Carnival Appliances

Remember the appliance rules of the rationing project?

We're still kinda following them.

When we moved in to the new house we needed to purchase a refrigerator and a riding lawn mower. Our budget was tight and we hated the idea of purchasing new items when gently used options were available at a reduced cost.

So we headed to the local used appliance store. Okay, "used appliance store" doesn't do this place justice. Those of you in T-town know what I mean. Back in the olden days (you know, before "T.J. Hooker"), this place used to be a local carnival, with rides and refreshments and toothless barkers offering to guess your weight (why, oh why, so people pay for something like that?). But then times changed and local carnivals went the way of, well, "T.J. Hooker" and the place shut down.

And then it reopened as the most bizarre flea market type store in northeast Kansas. Seriously, the creepy smiling clowns are still on the side of the building and the toothless barkers are now inside, smoking their cigarettes and asking if they can help you find something. Chances are, if you need something you can find a used version here. Ashtray? Yup. Jig-saw? You can chose from 20 on the shelf. Coffee table? Some of them already have coffee stains! Life-sized R2D2 cooler? Got it! (Damn, I need to get back and get that...).

There are some great finds, but there's plenty of...well...junk. Some of the furniture looks like it needs a hefty dose of duct tape and glue and I am still freaked out at the thought of buying a used mattress (damn you, incessant national media stories on bed bugs). But you can't help but look, and look, and look. Oh, and try not to step on one of the cats that roam the store.

Outside, sprawling in front of the store and across a good section of the parking lot, is a six-foot chain-link fence that encloses most of the lawn and garden equipment: weed-eaters, birdbaths, wheelbarrows, lawn mowers, shovels, lawn chairs, window panes, storm doors...you get the idea. There we found a 16.5 horsepower, 42" deck riding lawnmower with low hours for a price less than what was available on Craigslist.

Inside, in the back of the store, there are several rows of appliances. Now, since we moved the oven from the old house, I wanted a white fridge to match. Unfortunately, all of the white refrigerators they had were scary - severely dented doors, peeling paint and inside shadows reminiscent of a Zuul, the Gatekeeper of Gozer possession. So, I went with a cream-colored Kenmore model slightly bigger than our previous fridge. The best part? It was about 1/3 the cost of a new model with similar bells and whistles.

Now, TMOTH and I both agreed that once finances settle down from all the new house purchases we'd like to replace the refrigerator with a newer, white, Energy-Star rated refrigerator. But in the meantime, we'll be all anti-Martha and take pride in our used, totally mismatched appliances.

Coordinated kitchens are soooo overrated...at least, they are for the next year.

--Rational Mama

Television Daze...Part 2

That would be a picture of digital PBS programming on our new T.V.

I would be lying if I said it wasn't beautiful.

One of the folks following Rational Living on Facebook asked how our television price compared with the cost of purchasing a new family radio in the 1940s. According to this website a mid-range floor radio model would set a 1940s family back $60 to $80. The inflation calculator says that would be equivalent to roughly $900 to $1200 in today's dollars. Even after you add in all the extra cables and accessories we were still well below that figure.

Blame it on the bad economy or deflationary electronic technology. Either way, we'll be happy watching Star Trek on the big screen in high definition.

Anachronistic? Yes. Geeky? Most definitely. Good? Oh, yes. And we look just like that family in the Westinghouse ad...I promise.

--Rational Mama

Television Daze

Sometimes it's really challenging to be patient - especially in today's day and age. I can get takeout ordered and delivered, check out the game score and view the week's forecast all within half an hour and all without leaving my house. Patience may be a virtue, but today it seems a seldom-needed virtue.

And we typically don't like it when we're asked to use it.

Take, for example, our most recent appliance dilemma. Our current TV (yes, we only have one in the house - I believe this makes us an anomaly in the U.S. for our family size and income bracket) is roughly seven years old. It's a standard early 2000's model and after years of use and abuse the remote has gone AWOL. Also, it doesn't have a digital tuner and, considering how much cabinet space it takes up, it doesn't provide the nice wide screen features of the newer flat-screen models.

Additionally, it apparently has Seasonal Affective Disorder.

