The problem with waking up at dawn is that you need to get to bed at a time many would consider absurdly early to get a full night's sleep. It's not that I really want to wake up at dawn, it's more that barring illness or piles of sleep deprivation I can't sleep when there's light.
So, anyway, as I type this I really should have been in bed an hour and a half ago, but, you see, I kind of fucked up.
I sort of live in two places these days. The places I want to live are in Maine, the people I want to live with are in Massachusetts. I go back and forth a fair amount. I was there for about a week. I meant to turn down the heat because it only needs to be warm enough to keep the pipes from freezing as that happens to be warm enough for the cat (cats are hardy things) and the gecko has a heating pad on 24/7 and a lizzard light on 12 hours a day every day (through the magic of a timer.)
That would have stretched my oil until sometime next week, probably early next week, which (to be honest) probably wouldn't have helped me that much. It would, however, have been better than the current situation in which the oil ran out sometime while I was away and the temperature of the house has already dropped a fair bit. Hopefully the oil company can deliver before the weekend.
To avoid wasting gas and person-hours the oil company has a minimum order for their normal price, anything below that will have added fees. The minimum is a hundred gallons and though the price of heating oil isn't bad ($2.01 per gallon) combining cash I got for Christmas with everything in savings only got me around half of the way to one hundred gallons. So I reached out to family because it's cheaper if purchased by cash or check than it is if done on credit.
That's never fun, but we're four and a half months into hellfire raining down on my sister and hitting the rest of us as collateral. I'm getting hit least of all, everyone else is sort of frustrated to the edge of sanity (not that we were ever the most stable bunch to begin with) which made the whole reaching out to family thing physically painful.
And then I talked about it.
And then someone helped out by donating money. And now if I combine what they donated with the rest of my savings and the money I was given for Christmas . . . I can actually afford to pay for oil. If they can deliver it soon. If I have to buy a stopgap that might change, and it will require dealing with the person whose mind is most frayed because my sister is the one who knows about stopgap oil.
But anyway, I can pay. Yay. Depending on exact details I can either make it so family doesn't need to go through the extra stress of getting involved with the oil entirely or I can make it so they'll be paid back for the check they write almost immediately thus keeping it from being a financial burden.
So, what does this have to do with being up too late?
Well, you see . . . I've sort of been living in two places these days taking greyhound buses (and the Boston T) between them. Which means I don't always catch my mail right when it arrives. Which means that when I got sent a new debit/ATM card I didn't get it. Which means that when the year changed (I'll have a post or two on that, by the way; I got a squid hat) my old card expired without a new one being in my possession.
Which meant an hour and a half tearing my house apart trying to figure where that one bit of mail containing the new card was. (Wouldn't be a problem if the people who helpfully bring in my mail when they check on the cat would pick one fucking spot in which to put it. Sometimes help is less helpful than no help.)
Which means instead of being huddled under a blanket my toes are going numb.
Which in turn meant I felt a need to vent. Thus this post.
But, on the good side, money with which to pay for oil. Yay! Assuming it can be delivered in a timely manner.
So, anyway, as I type this I really should have been in bed an hour and a half ago, but, you see, I kind of fucked up.
I sort of live in two places these days. The places I want to live are in Maine, the people I want to live with are in Massachusetts. I go back and forth a fair amount. I was there for about a week. I meant to turn down the heat because it only needs to be warm enough to keep the pipes from freezing as that happens to be warm enough for the cat (cats are hardy things) and the gecko has a heating pad on 24/7 and a lizzard light on 12 hours a day every day (through the magic of a timer.)
That would have stretched my oil until sometime next week, probably early next week, which (to be honest) probably wouldn't have helped me that much. It would, however, have been better than the current situation in which the oil ran out sometime while I was away and the temperature of the house has already dropped a fair bit. Hopefully the oil company can deliver before the weekend.
To avoid wasting gas and person-hours the oil company has a minimum order for their normal price, anything below that will have added fees. The minimum is a hundred gallons and though the price of heating oil isn't bad ($2.01 per gallon) combining cash I got for Christmas with everything in savings only got me around half of the way to one hundred gallons. So I reached out to family because it's cheaper if purchased by cash or check than it is if done on credit.
That's never fun, but we're four and a half months into hellfire raining down on my sister and hitting the rest of us as collateral. I'm getting hit least of all, everyone else is sort of frustrated to the edge of sanity (not that we were ever the most stable bunch to begin with) which made the whole reaching out to family thing physically painful.
And then I talked about it.
And then someone helped out by donating money. And now if I combine what they donated with the rest of my savings and the money I was given for Christmas . . . I can actually afford to pay for oil. If they can deliver it soon. If I have to buy a stopgap that might change, and it will require dealing with the person whose mind is most frayed because my sister is the one who knows about stopgap oil.
But anyway, I can pay. Yay. Depending on exact details I can either make it so family doesn't need to go through the extra stress of getting involved with the oil entirely or I can make it so they'll be paid back for the check they write almost immediately thus keeping it from being a financial burden.
So, what does this have to do with being up too late?
Well, you see . . . I've sort of been living in two places these days taking greyhound buses (and the Boston T) between them. Which means I don't always catch my mail right when it arrives. Which means that when I got sent a new debit/ATM card I didn't get it. Which means that when the year changed (I'll have a post or two on that, by the way; I got a squid hat) my old card expired without a new one being in my possession.
Which meant an hour and a half tearing my house apart trying to figure where that one bit of mail containing the new card was. (Wouldn't be a problem if the people who helpfully bring in my mail when they check on the cat would pick one fucking spot in which to put it. Sometimes help is less helpful than no help.)
Which means instead of being huddled under a blanket my toes are going numb.
Which in turn meant I felt a need to vent. Thus this post.
But, on the good side, money with which to pay for oil. Yay! Assuming it can be delivered in a timely manner.
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