Take breaks

(StatePoint) With expected delays in bill payments, unprecedented layoffs, hiring freezes and related hardships, many Americans are facing new financial challenges.

“COVID-19 has impacted all industries and individuals from all walks of life,” says Rod Griffin, senior director of Consumer Education and Advocacy for Experian. “With all of these rapid changes, you might not be thinking about how your credit report may be impacted yet, but you likely will soon.”

As you adapt to life in this unprecedented time, the experts at Experian are sharing strategies and resources for protecting your financial health and credit history. • Check your credit report. While checking your credit report regularly is always a good idea, this is especially true now. You can get a free copy of your report from Experian every 30 days with a free account. In addition, you can get a free credit report from each of the three national credit reporting agencies annually by visiting annualcreditreport.com. • Maintain your score. Making credit payments on time and infull and keeping your utilization rate (balance-to-limit ratio) as low as possible are the best ways to maintain your credit score. At a maximum, you should try to keep your credit card balances below 30 percent in total and for each individual card. For many reasons, maintaining these habits might not be possible right now. However, paying your minimum monthly payments and anything additional you can afford will go a long way. • Talk to your lenders. Keep in mind, lenders don’t want you to fall behind on your payments any more than you do. If you’re facing trouble making monthly payments, contact your lender or creditor. They may have options for helping you cope with COVID-19-related financial hardships. For example, lenders can place your accounts in forbearance or deferment for a period of time. • Use credit as a financial tool. While debt is a problem, credit can be a financial tool that can help improve your overall financial health in the long run. As always, avoid making rash decisions when it comes to credit and your financial health. • Check out resources. Use new educational resources that can help you protect your financial health in these uncertain times. For example, Experian is hosting a series of #CreditChat conversations surrounding COVID-19 on Wednesdays at 3 p.m. ET on Twitter. The program covers important personal finance topics. The next several #CreditChats will be dedicated to items like methods and strategies for bill repayment, paying down debt, emergency financial assistance and preparing for retirement during COVID-19.

You can also visit Experian’s blog post, “COVID-19 and Your Credit Report,” for updated information pertaining to how COVID-19 may impact your creditworthiness. Additionally, the “Ask Experian” blog shares immediate and evolving resources on its COVID-19 Updates page. To obtain a free Experian credit report and other free services, enroll at Experian.com.

While staying safe and healthy should be everyone’s number one priority, it is also important to protect your financial health at the same time. Be sure to leverage all the resources available to you that can help you emerge from this crisis in good financial standing.

Food Options

Soups and Such - Take Out Only, Regular Hours

Julian Beer Company - Open for Take Out Orders

Wynola Flats Produce - We will be open regular hours for the foreseeable future. We have been cleared by the County to operate with the only restriction being that 6 feet of social distancing must be maintained.

We are exploring food box delivery and may offer this ourselves or through partners in the near future. In the meantime if you learn of anyone who is homebound and cut off from food supplies please let us know ASAP.

I am committed to making sure that all of us can access healthy food within our own community. I will be happy to take special requests and stock items that may be essential to your household. I am already making a weekly food run and I should be able to get most things that you may need through one source or another. We will also be continuing to work with the Santa Ysabel Farmers Market and we hope to offer an alternate sales point for their produce until the County has lifted the restrictions on Farmers Markets and normal operations have resumed.

Any questions? Just ask.

We are blessed to have each other and we will get through this together. Mike We’ve come this far and we can keep going.

One thing I’m doing that I shouldn’t is that I’m staying up way too late on my computer’s internet. I look things up. I look people up. I read and I read. I may look up one person and see references to other people and away I go. Before long I’ve read biographies of five or ten people. Saturday nights we watch movies on KPBS. We never know ahead of time what the movie will be and we are never disappointed. This past week we watched The Buddy Holly Story. I knew that he only played his music for about a year and a half before he died and I knew that his last concert was in the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa. Since I’ve been there and stood out front I can tell you that the auditorium doesn’t look anything like the one in the movie. It’s flat. It doesn’t have a lot of steps leading up to the door. It looks the same as it did in 1959. As the story goes, the band’s bus broke down and they had to get to Fargo, North Dakota for their next gig. Buddy wanted to do his laundry before going on stage, so he, Richie Valens and the Big Bopper (Jiles Richardson) got in the plane at the Mason City airport during really bad weather. That night, February 3rd, 1959, the plane crashed before it left the airfield. The reason it crashed still isn’t known. If you know where to look, you can find memorials and a plaque dedicated to them all, even a set of oversized eyeglasses that look like Buddy Holly’s glasses. All aboard were killed, including the pilot Roger Peterson. Buddy Holly’s wife heard about it on the news and consequently miscarried their baby. In later years, Don McLean wrote and sang “American Pie” The Day the Music Died about that plane crash. The name of the plane was Miss American Pie. See how much we can all learn if we sit long enough?

