I said that the oil situation wouldn't be truly resolved until the oil was paid for and delivered on the 18th. It was and is. Unfortunately I forgot to take my medicine yesterday and so wasn't really in the right frame of mind for accomplishing anything (like, say, writing a post saying that it was resolved.)
On the one hand, even if the previous oil hadn't burned way faster than it should have because of a critical insulation failure, I'd still need to buy new oil eventually. So it's not like I would never have had to pay this money. More that when oil needs to be filled has been eternally moved up.
On the other hand, it's stopped me from paying off the house insurance (I'm not overdue in a late fee kind of a way, more a straining the generosity of the family member who effectively made an interest free loan by paying the bill and then deferring collection in order to help fund heating oil) and the purchases of small amounts of stopgap oil to keep everything from going catastrophic while I waited two fucking weeks to get a respectable amount of oil in the tank cost a metric fuckton.
That means that even with help I'm pretty well tapped out with respect to money right now (I will be able to pay the remaining bills of the month) which shouldn't have been the case and will be a problem when non-monthly bills roll around, I believe, next month.
So, basically, the oil problem may have bridged the gap between the ongoing financial crisis that was the final months of last year with the first crunch time this year, and that would suck.
In the middle of February I broke my foot, that and a couple of unfortunate coincidences led to the distraught slog through looming financial collapse that defined the final months of 2017. It, however, did more than that. It put everything on hold.
One of the things that it put on hold was dealing with the insulation problem in two parts of the house. You know: the very thing that would have stopped this whole oil mess from happening.
The two areas of the house are an addition and the hall under the addition (which had to be added to make it so the basement door still reached the outside.) Whoever built them didn't insulate them. As it turns out, sealing them off delivers decent insulation. (Stagnant air is actually a fair insulator, whereas moving air is the polar opposite of insulation.) This is a working solution, and for the addition as simple as sealing the door. (The underhall is more complicated.) The thing is, the reason that this isn't inconvenient is circular.
It's not a problem having those areas of the house non-insulated and closed off instead of properly insulated and open because neither I nor anyone else ever uses them. The reason that neither I nor anyone else ever uses them is because they're non-insulated and thus need to be closed off (plus they're cold in the winter and warm in the summer.)
That is utter bullshit, in fact it's the single largest problem with the house itself*, and so when planning out what to do with my year a year ago, fixing that was one of the first things on my list. While the addition, which is a furnished room, would bring the most utility in terms of using space, the underhall would bring the most savings in terms of oil burned. It is, unfortunately, beyond mere bad. The door doesn't fit quite right, I think a minor window might be broken, and as such, when the air is allowed to flow instead of kept in a state of enforced stagnation, it might as well be a hole in side of the house when it comes heating and cooling.
Thus, one of the things at the tippity top of the list of things to fix.
I'm not planning on breaking a foot this year, hopefully this is when I fix these two areas. If it is, then nothing like this oil crisis of mind will be happening agiain.
* The fact that the house is a mess, so much more so since I broke my foot, a big problem too, one that I plan to solve, but it's a problem with the stuff in the house instead of the actual house.
On the one hand, even if the previous oil hadn't burned way faster than it should have because of a critical insulation failure, I'd still need to buy new oil eventually. So it's not like I would never have had to pay this money. More that when oil needs to be filled has been eternally moved up.
On the other hand, it's stopped me from paying off the house insurance (I'm not overdue in a late fee kind of a way, more a straining the generosity of the family member who effectively made an interest free loan by paying the bill and then deferring collection in order to help fund heating oil) and the purchases of small amounts of stopgap oil to keep everything from going catastrophic while I waited two fucking weeks to get a respectable amount of oil in the tank cost a metric fuckton.
That means that even with help I'm pretty well tapped out with respect to money right now (I will be able to pay the remaining bills of the month) which shouldn't have been the case and will be a problem when non-monthly bills roll around, I believe, next month.
So, basically, the oil problem may have bridged the gap between the ongoing financial crisis that was the final months of last year with the first crunch time this year, and that would suck.
In the middle of February I broke my foot, that and a couple of unfortunate coincidences led to the distraught slog through looming financial collapse that defined the final months of 2017. It, however, did more than that. It put everything on hold.
One of the things that it put on hold was dealing with the insulation problem in two parts of the house. You know: the very thing that would have stopped this whole oil mess from happening.
The two areas of the house are an addition and the hall under the addition (which had to be added to make it so the basement door still reached the outside.) Whoever built them didn't insulate them. As it turns out, sealing them off delivers decent insulation. (Stagnant air is actually a fair insulator, whereas moving air is the polar opposite of insulation.) This is a working solution, and for the addition as simple as sealing the door. (The underhall is more complicated.) The thing is, the reason that this isn't inconvenient is circular.
It's not a problem having those areas of the house non-insulated and closed off instead of properly insulated and open because neither I nor anyone else ever uses them. The reason that neither I nor anyone else ever uses them is because they're non-insulated and thus need to be closed off (plus they're cold in the winter and warm in the summer.)
That is utter bullshit, in fact it's the single largest problem with the house itself*, and so when planning out what to do with my year a year ago, fixing that was one of the first things on my list. While the addition, which is a furnished room, would bring the most utility in terms of using space, the underhall would bring the most savings in terms of oil burned. It is, unfortunately, beyond mere bad. The door doesn't fit quite right, I think a minor window might be broken, and as such, when the air is allowed to flow instead of kept in a state of enforced stagnation, it might as well be a hole in side of the house when it comes heating and cooling.
Thus, one of the things at the tippity top of the list of things to fix.
I'm not planning on breaking a foot this year, hopefully this is when I fix these two areas. If it is, then nothing like this oil crisis of mind will be happening agiain.
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* The fact that the house is a mess, so much more so since I broke my foot, a big problem too, one that I plan to solve, but it's a problem with the stuff in the house instead of the actual house.
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