I used to secretly wish that the time change would magically disappear.  Now I really wish we lived somewhere that doesn’t go through it.  It’s got Elliana’s schedule all messed up.

At least I knew this was coming.  Last week when she finally got on the schedule we liked I told Hubby I feared the time change would screw it all up again.  I was fully prepared for her internal clock to stay on her schedule while the world around us jumped forward an hour.  That’s exactly what happened. 

Last night her 10pm bedtime didn’t happen until 11.  She was on schedule, but I was looking at the clock hoping she’d go to sleep.  Her 9:30-10 Monday morning wakeup happened at 11 this morning.  Her naps are all off by an hour, so I assume bedtime tonight will be as well.  It’ll take a few days, but we’ll get her back in bed at a decent time.

I almost had her down for her noon nap on time today, but my Grandparent’s showed up at the door.  They knocked, Bubba barked, and those little eyes popped open.  I quickly rushed them out the door promised I’ll bring her over sometime this afternoon after he nap.  They begged me to bring her over then saying she could take a nap at their house.  I had to repeat quite a few times that my Dad and my cousin Malese are both coming by this afternoon to see her, and we have to be home for that.

I know they love her to death and want to spend as much time with her as possible, but they’ve got to understand I have things I have to do to, and other people want to spend time with her as well.  Naptimes are my time to clean, take a shower, and get my work done, and I can’t do that at their house.  My house looks like an absolute wreck because we spent so much time at their house last week, and Elliana wasn’t in a mood to let me get anything done this weekend.

I just don’t feel right leaving her with them for an extended period of time, and honestly I can’t tell them how I feel, but I just don’t feel like they can handle her sometimes.  I mean my aunt lives with them so she can care for them and do the things they’re not capable of anymore.

Sigh.  I didn’t mean to turn this post into a mini rant, but ya know sometimes that just happens. 

The bad news is Hubby didn’t get to work yet again today.  I’m so ready for Winter to be over!  We’ve been robbing Peter to pay Paul as it is, and if this weather doesn’t let up soon I don’t know what we’ll do. 

What makes it suck even more is when it’s nice and sunny now that the rain has stopped, but 40 minutes away they can’t get to the jobsite for all the snow and ice.  When Spring arrives all will be well because we won’t have to worry about Hubby being snowed out all the time. 

At least while Hubby’s at home I can put him to work.  We’re going to finish some of the projects we’ve started around the house but haven’t had time to finish.  Then we’re going to run to town for some groceries, and I need to pick up something to help with the nodular acne Hubby gets on his cheeks. The normal pimple treatments just aren’t working, and we can’t really afford for him to see the dermatologist right now.

We’d planned to go to Lowe’s to look at some hardwood floors they have on sale for .78/sq ft.  We were going to do half the house with our tax money, but now I don’t see that happening.  I’m going to need to use that money to catch the bills back up.  Oh well.  Maybe we can do that sometime in the future.  We just wanted to replace these super old linoleum floors before Elliana is crawling and walking all over them.

After the power bill we just got I’ve got to do something to save a little extra cash somewhere.  Maybe I need to get some insurance quotes again to see if I can save some cash there. It’s ridiculous how expensive power with Blue Ridge Electric is right now.  Our power bill has gone up exactly $100 each month over the last 2 months.

The company is claiming (and they even sent out a pamphlet about it) everyone is experiencing excess power usage because of the cold snap we had last month.  Extra cold temps means extra power needed to keep us warm.  In theory that’s probably correct for most people, but that doesn’t explain our power bill.  We have a wood stove, and that’s our main heat source.  Yeah we use our electric heaters from time to time, but in the last 2 months we’ve used them less. We know they won’t keep us warm enough, especially with the baby, so there’s almost always a fire going in the wood stove.

We’re not the only ones scratching our heads at Blue Ridge’s claim.  I’ve spoken to quite a few people who have outrageous bills who have either natural gas or propane heat. A neighbor who’s been working out of town almost the entire billing period told us his power bill was over $500.  He’s a single guy, and no one has been in his house while he’s gone, so he’s baffled at how his power bill is so high.

My father-in-law asked about our hot water heater, something I had already considered.  If your hot water heater is in a cold portion of your house, and you have a cold snap it’s going to pull more power.  Fortunately our hot water heater is in the kitchen about 6′ away from the wood stove specially placed where heat will get to it.

I’ve already called the power company to let them know what I think, but what can ya do?  I do plan on writing a letter to the AG asking that they look into it.  Why are all of our power bills supposedly so high due to the cold snap if Duke Power customers only saw an average increase of $30?  $30 versus $200?  Something’s just not right about that.

At least ranting about it helps me feel a little better.

I think it’s about time I start rethinking which grocery store I’m shopping at again.  We almost always shop at Ingles because it’s the only grocery store in our town.  We could drive out of our way to do our shopping at Walmart (bleh), Bloom, or Bi-lo in another town, but Ingles most of the time has the cheapest prices anyway.

I’m about ready to make it a point to drive out of my way to Bloom or Bi-lo and pay the higher prices because I’m getting sick of Ingles.  I’ve already complained twice about finding too many items sitting on the shelves that are out of date, and I think I’m going to have to do it again.  I’ve gotten to a point where I try to remember to triple check sell by dates on most of the dairy because if it’s not already out of date it’s going to go bad in just a couple days.  I even joked to Hubby that maybe I need to get on the ball checking out life insurance rates because I think Ingles is trying to kill me with a food born illness!

Last week I returned 4 containers of Laura Lynn single serve yogurt and 1 container of Laura Lynn sour cream because I got home and found them expired.  The sour cream had been expired for more than a week!  Most of the time I don’t have to worry about sour cream expiring for a month.  At first I thought maybe it was just the Laura Lynn products that were expiring but that’s not the case.  Yesterday I had to search through half a shelf of Philadelphia cream cheese before I found two packages that weren’t expiring before September 29.  If I were going to use the cream cheese immediately it wouldn’t be an issue, but I know I won’t be using them until later in the week.

While I was looking for cream cheese Hubby picked up the plain yogurt that we add to Bubba’s food.  I used to buy the single serve packages because we only use 2 Tbsp a day, but Ingles no longer carries plain yogurt in single serving cups.  Now I have to buy it in the 32oz size.  It’ll last us a lot longer, but with the sell by dates expiring on everything I’m almost afraid to buy it at all.  Sure enough when I went to mix his food I discovered the sell by date is October 2.  There’s no way we’ll use even half of it by then!

It’s bad enough we’re paying out the ass for groceries in this economy, but I’d at least like the products I buy to last more than a few days.  We didn’t have this problem until recently, so it makes me wonder if people are buying diary items less causing them to sit on the shelf longer or if Ingles isn’t rotating the stock like they should be.  It’s like the milk guy used to stock it from the back of the cooler where the newer stuff went behind the stuff that needed to sell first.  Now you always see him out in front of the cooler slamming jugs on the shelf without paying attention.

I understand it’s perfectly ok to sell something up until that date printed on the packaging, but you’d hope a store would be paying attention to these things.  I guess not, and that’s why I’m finding so many that are still sitting there well past the expiration date.