Yeah, you do– I know you do. I was in the store several days ago, browing the shelves for probiotics and those effervescent “immune booster” tablets. My jaw clunked to the floor when I saw the stickers. You think gasoline is expensive?! Some corporations think we are just made of money, don’t they?

Well, thank God for “generic” brands, like Walgreens Brand Health & Wellness Products. Instead of the super-pricey Airborne tablets, I can get Walborn tablets for a fraction of the price (and they are even cheaper online). And the Walgreens brand is just like the Airborne brand, except a lot less expensive.      

I’ve always preferred generic or store-brand stuff, anyway. In most cases, there is no difference between pricey name-brand and store brand. Walgreens Brand Health & Wellness Products are Walgreens pharmacist recommended, many contain the same active ingredients as other national brands, and the Walgreens stuff has a 100% satisfaction guarantee. Not too shabby.

If you’d like to save even a little more on Walgreens Brand Health & Wellness Products, check out this page for information on giveaways for Walgreens gift cards. You can save a bundle more! And of course there’s the Walgreens Way to Well Fund™ to provide free preventive health tests as well as other health and wellness services and education to local communities. Check it out!

Of all the people I know, more than half of them have allergies. The only nice thing about allergies is the amazing camaraderie wherever I go. People are amazingly talkative about their allergies– unheard of for my “frozen chosen” location of New York State, where people are known for their chilly disposition. Yet OUT OF THE BLUE people will just start talking. Yeah ok, the conversations ARE about their allergies, but heck– they’re actually friendly in between sneezes! I took a few kids to an eye appointment the other day, and one of the young ladies went ON and ON about her and her husband and her son’s allergies. Her streams of dialogues extended our appointment by at least 20 minutes, I’d say. I know almost everything about her and her family’s allergies. Gee, if their doctor needs any information, give me a call… But she was wonderfully friendly, despite her plugged nose, nasally voice and intermittent achoos. Poor lady!

I don’t have allergies. It’s a miracle. I’m allergic to nothing. Well, except black fly bites (nasty things). I grew up amongst a bunch of sneezers, but me– nope. I got the good genes, I guess (at least the non-allergy DNA). I can thoroughly snuff the undercoats of cats and dogs and tree catkins until they’re all bald, and my nose is just fine. My husband and my son have allergies, though. I spend a FORTUNE on Kleenex for these guys, every spring. They owe me, I tell ya. And Claritin? What a crock. If you have allergies, does Claritin REALLY work for you, or is it all a bunch of hype?

Well, anyway, it’s allergy season. I hope it’s over soon because the landfills are filling up MIGHTY fast with Kleenex – not to mention my home’s wastebaskets. :blink:

Here’s my sincerest sympathies to all you sneezers out there: Only 6 more months til winter! Hang in there!

THANK YOU to all you wonderful people who supported my daughter and I with prayer during her surgery. In case you missed the info, one of my gals had severely impacted wisdom teeth removed this week. The poor girl has teeth the size of golf balls squeezed into a tiny little jaw. She’s a young adult, but her 2nd molars aren’t even all the way through yet. The wisdom teeth were deep into her jawbone, giving her a lot of pain, so we just decided to jack up the boot straps and get the surgery done.

A week before the surgery in consultation, the oral surgeon ran through several “problem areas” we might encounter. Nothing to worry about — tut tut — just the possibility of punctures in the sinuses, permanent nerve damage, or adverse reactions to general anesthesia. I was kind of freaked out. The doc said the surgery would take about 2 loooooong hours.

Glory to God, the actual surgery took about an hour! The surgeon said, “Well, that went better than expected.”

!!!! I’ll say!

Thank you for your prayers and words of encouragement and advice my dear, dear friends! I have never experienced such overwhelming comfort. I pray you are comforted with the same comfort you’ve comforted me with! Thanks a million!
:awe:

So the daughter is recovering. Even though she pretty much looks like this right now:

…and can’t quite move the jaw to eat anything yet. But she’s got bright eyes and is improving greatly!

Thanks for everything, pallies.

Oh wait, the kids are up.

Too late.