For the past several years the speakers have not worked properly during the colder months. It took us a few seasons to realize what was going on, but during the colder months the speakers rattle with noises of specific frequencies (think mumbling dialogue, car chases or an awesome Viper/Raider fight sequence from, say, Battlestar Galactica). Understandably, this can be quite irritating.

But then spring comes and temperatures warm up and we forget about the speaker plague of the previous four months. We tolerate the display even if we can't see the far edges and labels of the PBS program we're watching.

Oh, and we continue to pay around $12 per month to get our local affiliates (plus a handful of ot her channels that we don't really watch) since we lack the digital tuner.

Well, we are finally ready to purchase a new TV! All modern with a wide screen, working remote, digital tuner and functional speakers! We've been doing the research and it seems like our best fit would be a 32" LCD HDTV with 1080p and 120 Hz. The girls and I were in the area of the big box electronic store today so we stopped in to browse.

I had been estimating about $600 for our future purchase, based on prices from a few months ago. I had heard rumors that the prices on LCD televisions were dropping because of a glut of inventory (bad economy = slow electronic purchases). Wow - those rumors are true! I found a model with the exact features we're looking for with a high customer rating on mega-sale for only $450! Plus, with my credit and such we could do eighteen months of interest free financing.

Oh man...the temptation was there! How was I able to walk out of that store without a television?

Because appliances were rationed during WWII. Remember our oven range dilemma? We were in a pickle because ranges were in short supply during the war (not very many were being produced in the war-driven factories) so families in need of a range had to apply for one. If they were turned down then they either had to find a used model or make do without one.

So that's how I was able to say no to the television temptation. I was thinking about appliance rationing and delayed gratification and such. If you combine our Internet/television usage time I believe it roughly equates to what would have been the average usage of telephones and radios in the 1940s (and they serve the same purposes). If a new radio wasn't an option for 1940s rationers then a new television shouldn't be available to us during our rationing year.

But then I came home and did a little research. Apparently, I over-estimated the variety of appliances and such that were rationed during WWII. True, oven ranges were available only through an application process - as were automobiles, bicycles and typewriters. But that was the extent of appliance rationing. It doesn't take much effort to find War-era advertisements for new radios via Google. This all makes sense considering how much the government used radio as a tool for morale and support during the War.

So...what to do?

--Rational Mama

HAWT

As I type the current temperature in our fair city is 106 degrees.

The high yesterday was 106 degrees.

Thank you, dear readers, for encouraging us to use the air conditioner.

Very sincerely,
Rational Mama

A Traitor in Our Midst

It is hot. Hot. Hawt.

For at least the past week the heat index has been at or above 100 degrees. For the next five days or so it promises to be the same. When I walked home from work yesterday the heat index was 107 degrees.

It's hot.

Gone are the glorious days of getting by with only the attic fan. Those were good days - we could run the attic fan for an hour in the morning and let it suck in all the cool air. Usually we could drop the household temperature down to nearly 74 degrees just by running the attic fan for an hour in the morning. Then we would shut the windows and close the curtains. By late afternoon it could be in the lower 90s outside, but the inside temperature of the house would rarely break 80 degrees. And then again in the evening we ran the attic fan for an hour to once again pull outside air in to cool down the house.

But you can only get by with that pattern if the nighttime temperatures drop below 75 degrees and the daytime temperatures and humidity aren't ridiculously high.

Friends, the daytime temperatures and humidity are ridiculously high. It's air conditioning time.

When we first caved in and decided to use air conditioning we agreed that we would keep the thermostat set at 85 degrees; cool enough to not suffer but warm enough to feel like we're still making sacrifices for the rationing program.

In retrospect, that was kinda a bad idea. See, the thermostat is on the main floor but the bedrooms are on the upper floor - and they typically run four to five degrees warmer. This means that we were sweating it out at near 90 degrees some evenings.

Research says that the ideal sleeping temperature is between 65 and 68 degrees. Friends, it is virtually impossible to sleep well at 90 degrees. You toss and turn, rotating body parts to expose to the nearby fan. You are cranky the next day. This is not good.

So we compromised again and decided that while the daytime thermostat temperature would still be set at 85 degrees, the nighttime thermostat temperature would be set at 81 degrees.

This definitely made for a slightly less cranky household. Still a little uncomfortable, but less crabby than before.

