Flux

My life definitely seems to be in flux this year.  Lots of big changes.

Everyone in my house is on a diet.  Well, o.k. the cats are on weight loss maintenance since they achieved their weight loss goals last year.  However, Pugly was told by the vet that he has to lose 4 lbs — 1/6th of his body weight!  How do you explain to a Pug, who thinks he’s starving 24/7 on any given normal day, that he has to cut back on his in-between meal snacking and meal portions?

Meanwhile, I’m doing Weight Watchers@Work with 23 other hapless souls.  Since I managed to lose 55+ lbs on WW back in 2002/2003 rather successfully by applying strict OCD methods, I figured I can manage to lose the 45+ I regained living in Maine.  Actually, I’m trying to do it without the OCD part as that was a bit scary — no weighing myself 3 times a day for instance.  I’ve lost 6.2 lbs in 8 weeks so far, which is pretty healthy and I’m mostly feeling good about the choices I’m making about what I eat.  It’s much easier to follow the program during the work week however with all the cult members around.  That’s exactly what we’re like with our bags of baby carrots and our navel oranges and our discussions of Points and Lean Cuisine — which I don’t eat, by the way.  It’s very hard to find a variety of vegetarian frozen dinners that aren’t over -salted to cover the lack of flavor and under-sized.

So that’s body.

My house is going through a lot of changes too.  The roof suffered some damage from the Winter weather thanks to all of those back to back storms this past year.  Ice dams also did some inside damage.  So, I’ve just hired a contractor to do $5,000 worth of work.  It was really hard signing those papers.  However, the main house will be getting a new roof, there will be a steel door between the dining room and the garage, there will be drywall repair in the bathroom, kitchen and living room, and all three of those rooms are getting painted new colors and even the kitchen cabinets are getting repainted so no more awful green — and green is one of my favorite colors but that was just ugly.  I’m going for toffee orange in the kitchen and living room since they have an opening to each other and Cayman blue in the bathroom.

I’ve also finally bought a nice plain dining room table but no chairs.  I plan to strip the awful color on the front stoop and just stain it a natural weather-resistant wood color and I’ve been working in my garden, planting flowers and wildflower seeds.  It doesn’t look like much yet, but I have a botanical dream.

The biggest change is going to be the switch from oil heating.  I was getting physically ill at the thought of next year’s heating bills.  Last year’s bills of $600 a month were just horrible and that was before this latest daily increase in oil prices.  Then I got my letter telling me that I needed to lock in my discount rate for next year — the one I get as an employee for my work through my oil company — $4.59/gallon, a full 30¢/gallon cheaper than everyone else.  My brain might have actually melted.  For the year 2007, I used about 850 gallons of heating oil and my usage for the first 4 months of 2008 went up about 30-40% due to the harsh Winter.  Despite having been a math minor, the daughter of a CPA, and an IT professional, my brain simply couldn’t even begin to do the math; it simply couldn’t face it.

But I got to thinking about my options and I remembered hearing about Les Otten on NPR and the local news.  Otten is this crazy guy who was trying to get the state legislature to give tax credits to people who bought furnaces that burned wood pellets.  Well, I know a couple of people who recently bought wood pellet stoves but I’d never heard of a wood pellet furnace so I looked it up and it turns out that it’s a European thing.  Mr. Otten is bringing the first 100 wood pellet furnaces to Maine this summer and promising to have them installed by Winter.  He’s hoping to convert 10% of the Maine homes currently burning oil (that’s 44,000 residences) to wood pellets in 5 years.

Four out of five homes in Maine are heated with petroleum products, the highest share in the country.

By switching to wood pellets, Otten calculates, the average Maine home could be warmed for half the current cost of oil. If 44,000 homes made the switch, residents could save $78 million a year on heating bills, based on current costs. [Home Heating: Otten bets Mainers Will Warm to Wood Pellets]

So, I checked out his company’s website: Maine Energy Systems.