Ugh, and they have informed me that we need milk, so I must walk down the street to get some. *sigh*

Well anyway, I guess I still have a few dregs of solitude and thought in my noggin. I’ll try to make a coherent post before playing the milkman… :D

Has anyone else been getting tons of emails from advertising companies, asking them to place text links or purchase articles for their blogs? Usually, the offers are pittance. Some are good though. :D I’ve been getting carbon-copy communications in both my comments section, contact form, and email for the lower-end ads. Weird. It’s happened all at once, for about a month now. Hey, I’m not complaining– any offer is great! It’s just odd that it’s so much all at once.

Spring is coming. February is the time I *usually* order garden seeds, and my Johnny’s Selected Seeds catalog came right on schedule. But I haven’t had a spare second to peruse it. I have this feeling that I won’t be getting to THINKING about the garden until April….

Spring is also spring cleaning. Yes, we still do spring cleaning! I remember doing it with my mom as a kid. She always wore a red bandana on her hair, remember when ladies wore those? I think only hip-hop artists keep the bandana companies in business today… well anyway, we used to scrub the house from top to bottom, even the walls.

Something tells me this guy isn't off to do spring cleaning...

Oddly enough, we never cleaned the carpets. Today, of course, there are fancy (expensive) machines and companies like Carpet Cleaning Horseshoe Bay and Carpet Cleaning Hudson Bend who do it for you. They probably don’t wear bandanas. :D One of the reasons I did not install wall-to-wall carpeting in the house after we renovated (besides the cost) is that carpet is so hard to clean. Over the years, it fills with so much gunk that not even the bandana-bedecked Carpet Cleaning Jollyville experts can scrub it out. Or, maybe they can.

I’m nervous about that Obamacare bill. I don’t want federal government health care. And I don’t want to pay extortion to not have it, either. It makes me sick to my stomach to see our country forcing things down our throats all the time. I am a “do it yourself” kind of gal. I like the self-sufficient life and I like to make my own decisions. I had a doctor like that, too, but unfortunately, he’s now retired. He used to lay out all the facts, informing me of my options, and let me make the decision. When I was expecting my second daughter, he thought that she was not growing, according to the sonograms. Since my previous labor had been difficult and the baby large, he recommended that I have this second child early, to avoid complications of a large baby. The sonograms were showing that this one was going to be a whopper, because already she was 7 lbs and I still had four weeks left of pregnancy (babies gain a 1/2 pound every week, which would make the baby 9 lbs at her due date. My husband and I were very hesitant to induce. The doctor didn’t think the baby was in any particular danger, but he was concerned about her growth. But he allowed us to make our OWN decision. He allowed us to wait two weeks on the condition that every other day I had to go to the hospital for a sonogram, to monitor the baby’s growth. Which we did. Two weeks later, we did eventually induce, and the baby was born small (as far as my kids go, 7 lbs)! She was not the 9 lbs that the sonogram was saying she was. And actually, if we had induced two weeks earlier, when the doctor had wanted it, the baby would have been premature and weighed only 5 lbs because we discovered that the due date had been calculated wrong. I loved my doctor for letting us make our own decisions.

Anyway, in a culture where less and less responsibility is expected of the individual and more and more given to distant bureaucrats, I wonder what will become of us.

Enough musing. I must go to get the milk. Thanks for reading. :D

Last week was definitely a “scattered” kind of week. It seemed like I had a million things to do, and couldn’t devote much time on any one thing. Now, the entire week is a blur and I can’t even remember what I did. Ever have weeks like that?

Over the weekend, I had a weird incident with a 1-inch long shard of raw kale getting caught in my tonsil. I didn’t know what it was at first; at first I thought it was a small flax seed and a few swigs of water would wash it down. Nope. After gagging and wretching for over an hour, I finally decided to take a look inside, using a flashlight and half a clothesline pin as a tongue depressant. I caught a glimpse of something, which I initially thought was a “tonsil stone.” (these are basically small calcifications that come from the tonsils. My mom had such problems with her tonsils that she had them removed. I may have mine removed someday, because my tonsils swell so easily and drive me bananas sometimes!).

I'll never look at rabbit food the same again....

Anyway, I basically reached into the back of my mouth and tried to yank it out. I was shocked to see a small piece of green kale. That thing was lodged into my throat so well that the kale would only come out in pieces as I yanked. I will spare you the gory details, but I eventually forced it out. OH THE RELIEF. I was eating raw kale everyday before then, but now I think I may have some kind of phobia, because I haven’t TOUCHED it since. By the way, I had de-stemmed the kale before eating it, too. It was just one of those freaky kale things, I guess.

