When it rains, it pours ... even in a drought.

Let’s talk about irony for a minute. In my last post I was whining that August 2010 will definitely go down in history as my most expensive month EVER for dental work, figuring about $1,800 out-of-pocket after my annual dental insurance benefit covers the first $1,000. Except to almost paraphrase a famous pig, th-th-that’s NOT all, folks! Because Sam tells me he has a toothache and totally expects to need root canal and a crown ... and he already used up his annual dental benefit several months ago for the same procedures on another tooth. We’ll know what’s what after his appointment on the 18th, but we’re probably looking at another $1,200 out-of-pocket. (And Sam’s the one with GOOD teeth in our house.)

But just in case you think this couldn’t get much worse, you’d be WRONG. Our garage started to smell like a Shell station a few days ago so Sam dropped off our Saturn at Pep Boys this morning. Manny, Moe and Jack (pictured at right) discovered a leak in the fuel pump and had to remove the entire gas tank in order to replace it ... parts and labor added up to more than $600. We briefly considered buying a new car but decided against it, because Sam really loves his little Saturn and a new car would cost us a whole lot more than $600. Considering the overall economy this is NOT a good time to blow a ton of money on something we don’t need ... unless it’s a large quantity of Chinese food.

To help matters a little I’ve decided to sign up tomorrow for my senior discount at Kroger. As an old person I qualify for 10% off Kroger’s store brand and private label merchandise, which is pretty cool. This includes a lot of packaged deli things like potato salad and pimento cheese (pimento cheese is intensely popular here), milk and dairy products, stuff in cans, spices, frozen vegetables, cleaning doodads and so on. This should save us $10 a week at the very least. You might not think $10 sounds like a lot of money, but it adds up to $26,000 over the next 50 years, and I might even learn to like pimento cheese by then. Thank you for reading this.