In the meantime, we were anxiously awaiting the monthly electricity bill. This summer and last summer started out very similar - a slightly cool May and June, with the exception of one week that was near 100 degrees. This similarity allowed for an apples to apples comparison to determine how much the attic fan was saving us in electricity (and money) during most of that period.

Since we didn't have the attic fan last year we didn't have an efficient way to pull in the nighttime air to cool down the house and avoid running the air conditioner during the day. So the kilowatts used this year should be noticeably lower, since the air conditioner (with it's big compressor and frequent cycles) was used more last year.

The electricity bill finally came this week. The results?

Kilowatts used in mid-June/mid-July 2009: 970 (32.3 per day)

Kilowatts used in mid-June/mid-July 2010: 1008 (32.3 per day)

Aack! Barely a difference - and actually a marginal, statistically insignificant increase! What gives?

True, we've been running floor fans when benefiting from the attic fan, but we still ran some floor fans last year when the air conditioning was on (although not quite as often).

True, the attic fan uses electricity, but surely running the attic fan for two hours a day uses less electricity than having the air conditioner on for 24/7?

Why, oh why, wasn't the electricity bill lower?

Floor by floor we reviewed the electricity being used, eventually ending up in the basement. And there, friends, we found our traitor: the dehumidifier.

Dehumidifier are notorious energy hogs. We knew that when we were shopping for a dehumidifier several year ago and chose an Energy Star model as a result. Unfortunately, even an Energy Star rated dehumidifier can still be an energy hog. And we think ours went a little wild in the last month.

While we were saving electricity by using the attic fan rather than the air conditioner, the result was higher household humidity levels. The higher humidity levels caused the dehumidifier to run more often than if we had instead run the air conditioner (which is, by itself, an effective dehumidifier).

Two steps forward, one step back. It was like we were sabotaged by an often-ignored appliance. Sigh.

So now what do we do? Keeping in mind the seemingly never-ending 100 degree heat wave, we basically have six options:

1. Screw the air conditioner and use only floor fans and the attic fan. Turn off the dehumidifier.

2. Screw the air conditioner and use only floor fans and the attic fan. Change the setting on the dehumidifier so that it does not run as often.

3. Run the air conditioner, but set the thermostat at a higher (80 to 85 degree) temperature. Because having the air conditioner set at a higher temperature means it does not run as often this, in turns, means the household humidity is a little higher. As a result the dehumidifier runs more often.

4. Same as above number 3, but change the setting on the dehumidifier so that it does not run as often.

5. Run the air conditioner, but set the thermostat at a more traditional temperature (78 to 80 degrees). Keep the dehumidifier setting as-is, with the understanding that it will still run frequently, but not as frequently as in the above scenarios.

6. Same as number 5, but adjust the dehumidifier controls so that it does not run as often.

The first two options are basically out since they would most likely result in a complete destruction of the Rational Living household (really, how did people survive the summer in the 1940s without becoming The Incredible Hulk?). I don't like the idea of higher humidity levels in the house, since this is an old house and it can get a good "old house funk" thing going when humidity levels get too high. But we still want to save energy.

So what would you do?

--Rational Mama

If You Can't Stand the Heat...

You know that scene near the end of The Wizard of Oz, where Dorothy finally throws the bucket of water on the Wicked Witch of the East and, dripping from head to toe in her drenched black garment, the villainess screams, "I'm melting! I'm melting!"

Well, that was me at 2:00 this morning.

Except that I'm not green, nor was I wearing a black cloak and gown and what I was drenched in was sweat, not plain water. Of course, this begs the question - did plain sweat not affect the Wicked Witch of the East? She had to have been hot in that get-up...maybe the saltiness of sweat rendered it ineffective, or maybe her evil castle lair was air conditioned?

Anyway...we had been doing pretty well with no air conditioning in the Rational Living household the past few weeks. The formula was simple: run the attic fan in the early morning to pull in the cool overnight air, then shut the windows. By the time the house was heating up into the uncomfortable range (mid-80's) it was nighttime and we could once again run the attic fan before bed to cool the house down and start the cycle all over again.

But the last few days have been absolutely miserable. Nighttime temperatures have been hovering around 80 degrees - hardly cool enough to make the house bearable. Several days of this in a row and the house was downright tortuous.

