Utilities

If you have ever been to my home, you know I like it cold.  In Portland, I kept my apartment somewhere between chilly "put on a sweater" and "see your breathe" cold.  The living room rarely had fewer than three snuggies, afghans or lap robes, some of which I used all at once, layer upon cozy layer.  I don't know if it's because I grew up in a drafty 4 story house with oil heat and antiquated steam radiators or just the way I'm made.  Heat has never been my favorite, and that's a good thing.

But part of the reason I became acclimated to a cold environment is fiscal.  For too many years, I had to make a lot of tough choices about which bills to pay and which to let lie for another month.  Keeping a cold house, especially during the weeks my daughter lived with her father, diverted monies necessary to keep up the charade of living a normal middle class lifestyle while trying to get by on poverty level income.

Now I find myself in the odd position of making a living wage, yet also living in teacher housing where the utilities are included.  I can wash my clothes whenever I want in water as hot as I want, rather than waiting for enough quarters to accumulate.  In the time I lived in my apartment, the cost of doing a full load increased nearly twofold.  Here it costs me detergent.

When it started to get brisk outside, I held out as long as I could, feeling it was wrong somehow to turn on the heat while the calendar was still on September.  But when it's mid-40s during the day and cold enough to freeze the parking lot puddles by morning, it's time to try out the baseboard heat in a building constructed in this century.  Realizing that I wasn't going to get a huge bill in the mail next month prompted me to set the heater to a comfortable 60.  How lovely to live in a place where all the rooms are warm enough for comfort, yet cool enough to sleep.  I still keep a snuggie on the couch, and am never far away from a hoodie.

 In fact, I am thinking of taking a class next month in Dillingham at the Bristol Bay campus of the University of Alaska Fairbanks on making a traditional Yupik garment called a quaspuk.  Yupiaq have been wearing this for generations but the general idea is of a hoodie, though some are long enough to be worn as a dress, and the pocket is often quite huge and not kangaroo at all.  The cost of the class is reimbursed by the district as it is seen as investing in my cultural understanding, the room and board is covered by the University who use rural travel educations funds, and I can use a school substitute day since, again, the class covers my professional development.  And come home to a toasty warm house without fear of declaring bankruptcy.