Why Can't Every Day Be Like Yesterday?

I can't seem to find the rhyme or reason for why I have energy. All of a sudden, I'm struck with inspiration and drive to get something done. Other times, I feel like I'm trying to walk with lead shoes. Heavy lead shoes.

Yesterday started out early in the morning, around 2:30am. Dh was just getting up to get his day started and I got up for some reason - I don't remember. I immediately started in looking for things that are missing:

1. My driver's license
2. A debit card connected to child support money being sent to me (taken first from dh's check)
3. 2008 calendar to go on the wall beside me

I have no idea what happened to my driver's license. I cannot remember the last time I used it. I was asked for it, to show proof of identification when using a debit card as a credit card the other day and it wasn't where it should be. It's not on my desk, nor any other common place.

I went through a bunch of old mail looking for the child support debit card. Nada. Last night I found a stub from when they were sending checks, which gives a website that I can go to and see what is going on with the account.

I didn't look too hard for the calendars, as I discovered earlier today they are right on my desk, between the printer and the monitor.

Probably around 4am, I decided to just give up and go back to bed, because I was so overwhelmed with everything that had to be done. My mind kept whirring for a while and I discarded each concern as they came and finally fell to sleep again.

I got up at 8am and had some breakfast, a couple of chicken sausages with sauerkraut. Ds1 came out of his room. I have been giving him a trial period of keeping his room clean to see if he can do it, so I don't have to invade his territory. He has been doing a fairly good job, especially at bringing his dishes back into the kitchen. There was only a bowl and a plate in there when I asked him to bring them out. But he still needs some help, it was pretty messy. We opened a window to let in some fresh air and we began working on it together. It took more than two hours to get it completely cleaned up again.

Then I decided to clean ds2's room as a surprise to him. I also hoped it would illustrate to him how wonderful it is that he has been milking for us lately. Not every single day, but he is taking on that chore at least a couple days a week and it has really been a great thing. I don't hate milking, but some days I get home from work and I'm just worn out. It is also very pleasant to have a break from milking a couple days a week. I have been the sole milker for over a year now, and it does become a bit tedious.

That took a while, and then I started on dinner. Around 2:30 I put some of our own beef on the stove. Most of our beef is gone, but we still have some stew meat and soup meat, and a few other cuts. The soup meat are rounds of leg meat with a round bone in them, the stew meat is cut into chunks. I started that boiling with an onion and some garlic, and a splash of vinegar to help extract the calcium from the bones.

I worked on the kitchen on and off throughout the day. I cleaned the new popcorn maker so the grease wouldn't harden - I actually did that first thing in the morning.

I also took readings from our electrical meter, to see how much electricity it uses to run our dryer at the "on-peak" periods. With minimal other things turned on in the house, and only the dryer running, we used 6 kilowatt hours. On-peak costs $0.13 per kilowatt hour, so it costs $0.78 to run the dryer between 9am and 9pm, Monday through Friday. Between 9pm and 9am, it is significantly cheaper, $0.05 per kilowatt hour, coming in at $0.30.

I also ran a test on the air conditioning fan, which sometimes runs 24 hours a day... to my chagrin, I discovered it costs approximately $3.12 to run between 9am and 9pm. OUCH. No wonder our electricity bill has skyrocketed!! I have just not had the energy to figure these things out, and have just let things go on without saying anything.

I began looking at the electricity usage when I ordered this P3 International Kill-a-Watt Electricity Usage Monitor for myself for Christmas (thanks, Mom!). I am still checking what various things in the house use in the way of electricity.

I am also making another batch of Pioneer Woman's Butternut Squash Puree. That means I need to get the squash baking in the oven!

Oh and this morning, I used a quart of kefir given to me by my job to put into the soft serve ice cream maker and made soft serve kefir, which tastes like yogurt.

Okay, I had better back into the kitchen. It's now 2:13pm.

Until next time.