To make matters worse, we've been very short on sleep lately, due to near-nightly storms (with lots of blinding lightning and deafening thunder) and the hot, hot weather. While what we've been experiencing is nothing like the countless night raid sirens civilians in the UK had to endure during WWII (sometimes multiple times in an evening), I do have to say I feel a little connection to the sleep deprived, is-this-ever-gonna-stop exhaustion expressed by the family on The 1940's House.

All of this combined lead to my 2:00am outburst of "I'm melting!" last night. According to the thermostat on the main floor the house temperature was 87 degrees at that time; considering the upstairs is significantly warmer, the bedrooms were most likely around 90 degrees. At 2:00am (which is a painful time to be awake, mind you) it was 83 degrees outside which, combined with the 70% humidity created a heat index of 89 degrees.

This implied that the heat index in the bedrooms was probably close to 95 degrees.

Running the attic fan would do no good. The girls were only barely asleep, their poor little bodies sweating away the night. We were all sleep deprived.

And so TMOTH and I agreed to turn on the air conditioner, but to set the thermostat at 85 degrees. I have to admit I was afraid it wouldn't come on, the result of some sort of Murphy's Law affect on our 30 year old air conditioner.

Oh, but it DID come on...and even though the temperature did not drop dramatically the humidity was sucked out of the house.

And it was wonderful.

Going forward, we've agreed to use the air conditioner when we are not able to get/maintain the inside temperature of the house at or below 85 degrees. The self-imposed "no air-conditioning" rule for the rationing year has bit the dust.

Still feeling a pain of guilt (and secretly wondering if we're all a bunch of wusses) I e-mailed a friend today, seeking clarification. Ms. Hyldi was born at the beginning of the Great Depression and so was a young teen during WWII. I know she regularly uses her attic fan and sets her air conditioning thermostat at 85 degrees (that's where we got our compromise number). I asked her how folks during the 1940s kept cool, and this was her response:

"...[T]he climate was different — just out of the dust bowl days, the humidity was quite low.

We moved from one house to another in 1942; in both homes, I slept in a large upstairs room with windows on all four sides, so all the breeze possible came through. The 2nd house had large trees shading it, and that helped some, too. I spent time in the porch swing — swinging made a breeze.

During those years, our family had two oscillating fans — one large and one small. The small one was moved to wherever it was most needed. The large one was part of our evaporative water cooler — a contraption built by my dad. It consisted of a thick layer of excelsior (the packing material) between two panels of chicken wire in a wooden frame and installed in a south window. Along the top was a trough with numerous drain holes. We hooked the garden hose to it and turned it on to a drizzle. The water trickled through the excelsior and with the south wind and the help of the large fan inside, cooler air came through into the house. Lots of people had them — if they couldn't build them, they could buy commercially built ones at hardware stores. But they were ineffective once the climate became more humid. We always turned it off and night. I imagine my parents used the small fan in their bedroom, but I don't remember.

We, and hundreds of others, often slept outdoors. We'd take a rug or blanket and put it on the grass and sleep until the sun came up. People who didn't have a yard slept in the parks, something you'd have to be out of your mind to do now. We also often carried around wet washcloths. Sometimes we'd wrap them around ice, and apply them to our faces and necks.

When I was little, I spent most of the summer months in Western Kansas on my grandparents' farm. The days were blistering hot, but mostly, the nights were cool because the sandy soil didn't hold the heat. In 1936 (I think it's still considered the hottest Kansas summer ever), I remember going with my grandmother to a women's meeting in a home, and we were greeted at the door by the hostess who handed each of us a wet towel. There was one night that summer when there was absolutely no breeze and we all woke up hot. My grandfather went down to the milk house and turned on the windmill to get us some cool water to drink — the only source of anything cool on a farm with no electricity. There wasn't enough wind to even turn the windmill! The slightest movement of air would turn it, so that was incredible!"

I really appreciated her response - it made me realize that people were driven to extremes by the heat back then, just as they can be today. It also taught me that the use of swamp coolers was more widespread than I ever realized, which made me feel slightly less guilty about using our air conditioner if it is set at 85 degrees.

