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I saved $500 yesterday!

At least by congressional accounting standards…

In reality, I spent $500 less than I could have spent, than I expected to spend. Although, in theory, since I could spend an infinite amount of money (theory, remember), I am saving an infinite amount of money every day.

You may be wondering what this is all about. Or you may have lost interest and stopped reading already, in which case you are not seeing this sentence and it is pointless for me to keep typ

We had no hot water yesterday morning, which was not a good thing. Showering with unheated well water is a good way to get frostbite annoyed hypothermia. I checked the circuit breaker (electric water heater) and checked the valves and everything was fine. I opened the panel on the heater to check the thermostat.

I was already in my work clothes (shirt and tie) and getting ready to head out the door. When I opened the panel on the water heater and saw just a bunch of insulation, I knew I had two choices:

1. Try to dig deeper, which would mean missing the morning of work and I would probably have to call a plumber anyway or
2. Just go to work like normal and call the plumber right away.

A little background here to set the context a little bit:
I moved into this house about 10 years ago. The average lifespan of an electric water heater is 7-10 years. The water heater was old when I moved into the house.

All that, combined with the fact that hard water (we have a softener, but it can do only so much) reduces the life of a water heater, meant that I figured it was the water heater’s time to go. (In case you’re wondering, it’s the fridge’s turn to quit next. Since I’ve been at the house I got a new stove, dishwasher, washer and dryer, water softener, and had to have the furnace repaired. The only major appliances left are the fridge and water heater. And the well pump, but I don’t want to think about that).

So I informed my wife that I would call the plumber and get it fixed that day.

I called our normal plumber. He called back a couple hours later and said he was swamped. “Do you have a meter?” he asked. “You could check the thermostat to make sure it hasn’t tripped.”

“I could do that, but I’m not home.”

He agreed that maybe I should call our other plumber then.

Our other plumber said he’d be able to get there that afternoon. That sounded to me like it would be done before the day was over, so we arranged for that.

He called my cell phone in the mid-afternoon. He told me that he was on his way over and wanted the exact address and nearest intersection. I told him, then quickly hung up and called my wife so she would know he would be there in a few minutes.

Of course, the one time that day she could find to nap was right around that time. I think my call awakened her. She scrambled downstairs, only to find the plumber pulling into our driveway already.

My wife called a bit later – “Okay, it’s fixed and he’s gone. I gave him a check for $120.”

Our furnace guy charged about $75 for house calls. For plumbers, it turns out, it’s $60 to make the house call and $60 per hour of labor (minimum of 1 hour labor charge no matter what’s done).

I figured that $120 to fix a broken water heater was not too bad of a deal. My wife helped when she told me that the plumber said we were lucky, because a new water heater would run about $600.

That’s where the $500 savings comes into play.

Then came the revelation that ruined my happy thoughts of avoiding house maintenance: “Yeah, all he needed to do was push the reset button on the water heater.”

Oy!

A $120 bill for that?

If only there hadn’t been that insulation in the way and I had seen a reset button on the water heater. Why couldn’t it have been a big, red, prominent reset button like on our furnace? But nooooo…

The plumber said that the water heater is 22 years old. The newer heaters are smaller and lighter, we were informed. I’m sure they are smaller and lighter. I’m also sure that they won’t last 22 years. Ours is built like a tank (yes, a water heater tank).

I’m considering the $120 as like an insurance policy. Because if I hadn’t paid it, I would have spent all morning in the basement trying to replace heating elements.

That would have been much worse for everyone involved.

And probably some people who weren’t involved.

I just had to remind myself a few times yesterday to think of the big picture – you wanted to pay a plumber to fix the water heater, and now it’s fixed. Mission accomplished.

I need things that do not require maintenance.

I sold the lawn mower and now pay the neighbor boy to mow my lawn.

I buy disposable paint brushes because then I don’t have to clean them.

The central air for our house, though, is a different matter. We do not want to be without that, so I thought I would try to take care of it.

Some stores sell covers for the AC condenser. That’s the part with the fan that sits outside. Since the fan won’t work so well with leaves and snow in it, the theory is that the condenser should be covered during fall and winter. On the other hand, the condenser does have a screen to keep out leaves and the snow should melt before the condenser it used, so a cover isn’t necessary. But it might help it to last longer and a cover is cheap, so why not?