Now that you’ve lost your appetite…

Did you know that dark chocolate has more antioxidants than tea and wine? I have been reading this health book with the kids, and am finding out all sorts of interesting things. I’m not a big chocolate eater. I like it from time to time, but I’m not an obsessive chocolate eater. Still, it’s great to know that when I DO want to eat it, I now have a terrific excuse.

I’m pretty happy about my employment these days. I’ve had an abundance of work, both with the blogs and the freelance writing. I also have an opportunity to *perhaps* work as a webmaster for a local business, too. That would be SO COOL. I know a little about PHP and WordPress, some Drupal, too. I wish I was as talented as some of those designers at the SF Web Development Agency, for example. I’m really, really small time. I have perused tutorials and hacks at websites like Smashing Magazine (if you have never seen that website, you must!! Totally cool!), but I have a lot to learn. I know nothing about html, really.

Code is poetry, like another language.

Well, maybe I know a little from working with Blogger, lol! How I wish I could tinker with code and stats like the geeks at SF web product design agency… but anyway, this gig is a small gig (it’s a small business, not a Forbes monster). The guy is great and I know he’ll be happy if I just put my best into the project (which I will). And here’s hoping I learn a lot along the way. And make a ton of loot, too.

I’m glad the son is learning Garage Bad on the MacMini. Almost makes buying the thing worth it. He likes making music (well, ALL the kids do, it’s pretty amazing)– more accurately, he likes mixing music. And the nice thing is that when I need some music for a video, he can provide it. That way, I won’t have to use someone else’s music and worry about copyright problems. Nice one.

Until next time!

Anyway, it’s over now, lol. Christmas hasn’t been this fun in 16 years, when my newborn baby and two toddler kids got the flu…. three times over. So I’m thankful we got it just this once this time. LOL

Anyway, I’m so glad it’s Monday. That means that things will be back to normal! And it’s nice to start out the week with the meme. Here goes!

1. What are your New Year’s Eve plans?

I am gearing up for a wild, crazy, frenzied, bacchanalian evening of Scrabble with the husband! Woooooo! I’m cracking my knuckles, combing through the dictionary, and drinking the raw egg protein mixes, baby! Hum The Theme Song From Rocky and be rooting for me, guys!

2. How tall are you?

Average. Almost 5’4″. I used to be 5’3′, but after having my first child (at age 22), I grew a little.

3. What is your favorite pudding flavor?

Anything except banana. Ick. Oh, and except coconut. YUK. Oh, and I don’t like pistachio, either. Or lemon. But I like any pudding flavor, whatever. I think the most luscious pudding tastes like dark chocolate, like in those chocolate gifts boxes. YUM.

4. What room of the house do you blog the most in?

I write my articles (I’m a copywriter) up in my bedroom, believe it or not. It’s quieter up there, without the dogs, the phone, the traffic, etc. But when I blog, I usually do it downstairs, in my living room. Blogging is a lot easier than copywriting, so I don’t require a totally silent atmosphere. Even so, I hope to convert the living room into an office someday. I will eventually convert the attached garage into a big family room, and then I will be able to have the whole living room to myself.

This is my setup, photo taken from last year (before the renovation). I have moved furniture a bit and we have a new rug, but the big ol’ desk is the same.

My Tabby-point Siamese, Livvy, likes my desk, too. :blink:

5. What is your best physical feature?

Hmm… I would have said my hair, but in the last year my health has suffered and my beautiful, glossy, thick, wavy locks have been replaced with limp, thin hair. I’m eating better and trying not to overwork, so my health is improving and my hair is growing back.

My legs were also very nice. :D I took ballet as a young lady, and my legs were muscular but shapely. I have extremely strong legs. But the past few years I have grown sedentary, due to recovery from a back injury and my new desk job, so my legs are thicker. Still, my legs are honking strong. I can whup my husband in Indian wrestling.

Thanks for visiting me this Monday! Please consider “following” me with Google Friends Connect in my sidebar ———> I’ll follow you back! Have a happy and flu-less New Year!