Tonight after I walked home from work in weather with a heat index of 96 degrees I entered a house cooled to 85 degrees...and it really feels quite wonderful. Before the rationing year we would typically set the air conditioning thermostat at 78 degrees, but now I realize that 85 degrees might be a better compromise between our physical/mental well-being and our desire to live more responsibly. This might just be a change that sticks around.

In the meantime there is a cold(ish) front moving through tonight that is supposed to bring us nighttime low temperatures back in the upper 60s/lower 70s for the next several days, so I'm hoping we can avoid using the air conditioner again until the weekend.

How about you, dear reader? How are you managing the heat?

--Rational Mama

Ahhhh...

The whole house fan is officially operational! We can only run it on low right now (need more ventilation in the attic for the high setting), but even on low the effect is quite nice.

And the timing couldn't be more perfect - the project high temperatures for the next eight days are all in the low- to mid- 90s.

How are you staying cool this summer?

--Rational Mama

The (Produce) Seasons Are A Changin'

As if the new influx of hot and sultry weather wasn't enough of a reminder that summer is moving along, the changing inventory of our weekly CSA bag also serves as a harbinger of summer's prime.

Initially, our CSA bags were mostly salad greens (and you know how I feel about salad greens), radishes, green onions and the like. Typical early summer fare.

Today's CSA bag consisted of carrots, zucchini, potatoes, snow peas and a decent (and an increasingly rare) head of lettuce.
Ahhh...summer IS progressing. Soon our bags will be filled with more zucchini, peppers, eggplants and, and, AND tomatoes! Oh, how we are looking forward to those first fresh tomatoes! It has literally been around 9 months since we had decent tomatoes in the house.

I have a feeling we'll be eating most of this produce raw, since cooking seems to be falling to the wayside now that both outdoor and indoor temperatures are creeping up. As I write this at 8:35pm the current temperature outside is 86 degrees (after a high temperature of over 90 degrees) and the humidity is at 70%. Unfortunately, the situation isn't much different in the house.

TMOTH has been plugging away on the whole house fan project. The fan is completely framed and installed and the wiring is planned out. We need to make alterations to some of the windows in the attic to increase ventilation (whole house fans need lots of attic ventilation to work properly). I know TMOTH really wanted the completed window changes to be sufficient, but numerous calculation checks tell us we need more.

Poor TMOTH - he's been working in the considerably hot attic for days and did not take this news well. He needs to go refresh in a cool shower so that the world is a better place.

And maybe have a nice cool beer. That usually makes the world a better place, too.

What's your favorite way to cool off?

--Rational Mama

Progress! I think...

I had the opportunity to come home for lunch today. The girls greeted me at the door and then said, "You should go look at the roof!"

"The roof?!?" I asked in panic. Oh dear, what has TMOTH done? "Do you mean the ceiling upstairs?"

"Umm...yeah...the ceiling." (shifty eyes)

Up the stairs I went and was surprised to see this:
It's a little unsettling to look up at your hallway ceiling and see your roof.

While I was at work TMOTH had a chance to talk with our neighbor about the wiring and then proceeded to saw out the plaster ceiling. Plaster is difficult to cut nice and pretty, so there will be some patching when the installation is complete.

TMOTH then did a test fit with the temporary framing and the fan.
Did I mention this thing is huge?

After the initial shock of looking at the roof from the second floor I have to say I'm pretty happy that he's making progress. Making the first cut is an act of faith. I'm hoping that framing and wiring go pretty easily and quickly, too.

After all...the high temperatures this weekend are projected to be in the mid-90s.

--Rational Mama

This (Damn) Old House

Yesterday, at one point, it was 82 degrees outside with a humidity level of 83%.

My personal opinion is that the numerical value of the humidity level shouldn't exceed the numerical value of the temperature. It was sticky, sticky, sticky. Oh, how air conditioning would have magically sucked that moisture out of the household! But alas, it is not an option this year.

Definitely a good incentive to get that whole house fan installed soon! A major air movement would have helped for sure.

TMOTH spent the better part of the day yesterday up in the attic to start on said whole house fan project. Seems our 100 year old house doesn't exactly have joists at modern/standard intervals.

This is going to get interesting.