In the fall, I put the cover over the condenser. It did a fine job of protecting the AC from the elements. The condenser lives behind the house and we don’t normally see it.

Which means I forgot the cover was still on when I turned on the AC on the first warm day.

I remembered I had installed the air conditioner cover when I saw some fabric sitting in the side yard. It turns out that the fan inside the condenser is powerful enough to remove most covers.

I now avoid any maintenance items that I need to remember to undo.

And the condenser will have to learn to live with leaves and snow.

The old, cheap roll-up shades that we had in the living room were showing their age. Some edges were torn, some had broken or missing reinforcement rods at the bottom, and one couldn’t even roll up anymore so it was left halfway up all the time (or halfway down for you pessimists).

The dining room has two windows, and those did not have the roll-up shades. They, instead, had the old-school blinds, with a pull-cord to raise and lower them and a long handle to twist if you wanted to change the angle of all the slats. Since those types of blinds are being recalled and shunned due to the strangulation hazard of the cord, we decided to replace all the shades and blinds in both rooms. No sense in having nice new shades in one room and ratty old blinds in the next.

The replacements are the cordless cellular shades.

Unfortunately, we found out too late that “cellular” refers to the construction of the shade and has nothing to do with mobile phones.

I installed all the new shades, being careful to make things nice and level. Then I stood back and surveyed a job well done.

Thinking to myself:
How could that happen?

That’s the problem with an old house. Things are either level or even. I make new things level, with a level, but then they don’t match the existing things that match but aren’t level.

Then I stepped closer to the window.

Hey, look! The shades aren’t crooked – the curtain rod is.

Step back, look at the rest of the window.

I think it’s just the curtain rod. That shouldn’t be too bad to fix. What could go wrong with that?

I will save some of you guys out there some grief with this tip.

If your scrapbooking wife says she wants a personal trimmer, make sure you buy her one of these:

Not one of these:

That’s all I have to say about that.

Our church has an AWANA program, which is a weekly program for children and it involves games and Bible teaching and stuff. Every so often, we will have a special night instead of the usual program. These are planned at the beginning of the school year – hayride and bonfire one night in the fall, grand prix races one night in the spring, a night of caroling just before Christmas, and a sledding night in mid-winter.

Because the nature of weather is to be unpredictable, especially 5 months ahead of time, we always plan a sledding night and then a back-up sledding night in case there is no snow on the first night. Two weeks ago, when we were supposed to have our sledding night, there wasn’t really any snow. So we had a regular AWANA program and told the kids the sledding night would be this day.

And then, last week after he reminded the kids that the next week would be sledding, the guy in charge gave the closing prayer. Yes, he prayed that we would have lots of snow for sledding.

And lo, the snow fell in great abundance.

We got plenty of snow, and it all came the day before and day of the sledding trip. Perfect. But there is a rule that we follow – if school is closed there is no AWANA that night. It’s easy for the kids to remember, it’s easy for the parents to remember, and it makes sense that if roads are too bad for getting to school then they are too bad for getting to church. Keeps the kids safe.

School was canceled today. Too much snow.

So there’s no AWANA tonight. Too much snow.

Which means we can’t go sledding because there’s too much snow.

Maybe I’ll spend some quality time at home with the kids since we’re not taking them to church tonight. I think we’ll go sledding.

We have the Stow-n-Go seating in our minivan and it is very nice. Need some extra room – just fold the seat down. I know it’s old news now, as that feature has been out for a few years, but I need to set the background here.

I was folding the seat into the floor for whatever trip we were taking, and the seat started hissing at me. I stood there perplexed, because I had always thought the folding mechanism was coil-spring assisted, not gas-spring assisted. I was wondering why I had never noticed the gas springs.

And the seat kept hissing.

Finally I stopped wondering about the seat and actually looked at it. By now there was a mist coming out of the seat. At the beginning of the mist was the source of the hissing noise, and it wasn’t a gas-spring.

It was my old nemesis – the spray-on sunscreen.

It was supposed to have a cap that prevented the nozzle from being pressed, but the cap was lost. The can got stuck under the seat and when I folded the seat, the folding mechanism pushed against the nozzle and out came the sprayscreen.

I unfolded the seat and the spraying stopped.

Make sure you keep your spray cans secure and their nozzles locked.