On these rainy days reading a good book with a cup of hot cocoa next to me and an afghan around my legs is a good idea too. I used to read books and then tuck them back into my book cases for future times to read them. I’m not doing that anymore. I’m sixty-nine years old and rather than reread books I want to explore new books, so once I’ve read a book, if it is still in really great shape, I put it in a box for my local library. If it isn’t quite perfect, I put it in a box so I can give it to a thrift shop. I have a few antique books too and I need to find someone who would be thrilled to get those.

This is a good time for making jams and marmalade. With the house so cold, heating it up for hours with good aromas makes me feel better about staying home. Last spring I pitted and chopped up both red and yellow plums. Now I am ready to make plum jam. This week I got a great deal on a bag of four large lemons which I will use to make orange marmalade. I few nights ago I looked on amazon. com for canning jars. The prices were unbelievably high. A dozen half pint jars with seals and rings cost over $26.00. Since my son was driving to Ramona today, I asked him to check the price at True Value next to Albertson’s. There, a dozen half pint quilted jars cost $12.99. He bought plain jars which is what we like to use. They cost $9.99 per dozen for the half pint size jars with seals and rings.

We like to put our jams and cranberry relish in half pint jars to sell at church, and any odd sizes that we have we put applesauce in because we like to eat that. My friend Ingrid makes wonderful chunky applesauce and lets me keep the jars. I can’t sem to get enough of Ingrid’s applesauce.

I recently heard someone say that people don’t can food anymore. They sure are wrong. When it’s hot I chop my fruits and when it’s cold I turn them into sauces, jams and breads. Yes, I skin my yams and sweet potatoes, cut them into chunks, boil them, drain them, cool them, mash them and then I measure them usually 2 cups per bag, and seal them into zip lock bags. By doing this I can either take out a bag for dinner, to make a pie or to make sweet potato bread.

With more and more rain flooding our yards and our stay at home orders in place, this is a good time to look behind your refrigerator to see how much vacuuming needs to be done, pull your stove out if you can to see what may have dropped behind it and you can move your microwave oven to clean under, behind and next to it.

Other projects that may or may not interest you would be to get your children or grandchildren to help get all of the pots and pans out of the cabinets. Match pans to lids and put any left overs in a box for a thrift store. This kind of project would also be good for sorting out plastic containers and lids and then move on to baking dishes.

I often say that I never get bored and now you know why. I would do just about anything to avoid the things I really need to do, like paperwork. So I keep busy. At least mentally I keep busy. At night when I should be falling asleep, I’m planning all of the activities that I will do the next day. Most of those projects don’t get done because I’ve forgotten them by the time I finally fall asleep. At least my heart is in the right place.

Now it’s 2:00a.m and it’s time for me to go to bed and plan tomorrow. Good night, These are my thoughts

EAST OF PINE HILLS

by Kiki Skagen Munshi

So...

It’s Spring! The great old cherry is in bloom and time, perhaps, to see if A.E. Housman is still relevant, a century on and still counting, SO:

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now Is hung with bloom along the bough,

All right, that pretty well describes the old cherry, although some would say apple blossoms are prettier. And stands about the woodland ride Wearing white for Eastertide.

Well here a bit of a problem. The time is right—Eastertide—but “woodland ride”? Maybe in England but here you usually ride along open areas. Too many branches and such in the woods, what wood are left after the Golden Oak Borer, that is. Still… not really a big deal. Now, of my threescore years and ten, Twenty will not come again,

WAIT A MINUTE!!! While we will admit that twenty isn’t in our future, “threescore years and ten” adds up to seventy which, well, you know…we don’t need to go into DETAILS but it this isn’t the lifespan we …anyway. Scratch that verse. And take from seventy springs a score, It only leaves me fifty more.

The arithmetic is correct but the underlying objection remains. And since to look at things in bloom Fifty springs are little room, Agreed. About the woodlands I will go To see the cherry hung with snow. Okay, we’ll ignore the “woodlands” bit and go admire the cherry tree.

You might want to as well.

Ramona Food and Clothes Closet 773 Main Street, Ramona 760-789-4458

Brand New and Gently Used Items

50% off One regularly priced item with this ad Exp. 5-31-20

Not for profit 501(c)(3) tax id# 33-005939 since 1983