I’ve been away for a while. Nowhere different physically. But mentally, I’ve been away for a while. And I’m feeling slightly guilty about the fact that I’ve missed out on documenting a lot of what has gone on in our lives. Not just the little day-to-day things – but some of the big events – things such as Charlotte’s first day of Grade 1, Arden learning how to scooch around on the floor, and Ruby climing to the top of the Ropes Course at the GBC family weekend. There are also the last glorious days of summer that slipped through our fingers over the past weekend, Ruby’s first ballet class, Arden’s one year old check up at the doctor, Charlotte’s end of summer shaggy hair, and our family trip to Center Island. So much has happened since I last sat down to write on this blog. With that in mind, it seems fair to ask why I have posted this picture of my new favourite thing in our house. When there is so much to share, what is it about this little device that has caught my attention. Let me tell you.
This is my BlueLine Innovations Power Cost Monitor. At any given moment, it tells you exactly how much you are paying per hour for the electricity your house is consuming. It was given to us by Toronto Hydro as a small token of thanks for our long standing enrollment in their Peak Saver program. And it is spectacular. It is wirelessly connected to our electiricty meter outside. This afternoon, when turned on the stove to boil water for tonight’s soup, the per hour consumption shot up to $0.36 and once the water had boiled and I turned the stove down so the pot could simmer, things quickly leveled out to a very modest $0.04/hr. At the moment the picture was taken, I has heating up some milk for Arden in the microwave (shhh… don’t tell).
I suppose that this could be yet one more example of too much information. Do I really need an around the clock conneciton to my hydro meter??? hard to say for certain. But if it helps us all make better choices about our power use, then why not. Knowledge is power, right?
Anyway – I suppose the real reason I am writing this is that, sometimes, in this stay at home parent life, where the whole world is spinning around outside and we are changing another diaper or slicing up another apple or picking up the kids after another day of school, it is the small things that revive us. Truth be told, for the past 6 weeks, maybe 8, I’ve been a man possessed. I’ve been with every spare moment to chase a dream and I’ve been trying to balance everything else out (and often doing a mediocre job of it) in between stints in front of the computer staring at my spreadsheet and phone calls with real estate agents and accountants and strategizing with anyone who is willing to speak with me about how Hil and I might be able to fulfill our vision of owning and running our own summer camp. Last week, we came close. Not close enough to count, but close enough to know that we are on the right track. We put an offer on a camp for sale near Bancroft. It was the perfect place – private lake, 150 acres of land, cabins, dining hall, canoes, a swim dock. I could go on. In the end, we just couldn’t pull together a solution that worked for both sides and now someone else is going to run it and that had us feeling a little blue late last week. We are moving forward though. We’ve got a lead on another camp that sounds kind of promising, for very different reasons. It will be a place that we will have to revitalize almost from the ground up – but there is a small, semi-private, lake there, a huge parcel of crown land right beside the camp, cabins, a dining hall, canoes, a swim dock… we shall see. The thing is, that through all the effort and the chase of the camp dream, I’ve certainly let a few things fall by the wayside – not just the blog. I’ve been pre-occupied wth my own ambition and that meant being less present with my kids, less involved in keeping our homelife stable, less aware of the needs of everyone around me. And I suppose that, in some strange way, the Power Cost Monitor, sleek device that it is, is a nice little reminder that through it all what matters most is what is going on in my own home and what the state of life inside our four walls looks like on a daily basis.
3 Ginger Snaps 