Three small successes from my week:
1) I made it to Friday. There were a few meltdowns, but Jim and I managed to have a really constructive discussion about how to balance LW between us so that I can get work done a little better, and maybe even have a few minutes of free time during the day. I give the week an A+ for effort, and mostly LW was a much happier camper.
2) We got our electric bill today. I wasn't blogging last month, but a bit of history - we received an $135 electric bill, and my head pretty much exploded on the spot. Since then I've gone a little crazy with "energy consciousness", and while next month's bill should be even better (I just started line drying everything the last week in April, so the impact of that on this month's bill was minimal), I was able to drop it $40 to $95 for this month. While not perfect, it's still a success.
3) I squelched my "go, go, go, do, do, do" voices for long enough today to sit, with a mug of icecream (also squelched the "don't eat that" voice, in favor of the "you're a lactating woman, go for it!" one), and just watch the wind blow the clouds along outside my window while LW was napping. It was a nice recharge, and a reminder that I need to take more time just to relax, and be.
Now the last success of the week/day - to successfully put down the computer and spend a few minutes with hubby before bed.
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6 comments:
Yay for the lower electric bill! We just got a gas delivery and it was almost exactly 2 months since the last one. The gas we got totaled 71 gals. and cost $259.46. So a month worth of dryer, hot water heater, and stove costs us $129.73. Since your electric bill also included your furnace blower, your lights, etc. I guess it really wasn't all THAT bad. Still it's nice to see that it came down so much this month. Now I get to see how much of a difference line drying is really going to make, if that is I can get other people to not do laundry at midnight.... I'm also running the dishwasher on the normal cycle instead of always running it on pots and pans to see whether that will use less hot water. I was hoping running it on the longer cycle would get me consistently clean glasses, but it really didn't seem to make that much of a difference. Lousy dishwasher!
Oh, the really discouraging thing about the gas bill is that it was $19 more than the last one despite the fact that I've been using the clothesline, although not until the last couple of weeks I'm sure you sympathize my frustration and I can't even blame it on steaming the baby or someone's power tools.
Sorry to hear your gas bill was so high. Drying clothes outside should make a big difference, though - and in the summer, you probably cook less on the gas stove as well, take cooler showers, etc. So it should go down some more. You guys could really think about a low flow shower head, too - I think ours has better pressure than yours, despite being low flow. I'm planning to get a new one that is 1.5 gpm instead of the 2.5 gpm we have now.
Isn't our shower head already low flow? I thought that we had to go low flow when it got replaced. Not being a shower person for the most part I'm fairly oblivious to the flow except when I'm trying to clean the wretched shower floor and it seems pretty low flow then, but maybe it's just a pressure thing.
I honestly don't know if we actually used more gas or if they simply arbitrarily delivered more gas or even if the price went up. I'm not sure they actually fill the tank, so it's possible they just gave us more this time, but I'm more suspicious that the price went up because our deliveries are usually right around 70 gallons. But since last delivery's slip seems to have gotten thrown away, along with the paid bill.... I guess I won't know.
Ah, I think I figured it out. In January they delivered on the 14th, in March they delivered on the 9th (which because February was a short month was even earlier than it would otherwise look). This month they delivered on the 7th which is actually just about the 60 days it's supposed to be. So in March they delivered way earlier than 60 days so we'd used less and this month we used about the normal amount. I suspect that's the mystery solved.
And the good news is, I found the paid bill. Calculating it out on the assumption that they actually filled the tank each time, we actually used 1.2 gals of gas per day in January and February, but only 1.05 gals of gas per day for March and April. So despite the fact that the bill was higher (because it was more days of gas) we actually used less than we might have. See what you've started. I never even used to pay attention to those things. I simply paid the bill.
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