Oh! And while we were checking out the dormer windows (they'll need to be replaced with vents) TMOTH pulled out some insulation-type material that was wedged between the window and the beam. It appears to be a section of some type of insulated clothing from ancient (early 1900s) times - like welder's pants. One of the early inhabitants of our house was a blacksmith, so I wonder if one winter he shoved some old work pants in the crevices of the attic to decrease drafts.

We'll keep you posted on the fan installation - it's going to require some outside-the-box thinking.

And sweating.

--Rational Mama

Something in the Air

Oh, boy.

In our attempt to stay true to our rationing experiment, we're trying to go all summer without turning on our air conditioners (both in the house and in our cars). In the 1940s some businesses, but few residences and no cars, had air conditioning. That is our historical precedent. Additionally, the extra electricity required to run the air conditioner isn't exactly kosher if we're trying to save energy for the war effort, sooo...

This could really suck. We live in the central plains and it is not unusual to have a couple of weeks of 100+ degree (Fahrenheit) highs. Otherwise, most of the summer's daytime temps hover around the mid-90's. Oh, and did I mention the 40-60% humidity?

Since our house was built when air conditioning was but a dream (our house turns 100 years old this year!) it is equipped with lots of windows which are great for air circulation - cross currents are not a problem. Add in three ceiling fans and four floor fans and so far we've been fairly comfortable on most days. Part of the reason is because the nighttime/low temperatures have still been very reasonable and once we shut down the windows (around 10:00am) to trap the cool air in and keep the mid-day heat out, the house remains pleasant (if not a little stuffy). The other day I came home from work and while it was 92 degrees outside (heat index of 96) it was only 79 degrees in the house. Victory!

On those days when the inside temperature has crept into the mid-80s we've been taking cool-down baths/showers and drying off in front of the fans to cool our core body temperatures down. Done right before bed, this serves as a good way to get comfortable and fall asleep while waiting for the pleasing evening air to find its way into the house.

But...we're reaching the part of the summer when nighttime temperatures will be in the mid 70's/low 80's. This is not nearly as satisfying (and cooling) as the 60's/low 70's so we're bringing in the artillery...or, at least, this:


This is a whole house fan, commonly (and incorrectly) referred to as an attic fan. It is huge. Whole house fans are typically installed in the attic floor/top level ceiling and work by pulling cooler morning/evening air into the house through the windows and blowing the hotter air out through the attic venting. I had never seen or heard of one of these until I was in college and was amazed at how effective they can be at cooling down a house. We've been pondering installing one of these in our house for years, and with this year's rationing program we are finally getting off of our tookuses and doing it!

"But, wait!" you say. "Isn't the Rational Living household restricted on buying new appliances during the rationing year?" Yes, faithful reader, you are correct. While we were ready to bend that rule to survive the summer we didn't need to thanks to the clever tinkering of a relative, S.P.

S.P. is quite the handy type and a few years ago was helping renovate a house that had fire and smoke damage. He noticed that the attic fan was slated for replacement, even thought it only had some limited smoke damage. After asking permission, S.P. took the attic fan home to his workshop and there it sat - until I mentioned to S.P. this spring that we were gearing up to install a whole house fan (I didn't know he had one in the wings). He dug the reclaimed fan out, hooked it up to electricity and let it run for over an hour - it worked perfectly fine! So, we are able to install a used fan and thus not violate any appliance-buying restrictions. Thanks, S.P.!

In the next couple of weeks we'll finish cleaning the soot and dust off the fan and begin the installation work. TMOTH will be in charge of this project and luckily our extremely knowledgeable neighbor will be helping him with the wiring (we have the best neighbors, evuh).

Wish us luck - I always get a bit nervous when we start knocking down parts of the plaster ceilings and walls in the house.

In the meantime, we'll be brainstorming other ways to stay cool this summer. This weekend the highs are in the mid-90's with 50% humidity, so it's a good test of things to come. I see a lot of sprinklers, swimming pools, popsicles, watermelon and outside grilling in our future.

Hmm...that sounds suspiciously like a good summer.

One last thought: when we did run the air conditioner during the summer we kept the thermostat at 78 or 79 degrees. What is your summertime thermostat set at?

--Rational Mama

A Grilling Dilemma

First off, let me say that I apologize for the lengthy 10 day delay in posting. I also want to shout out and say thanks to all who took part in the roll call (and it's not too late if you didn't, just click here).

