Power — Our House Needs a New Green Deal
“I have the power!” — He-Man
I took a class in high school called “Power and Technology”. Luckily, the teacher, Mr. Rose, knew nothing about either topic. A skilled — I assume — auto mechanic, he was forced into this role as the school system was phasing out classes on how to change oil and whatnot. On the first day of class, he proclaimed his ignorance regarding power and technology. I remember two things from that year. First, we were routinely visited by someone who voluntarily went by the name “Backwoods” Willie. He and Rose would go off and shoot the breeze, possibly discussing the finer points of moonshine, while the rest of us told jokes,threw stuff at each other, or slept. Second, he told this story:
“I knew a guy that went to use his vacuum cleaner. It had a broke (sic) cord, and when he turned it on it electrocuted him.”
He then showed us the power of electricity by jamming two paper clips into a wall outlet, mildly electrocuting himself. A student asked, “why didn’t he just let go
Side note: Mr. Rose was also the assistant track coach. His primary responsibility was to fire off the starter’s gun. He would practice that at practice. The athletes would be warming up and suddenly hear 3–5 blasts and think “what the…?”
The power has got me
Every so often our utility company sends us a letter comparing our energy usage to that of our neighbors. We are consistently above average (yay?). Part of this is due to the fact that most our neighbors don’t have kids living at home. In fact, I think one of our neighbors has been dead for roughly five years. Her drain on the electrical grid is minimal. Calculating an average when one of the values is zero tends to throw things off.
Still, I thought that it was worth taking stock of what could be causing our outrageous impingement on the global climate. Everyone can improve, right? Here is what I came up with:
Laundry
Our kids cannot get out of bed without acquiring 17 pounds of mud on their clothes. It is amazing. I have searched their room for the source of their mud many times and cannot come up with an answer. Best I figure, there is someone in the neighborhood (who uses less power than me) that squirts mud into the kids’ room at night when they are sleeping. S/he probably goes by the name @muddler on Twitter. By the time my wife has made breakfast, they have already gone through 18 shirts, seven pairs of pants, and three pairs of underpants. A non-holiday weekend is 48 hours. It takes 47.5 hours to get through all of my kids’ laundry. Do the math. Seriously, do the math for me — I’m not good at math.
On the flip side, I live a relatively austere weekend life. Over those 48 hours, I’ll wear the same pajama pants and fleece the whole time. Most weekends, I have no pressing need to not look like I live in a retirement home. I enjoy the comfort of my fleece pants as I slog through yet another game of Candyland. I shower (sometimes) but if nothing has sullied my pants (spilled milk, salsa verde, cat urine, etc.) they are perfectly fine to be re-worn. That brings me to our next energy drain…
Showers
Even though showers are — for me — voluntary on weekends, they are necessary during the week. Everyone in this house likes to take long showers. And everyone in this house likes to take hot showers. My youngest son likes to take showers so hot that, when he gets out, he radiates enough heat that we can use him as a space heater. My wife prefers to wear yoga pants for leisure time, but her showers are so hot that getting the pants onto her legs is a mighty struggle. If I were to start a YouTube channel in which I had a stop watch and asked people to gamble on how long it would take her to get dressed, it would have 1.7 million subscribers.
I like to meditate in the shower. With the bathroom fan on and the hot water falling on me, I can escape from my kids talking about whatever nonsense they got into that added more mud to their clothes (and thus more laundry). Of course, hot water is a limited commodity, and the meditation tends to get interrupted by cold water. Meditating in cold water is akin to meditating in a pit full of asps. Which leads me to the…
Hot tub
Regardless of the energy burn, you can never take my hot tub away from me. Once the kids are asleep, I can go out to the tub and sit in heavily chlorinated water with perfect lucidity. Even on the coldest nights, you might be able to find me sipping from a glass of Chianti or a hearty IPA while partially immersed in 102 degree water. I have seen many beautiful things from my perch in the tub. For example, I scoped the deer that ravage our vegetable garden every year. Seriously, every year 98.51% of our produce get eaten by deer. We only manage to harvest a few pitiful carrots. When the sky is right, I can — through the Baltimore/DC light pollution — see the moon, the stars, and even a planet or two. One evening, when the snow was falling on my super-heated face, I saw one of my kids thwap the other with a snowball. Like any good parent, I set my drink down and directed the victim — from the tub — to my hot tub towel saying “just use the towel to wipe it off — you’ll be ok.”. I’ve even seen my neighbor light two sticks of TNT in his grill in order to cook a rib eye in less than 12 seconds (at least that is what it looked like). So far, there haven’t been any streakers. On one hand, it would be kinda funny to see a naked person running around suburban MD in the winter. On the other hand…not so much.
Of course, keeping the water hot in the winter takes energy. Maryland — spoiler alert — is not like Minnesota. Nonetheless, it takes some effort to keep that beast humming (even though we have a cover that is stronger than the lid on a Cold War era nuclear missile silo).
In summation
Mr. Rose was right when he said — in his heavy New England accent — “the power. It’s got you.” Of course, “power” sounded like “powah”, and “got” sounded like “gut”. Best I figure, these are the three main power drains that send our house to the top of our street’s energy consumption standings. Some things in our house can’t be avoided. The kids and my wife have to be online all day. I have to have the TV on to save me from our youngest constantly talking about poop jokes. We could probably take care of two of these three issues. A sorcerer could take care of the mud through some arcane spell. A friendly dragon could take care of the hot (shower) water issue.
But nothing will take my hot tub away from me.
