I Love A New Haircut

We got one of these thingies. You can visit their website HERE


It's a woodburning furnace that sits outside, and it has done WONDERFUL things for my electric bill I can tell you. Last year at this time my electric bill was almost 500 - A MONTH, this year it's 180.00. Charles and I are pretty happy with that number....we don't have a heat pump, and it's all just forced heat and it really made our power bill go crazy..but this little baby has made it all better.

One of Charles' relatives had gotten one as well a few years ago and he used so much less electricity that the power company came out to make sure that he still lived there/make sure the meter was working correctly. That's how good this baby works.

It heats the house, and all the water, and ever since we've had it, we have NEVER run out of hot water...and that was with 8 people living in the house. It's been bliss. This coming year we are going to get an adapter put on the dryer so that the heat from the furnace will be used to dry clothes instead of the heating element...and they won't smell all smokey either - just the heat will be used.

I feel like I've gone back in time. Cool crisp weekend mornings with Charles waking up early (meaning he wakes up with the rest of us), fixes himself a cup of coffee and goes out back and chops wood all day. It just has that country "I've got things to do today and I'm going to get them done" feeling - you know? Well, maybe not - but it's a good feeling and I stay motivated all day just watching him swing his axe (today's secret word is BICEPS- can you say BICEPS? Tomorrows secret work will be Icy Hot)

I generally look after the fire on the weekends that he's not chopping...make sure there's a nice bed of hot coals and throw some wood on top to keep everything going. It only takes a few minutes and that's it.

That's what happened a few weeks ago, I was getting ready to cook breakfast and decided to go throw some wood on the fire. I was suffering from a severe case of BEDIOUS-O-HEADIOUS but decided that it didn't matter because our neighbors live far enough away from us that they wouldn't be able to see me even if there weren't a thousand trees seperating me from them...so I left my hair sticking out in all crazy directions and went and threw some wood on the fire.

Charles and Stinky had cut down a couple of trees on the property the day before...they were infested...one tree had 5 (that we found) queen ants, and another had beetles. I threw a few pieces of the wood in the furnace....and man did they stink. I decided to talk to Charles about that ... I didn't want to burn stinky wood....no need to torture the neighbors.

I went back in and started cooking a big breakfast for all 8 of us...pancakes, sausage, bacon, (yeah, I cooked both) and as I was cooking the eggs, Lauren walked up to me.....

"Mom, when is breakfast going to be ready?"

"In a minute sweetie, it's almost done."

"Mom, you hair looks funny in the front."

"I know sweetie, I haven't done my hair this morning. I figured you might want breakfast first."

"No Mom, it looks REALLY funny right here." and she reached up and pulled a huge chunk of burnt hair off the front of my head - right where the bangs go..er...were.

That would certainly explain the smell now wouldn't it.....turns out, the wood didn't stink at all. I just got to close to the fire...it also burnt off most of my eyelashes....I now have eyestubs - and one eyebrow went adios.

I'm still attractive...in that hairless, scary looking, had to get an interesting new hair cut, and had to learn how to draw my eyebrows on kind of way.