It's been a busy 10 days of getting summer schedules set for the girls, finalizing planting plans and getting a new, improved job (yay me!). In the past 10 days we've also dealt with a dilemma that's been on the burner, so to speak, for a couple of years.

The dilemma is our grill.

Eight years ago when I was pregnant with Eowyn and Sissy was but a wee toddler we decided to upgrade from our traditional charcoal-powered college-years grill to a propane grill. I was tired of dealing with the briquettes and justified the expense by touting how much safer a propane grill would be (with an immediate "off" switch and faster cool-down period) with young children around. Our budget was tight, having just moved to our current burg and saving up funds for the new addition. So we went to Sears and bought a basic propane grill (I can remember that, with the sale and the mail-in rebate our cost was $109. Aren't I good at useless trivia?).

The grill had served us well, getting much use and decently holding up to our neglectful attitude (grill covers just seem too bourgeois). But last year it became painfully obvious that the grill was falling apart. Literally. Parts of it were disintegrating and causing uneven heating and flare-ups. But we didn't feel like we could dump the extra hundreds of dollars into replacing (and slightly upgrading) the grill because I was the receiver of one of the State's pink slips that went out last May because of the economic crisis.

But that's another (painful) story.

So we compromised and ordered a new flare guard (or, as I like to call it, heat shield) for the grill for something like 13 bucks. Not bad, eh? The burner was still experiencing it's own demise but at least with the new heat shield the food was only slightly scorched in places. With this purchase we could get through another summer and plan on buying that fancy new model next year.

But see, we didn't know then that we'd be rationing this summer (isn't that very historically accurate of us?). Buying new appliances during rationing wasn't necessarily a no-no, but it was to be done in emergency situations only. And we had already had one close call with the oven, remember?

But with the burner assembly literally falling apart, using the grill was about as refined and effective as using a Bunsen burner to cook a hot dog. What were we to do?

Luckily, the interwebs came to our rescue! We were able to order a new burner assembly and have it shipped to us for only $23. Within a week of ordering TMOTH had installed the new burner which, combined with the almost-new heat shield, has made our grill an evenly heated cooking machine.

I think, with the new parts, we'll be able to get at least two to four more years out of our grill.

The only problem is I now have to adjust to cooking with a fully-functional grill. I had memorized the hot spots before the repairs to avoid burnt food. Now grilling is so easy and simple it makes me feel, well...

...a little bourgeois.

--Rational Mama

A Bumpy Day

Yesterday had a few bumps to it, it seems.

First, we had an early morning emergency jump start of one of the vehicles. Apparently, in the hustle and bustle of checking the weekly mileage on the vehicles the night before I left the keys in the ignition and in the "accessories" position (yes, you may sent a Homer-like "D'oh!" my way). Luckily, I did this in the vehicle in the garage and NOT the one in the alley (otherwise, this could have been a much bigger bump in the day). Early morning jump starts while you're trying to get to work on time are no fun.

Second, Eowyn's been home sick for a few days with a fever and sore throat. It's no fun for anyone to have a puny little one in the house, especially one with huge brown eyes (and she knows how to use them).

Also, the oven range was repaired. Apparently the computer unit and digital oven display were shot and were replaced to the tune of $271.00. Cheaper than buying a new oven? Yes. But it still hurts. And I still blame the liver.

And speaking of hurts, I had my regular blood donation appointment (how very "Greatest Generation" of me) yesterday after work. For the first time in ages they had real trouble finding a vein and ended up poking me in both arms. Actually, "poking" isn't the most accurate term - probably "harpooning" would be more appropriate, as evidenced by the nice-sized bruises on both arms this morning. But those obligatory Nutter Butters they push on you after you donate were sure delicious.

I'm home with a recovering Eowyn today while TMOTH helps out with Sissy's class - they have an all-day field trip. I think I might have the better end of that deal, since so far Eowyn's in pretty good spirits and there is no sign of the fever yet.

Maybe we can sneak out into the backyard and soak up some of this delicious sunshine with which we've been blessed. This time of year I can often be found in the backyard, staring at the garden and scratching my head, mentally planning what will go where.

The peas should be in the ground before month's end! Better get cracking!

Hope everyone is having a nice spring day.

--Rational Mama