And let’s face it, the first thing I checked out was the cost and most particularly, the cost comparison between wood pellets and heating oil.  Let’s assume I use 900 gallons of oil and I’ve locked in my discount rate at $4.59/gal; that’s $4,131 for a year.  Apparently the equivalent amount of wood pellets would be 6.73 tons and MES’ rate is $250/ton, so that comes out to $1,684.  That’s a huge difference — $2,447 annual savings.  (O.K. I’ll be financing the new furnace but still.)

I love that the whole thing is automatic.  It just has to be cleaned once a year.  Plus, it’s environmentally friendly.  Most wood pellets are made from by-products of other wood manufacturing processes and the ash create makes excellent compost.  Plus, oil is not a replenishable resource and wood is, though it should be harvested wisely.

Anyway, I put my deposit down and now I’m waiting for that contractor to come out, have a look see at my current furnace with its big rusty hole and its current set up, and discuss the refitting so I can be one of Mr. Otten’s pioneers.

And now that my checking account is tied up for the rest of the year, I believe I’ll be sitting at home admiring the construction on my house and my wildflowers and my pitiful food portions and trying not to do anything else that’s going to cost anything.

Friday Pet Blogging: Morning Companions

Every morning, Needy and Pugly keep me company while I get ready for work.

Pugly always looks so forlorn about the whole thing too. He seems far more upset about my having to go to work than I am and I really would rather stay home and play puppy games.

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Same Thing Every Day

Last night I got out of bed and made the long, treacherous journey downstairs to the bathroom. This is not an uncommon event. Yet, for some reason as I was sitting there, I looked up and there were two cats and a Pug crowded into the doorway peering at me with concern and bewilderment as if none of them had ever seen me pee before.

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Friday Pet Blogging: ‘Laxin’

Don’t forget to check out the Friday Ark!

Mean Ole Cat

For about a year, Aloof, the mean ole cat of the house, and I have been embroiled in an embittered battle of wills.

The vet told me that both cats needed to lose about 2 lbs. and instructed me to feed them 1/3 cup of kibble twice a day or one 3oz can of cat food twice a day. No, that’s not each cat. He said that I should put that amount in their one shared bowl.

Well, my cats don’t like canned food. Though I did try switching to it last Spring…about a week before the news media announced that canned food was mysteriously killing cats and dogs nationwide. That put an end to that.

So, we went with the kibble. I’m a little bit of a health nut too. Since my cats won’t eat home-cooked meals and I am horrified about what goes into most grocery store pet foods — meat by-products that won’t pass meat inspections for humans and carbohydrate fillers — I buy organic kibble at non-chain pet supply stores. We’ve been going through a bit of brand sampling trying to find one that works for everyone. (For example, it turns out that the highly recommended high protein low carb Innova Evo diet gives my pets diarrhea. ) Right now everyone seems to be enjoying the Wellness selections. The cats are sampling the “Indoor Health” selection.

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Thirteen Things You Might Not Know About Me, 1rst

