Thats right, November is Alzheimer’s Awareness Month! The Alzheimer’s Foundation of America initiated National Memory Screening Day as part of its mission to provide “optimal care and services to individuals confronting dementia, and to their caregivers and families”…and as part of its focus on “Together for Care…in addition to Cure.” National Memory Screening Day is a collaborative effort spearheaded by the Alzheimer’s Foundation of America to promote early detection of Alzheimer’s disease and related illnesses, and to encourage appropriate intervention. AFA carries out this event in collaboration with organizations and health care professionals across the U.S. Participating sites offer free confidential memory screenings, as well as follow up resources and educational materials to those concerned about memory loss. I worry about my family having this illness because my grandfather and grandmother are getting to that age where this can afflict them. I remember that my great grandmother had it when I was just a kid and although I don’t remember much from that time, what I do remember makes me sad. Memory screenings make sense for anyone concerned about memory loss or experiencing warning signs of dementia; whose family and friends have noticed changes in them; or who believe they are at risk due to a family history of Alzheimer’s disease or a related illness. Screenings also are appropriate for anyone who does not have a concern right now, but who wants to establish a base line score for comparison in the future. The key to successful aging is a healthy, common sense lifestyle. The goals are to slow or prevent the loss of brain cells, maintain the brain’s capacity to make up for any loss, and let remaining brain cells function well. This requires a healthy body, mind and spirit. I can’t thank of any better holiday gift than the gift of great health to a loved one. Make sure that you provide your loved ones an opportunity to improve there overall mental health and spirit.

I was watching TV the other day and I came across the preview for The Mist by Stephen King. I am a big fan of Stephen King and grew up with a lot of his books and movies. The guy knows terror thats for sure. This movie is no different. It stars Thomas Jane (from the new “Punisher” movie) and is about an other worldly mist that falls on a small town. The residents are trapped in a grocery store while they determine what is to be done. In the mean time the town starts to divide and one group is of the belief that the mist is nothing while the other group is on the other extreme and believes that the mist is a sign from God and wants to sacrifice a child to appease the lord. Thomas Jane’s character and his family seem to be caught in the middle of it all and have the only rational minds in the whole town! Things soon escalate when the creatures that are in the mist try to get into the store so that they can eat the tasty morsels that reside with in it, kind of like getting to the cream filling in a Twinkie, lol! It kind of reminded me of this time that I was moving back from Tennessee! I was driving up this tall hill in Arkansas and it was raining, the higher I got the harder it seemed to rain, like something was telling me that I shouldn’t be trying to climb this hill. I was carrying a trailer on the back of my car and the weight of that combined with the slick road was making me slide backwards. I decided to pull over till the storm passed. While I was sitting there I noticed that there were no cars on the road. I thought to myself “How can this be, this is a major highway, cars should be just rolling by”. However, this was not the case, for about 30 min I sat their and waited for the rain to stop. Finally I noticed it letting up a little and decided to head out. I started up the hill but still no cars. It wasn’t till I reached the other side of the hill that I noticed all the oncoming cars sitting on the side of the road. because of the windows being fogged over I didn’t notice the cars behind me till I vented the car and got the windows clear. Seems everyone else had the same idea. But in that thirty minute stretch my mind was playing with some strange thoughts of other worldly dimensions and transportation to parallel universes. It was freaky but it reminds me of this movie. I am curious to see if this is all just a figment of there imaginations or if this is something that is truly going to destroy us all.

Brian and I are advocates of checking your credit on a yearly basis to make sure it is free of errors and other anomalies, like fraud or identity theft, things like that. There are many places that offer free credit reports online. The only down side is that they don’t tell you your actual credit score. You often have to pay to get that info. Everything else is free for the most part. However, at the end of the free report (or sometimes at the beginning) they’ll tell you that for $15 or so you can get your actual credit score.

This week we had the opportunity to get our credit info at no cost. As much as we don’t like credit inquiries, we figured that we really want to know how much of a hit our credit took because of the debt consolidation we did a few years ago. We’d rather know the damage now so we can take steps to rectify it before we begin going about getting a loan for new house within the next couple of years. There are many resources on the web that provide helpful information to those wanting to get out of debt or improve their credit. Badcreditoffers.com has a special section on credit repair and relief. Knowing your credit rating is important. If it’s not good, at least you can begin the road to recovery before it gets worse. =P

Brian got the info back from the mortgage broker today. Believe it or not, he actually has better credit than I do. When we first met, he practically had none. LOL. No really. That’s why my name is on our current mortgage. Brian wanted to buy a house. I really didn’t care either way. However, he didn’t have enough credit to get it on his own so I had to get on the mortgage. Looking back, I think it was a trick to get me to marry him. Getting a joint mortgage is a pretty big commitment. How can you not get married after making such a commitment? Of course, I would have accepted his marriage proposal with or without the mortgage hanging over my head.

Almost ten years later, the tables have turned. Brian has better credit than I do. We are both at about 800, but Brian’s is slightly better. Mine is a couple of points below and Brian is about fifteen points above. According to FICO, perfect is 850 so our credit is surprisingly actually pretty good. It seems our debt consolidation didn’t hurt us at all. I was afraid that the debt consolidation would tarnish our credit so much that we would have to settle for bad credit loans. I think the good thing about Brian and I is that we took action before we missed or were late on any payments. Besides that, we really did learn our lesson and we haven’t reverted back to our old crazy spending ways. I think that is what has helped our credit stay good inspite of everything.

When we were looking at our report today, which we didn’t have to pay for thanks to the mom’s mortgage broker friend (it was actually a small investment on his part because he is hoping to get our business when we buy a new house some time next year), Brian joked “Gosh! I never would have married you had I known you had a below 800 credit score!” Kidding aside, I think I was already at about 800 when we met. If anything, my score just got worse because when we first got together we spent more than we were making. I’m really proud of the kind of people we’ve become. We’ve learned the value of saving, and we just save, save, save as much as we possibly can. Delayed gratification is a good thing specially if your goal is to retire at 55, which according to the mortgage broker is not so farfetched based on our current spending/saving habits. Only 25 more years to go!