And it’s not limited to just sunscreen. I have noticed aerosol version of various things. People have known about aerosol cheese (AKA self-propelled cheese) for a little while. I have never trusted that.

And now I have seen the Batter Blaster. Why do pancakes need to be self-propelled? That would make quite a mess if that got loose in the van.

Lotions and I used to have an agreement that neither one of us would bother the other. And we stayed away from each other quite happily.

Then I got married.

And my skin started showing its age more.

So for various reasons, I have been using sunblock regularly for several years.

Chapter 1: Me and My Sunscreen

Sunblock or sunscreen or whatever used to be just a lotion that you spread on your arms, neck, back, whatever was going to be exposed to the sun. I didn’t like the lotion part because I don’t like having greasy hands. But it beat the pain and inconvenience of a sunburn. That’s why I prefer not to go to the beach, if given the option. There’s just so much work involved in getting ready.

Back on topic… I am used to sunscreen lotion now. And then this year, everyone is selling and promoting the spray-on sunscreen. It is hard to find just plain old lotion anymore. Now if there is anything worse than lotion, it is breaking a habit or tradition or changing the way things are supposed to be. Sunscreen is supposed to be a lotion. You can’t just change it into an aerosol form.  That changes the whole summer ritual.

Chapter 2: An Invasive Species

I wanted to mow the lawn, but I needed to put sunscreen on first so that my arms wouldn’t burn. I wanted the lotion. There were about 3 spray cans sitting there (what am I, a graffiti wall?) but no lotion. I used the sprayscreen, but I didn’t like it because it wasn’t what I wanted. It was new and I didn’t trust it.

Plus :

• It seems wasteful. How much of it just blows away in the breeze? The lotion has very little waste.
• The spray stuff can’t be used on faces, especially on children, so you need the lotion anyway (eyes should use sunglasses, not sunscreen).
• And you have to be careful which way you are facing, otherwise you’ll end up breathing the vapors. I don’t know what effect spray sunscreen has on lungs, but at the very best it is useless. I have yet to hear of anyone getting a sunburn in their lungs. Lotion has no such problems of being inadvertently inhaled.

But that’s what we had, so I used it.

Chapter 3: It Started Innocently Enough

Then another day we went to the water park. My wife is glad to have the sprayscreen stuff, because that makes her day easier.

“Okay everybody, line up. Arms out. Chins up. Eyes closed.”
spray-spray-spray
“Okay, you’re all set.”

It is a lot quicker and easier. And it works fine for the kids, because they inherited some of her melanin and so they don’t need as complete coverage as do I.

My wife is taller than our kids are, so when she sprays them with sunscreen, she is spraying from about the same position from which the sun shines down on them. So the areas they get sunscreen are the areas that need it.

Chapter 4: An Ugly Turn of Events

I got sprayed with sunscreen after the kids did. My wife already had the spray can out, so she just went ahead and sprayed me too. But she didn’t have the same angle, so I didn’t get covered in all the right spots.

She and the sun have different perspectives.  Plus, I was probably complaining about the spray stuff, so she went quickly in order to minimize the ordeal. But I think she went a little too quickly. Or maybe it was too windy and the sunscreen never actually made it to my back.

If before that day I was annoyed at the sprayscreens, then after that day I was angry at them. I mean, look how useless they were. I know, I just know, that if we had lotions instead of sprays, I would not have been sunburned that day.

My wife didn’t see my sunburns until I was getting ready for bed that night. I was trying to talk to her about something else, but she just kept laughing at my sunburn. I believe she said the words “Wow, that’s bad!” but it was between giggles.

Then she stopped laughing, but she still wasn’t paying attention to what I was saying…because she was too busy trying to find the different shapes in my sunburn. Like clouds: “look, that one’s a bunny”. Except it was with my seriously red skin.

Chapter 5: The Conclusion

I’m better now.

And the sprayscreen stuff is okay, if I rub it in after spraying it on. The sense of touch helps me to know that all areas are covered. That’s what’s missing with the sprayscreen. Rubbing in the spray-on sunscreen helps ensure even, complete coverage. And reassures me that I won’t get burned.

But if you have to rub it on anyway, why bother with the spray can?!?!

Harumph.

Yes, I now have a couple of tubes of sunscreen lotion for myself.