Living Large In Our Little House

I was feel­ing a bit low yes­ter­day. A for­mer class­mate posted about his impend­ing retire­ment on Monday and while I’m happy for him, of course, I got to think­ing about how far away we are from that goal.

Sometimes, as any free­lancer does, I miss the reg­u­lar pay­checks, the ben­e­fits and the secu­rity for a pen­sion a “real” job affords.

For the past 13 years, I’ve cel­e­brated Monday, October 31, as my Free Day. It was the day I shed a life in a gray flan­nel cor­po­rate cube that did not suit me.

I’ve always thought it was ironic the anniver­sary fell on Halloween, one of the scari­est days of the year, but also one full of treats if you say (trick or treat!?) and do (wear silly cos­tumes) the right things.

There have been times when being on my own has been scary, espe­cially these past 2–3 years. My writ­ing career was built on news­pa­per jour­nal­ism and as the econ­omy fal­tered so did most of my long-standing clients.

It’s been tough rebuild­ing my writ­ing to a major­ity of online clients as well as adding back in cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions, mar­ket­ing, pub­lic rela­tions and learn­ing a whole new world of social media mar­ket­ing (some­thing we couldn’t have ever imag­ined when I was earn­ing my degree in busi­ness admin­is­tra­tion 20 years ago).

For the past 13 years, over­all, my writ­ing life has been a treat.

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We began our Saturday at a Dutch oven cook-off, a good, old-fashioned way to enjoy a beau­ti­ful fall morn­ing, espe­cially if you enjoy that type of cook­ing as we do.

We ended the day, about as high tech as we could get, choos­ing new cell phones.

First, let me say that I hate the fact that we have to update all of our elec­tron­ics every few years, espe­cially when there may be noth­ing wrong with them. I think, like most things, it is a com­plete waste to have to pur­chase a new phone when the older one still works.

We pur­chased our first “car phone” (what they were called then), a big, bulky bag phone for about $400 in 1990. I drove a ways to work and we jus­ti­fied the expense know­ing I could call Dale if there were an emergency.

For a long time, that’s the only phone we had and we had an inex­pen­sive “emer­gency plan,” for $10 a month with huge per call fees if we did use it (which I recall doing only once, when my Baby Blazer’s axle broke on the highway).

Our German daugh­ter thought hav­ing a phone in the car was the most ridicu­lous thing she had ever heard of. Of course, when we attended her wed­ding in 2007, like most peo­ple today, she was never with­out her cell phone.

While I finally upgraded, Dale kept that bag phone until they told us the tech­nol­ogy to pro­vide it ser­vice was no longer avail­able. By then, he was work­ing nights and I insisted he also get a phone, just in case.

Dale and I both had the same model phone that we pur­chased four years ago when we moved to Our Little House. We had to switch car­ri­ers because the old one would not work here and the chip in our old phones wouldn’t work with the new provider.

We chose a model of phone that did noth­ing but make and receive calls. No cam­eras. We could text, but it was a cum­ber­some process. Since Dale didn’t do it at all and I only do it when I can­not reach some­one by call­ing back some­one who has texted me, it really was unnecessary.

My, have things changed in four years.

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Dale woke up yes­ter­day morn­ing com­plain­ing of being cold.

When we were younger, I was the one always cold and he was hot, now it is reversed.

“You’re going to have to put on some sweats or some­thing,” I told him, “That is, until we fire up the stove.”

He said some­thing about adding another dog to the bed – we already sleep with two – which isn’t an option in a dou­ble sized bed.

We’re using a small elec­tric oil heater right now, enough to take the chill off, but we won’t start burn­ing wood until the temps dive and stay low.

Until then, instead of turn­ing up the elec­tric heater, which costs us as well as the envi­ron­ment (or mak­ing it 3-dog nights), we will take these steps:

• Add an extra quilt to the bed
• Layer cloth­ing
• Open the oven after use to allow the unneeded heat for cook­ing con­tinue to warm the house
• Close the vents in the basement

For those of you who have cen­tral heat, low­er­ing your ther­mo­stat to 68 degrees dur­ing the day and lower at night not only helps the envi­ron­ment, but can save you up to 15 per­cent on energy bills each year.

Do you have any more tips to help save energy in the winter?

As I write this, we are expect­ing our first freeze of the sea­son, which means my beau­ti­ful sum­mer annu­als will be no more and it is time to get seri­ous about get­ting ready for the cold.

I took the dogs out yes­ter­day morn­ing and could already smell the famil­iar scent of the wood­burn­ing stove my aunt got going at her house down the road.

We haven’t had to do that just yet. We typ­i­cally use a small elec­tric oil space heater until the temps refuse to come back up. The stove just really is too much for Our Little House when it isn’t stay­ing below 40 degrees.

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