Thirteen Things about J. Lynne I lived 23 of my 36 breathing years in New Orleans, but not consecutively; one period for 12 years and one for 11 years. Coincidentally the reason I moved to New Orleans in 1993 and the reason I moved away in 2004 were the same — unemployment; despite being told by my high school guidance counselor that computer science would bring great fortune and job security, I have yet to find that to be true after 15 years. Before anyone asks, no, I didn’t have any family left in New Orleans during Katrina; my parents had moved to New Mexico in 2002; I do still have a number of friends in the area. Everyone I know luckily survived, even if their belongings didn’t — two friends lived just blocks from the Canal Street levee break. I currently live in Maine with two cats and a Pug in a red house. I couldn’t get a third cat because I’m single and you know that single women can’t have 3 cats or they become crazy old maids. So I have a Pug. When I moved to Maine, I drove up without an apartment rented and without knowing anyone but the people I’d interviewed with for my job. I stayed in hotels for a month with my two cats (didn’t have the Pug yet) while I looked for a decent, affordable apartment that a piano would fit in — it took at least 2 weeks for me to accept that up here no one needs central A/C so apartments just don’t have them. My current obsessive hobby of choice is photography. I am participating in Project365 — a world-wide phenomenon where amateur and professional photographers alike take at least one photo every day for a year. (View my Project365 as a slideshow.) Ironically I started out doing digital photography because I thought it would be a cheep hobby, but a new Canon PowerShot S3 IS, a bunch of printed photographs, picture frames, and a lot of books on photography later, and I can tell you that is a myth. Since January 1, 2007, I have taken over 1000 photographs and have posted 941 to Flickr; 189 of those photos appear to be of my Pug. According to Flickr’s mysterious rules of “Interestingness”, 16 of my photos have made it to Flickr’s infamous Explore; 10 of those are of my Pug and technically one was taken last year. (View my Flickr Explored Photos as a Slideshow.) The reason that I needed to save money is because I bought a house in November, which is a really big commitment; I guess I’m staying in Maine. As it turns out, houses have a lot more unexpected expenses than apartments and you can’t just call the landlord and have things magically repaired while you are at work. It also turns out that the landscaping and garden fairies don’t come while you are at work either. However, for $25 a week, the lawnmower man will come once a week and make all the dandelions disappear from your yard. I have discovered that it is not easy to make new friends all over again in your mid-30’s if you move to somewhere you know no one and you don’t immediately click with your co-workers. By your 30’s you’ve pretty much defined your social circles and there’s really very little change until you hit retirement age, I think. I kind of think it’s easier if you relocate as a couple. Couples seem to find other couples to do things with, but by your mid-30’s everyone’s pretty much looking to become a couple or looking to find other couples to hang out with. Look at Friends, for example. Integrating outsiders never really worked out once they reached their 30’s and Monica and Chandler were always trying to find appropriate partners for the single “friends” so they could do couple things. In fact, they spent quite a bit of time just trying to find someone to pair off with to become a couple. Unfortunately, I haven’t found a ready-made group of friends for me in Maine yet. I have been diagnosed with chronic migraines, IgA Nephropathy (an autoimmune kidney disease), fibromyalgia, gastroparesis (a condition in which the stomach digestion is slowed), IBS, general anxiety disorder, and chronic depression. I probably also have some OCD in there. As a result of my medical problems, my doctors have put me on a strict pescetarian diet — no flesh of any animals other than fish or other types of seafood. I’m supposed to eat lots of soy products too. I was already eating 75% this way when the doctor told me no more red meat or chicken. As a result of being told I can’t have those things, naturally, I cheat on really rare occasions. To be honest, I don’t really like the smell or taste of meat most of the time anyway. I have been blogging in various places for over 6 years and have been “outed” several times by a health magazine, The New York Times, and Good Morning, America. I suspect I lost a job because I was blogging rather nasty things about my boss though using all fake names but I can’t prove it. It’s just a reminder that nothing is really anonymous or private in Cyberspace. While this is the closest I’ve come to using my real name on a blog, I still use aliases for my pets because some of them — Pugly — have become quite well-known by their online monikers and besides, you never know when some pet-o-phile will come across their photos and want to stalk them. They must be protected. Links to other Thursday Thirteens! Jeremy Eric qtpies7 Robin Ed byoc hazel Amy the Black

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So Not A Morning Person

To say I’m not a morning person is an understatement. More truthfully one should say that to put me behind the wheel of a car before 8am is like playing Russian roulette with a small SUV.

Starting sometime during this past Winter, I just started having a harder and harder time getting out of bed in the morning and even once I was out of bed, I just felt so sleepy, like the walking dead. I’d find myself driving to work with those droopy eyes, doing the head bob, feeling that with each blink, my eyes might not reopen. I’d doze off at stop lights. It was horrible.

Then I had a small fender-bender. My foot slipped off of the brake at a light. At the time I blamed my morning medications and I started waiting to take them until I was at work.

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