An Expensive Decision

I have never been a fan of the news. At some point, probably around my senior year in high school when I was co-editor of the school newspaper, I decided I didn’t want to be a reporter. It was a good choice considering that to this day, I’m a lousy interviewer. This came to light once again during my recently completed fifteen weeks at Citizens’ Police Academy. Others asked many, many questions of the instructors. I asked very few. I preferred to listen and to take notes on what was said.

Besides the interview thing, there’s that little problem with the news always being bad. If it bleeds, it leads. And what is bleeding most profusely these days is our economy.

Everyone is cutting back. I’ve been cutting back for years, which leads me to ponder how ELSE can I cut back? I already drive a car that gets around 36 miles per gallon. Even most highbreds don’t do as well. Still, it’s costing me almost fifty dollars a week to fill my tank. FIFTY DOLLARS! I remember when it cost me around ten.

So my new credo is that I don’t go anywhere unless I have multiple reasons to travel there. Just run to the bank? Oh, no. Cashing that check will have to wait until I’m going by there on my way to somewhere else.

Mom is back to going shopping with me. I about wore her out yesterday. And I could have made several other stops and gotten more business done, but I didn’t want to put the poor woman into a coma.

One exception is coming up. Skye has an appointment for her annual exam and shots (shhhh! Don’t tell her!). I won’t make her wait in the car while I run errands.

And then there’s the BIG DECISION that hubby and I made this week. We’ve been dreading ordering oil for our furnace. I remember back when we would wait until mid summer for the price of heating fuel to drop below a dollar. Cue hysterical laughter.

We’re ditching the oil furnace and are going to have an electric heat pump installed.

The furnace, after all, is twenty-five years old and not very energy efficient and probably on borrowed time. But the incident that triggered this very expensive decision was our two window air conditioners repeatedly tripping breakers during last week’s ninety degree days. Somehow the hundred dollar add-a-new-circuit electrical job turned into needing a new electric service.

I’ll try to think of it as doing our part to stimulate the economy. I will try NOT to think about how my July vacation money has just disappeared into the heat pump fund. I WILL try to think about whole-house air conditioning.

At least I won’t have to call around pricing oil. That’s one interview I was really dreading.