Electric Dog

I'm having fun with the title of each blog!

We took our beautiful beagle back to the vet to confirm if he thought she was pregnant. He was pretty sure he could feel one of the individual puppy embryonic sacs and estimated that she could be around 5 and a half weeks.

So if he is correct we could have puppies in 3 to 3 and a half weeks. There is still no guarantee ... we will have to wait and see, but he sent us home with plenty of reading material.

Bella could be a mum just a week before her first birthday!

Interesting times to come .....

Today we also received our electricity bill which to my delight was only $1 more than our bill last quarter. I have been switching off lights left, right and centre ... we are almost down to the equivalent of candle light some nights.

I am also switching off the computer monitor any unneeded power points and cutting down on our usage of the air conditioning. Instead of keeping it on all night I turn it on in KT's room a few minutes before she gets dressed in the morning, in time for dressing after her evening bath and also to warm up her room before she goes to bed. I have added extra blankets to her bed for the evening.

Uni will sometimes turn on the one in the lounge room but I switch it off as soon as I can. I also turn on the one in our room for a while just before we go to bed to avoid going to bed feeling like an ice block ... but I don't see the need to have it on all night once I've gotten warm ... although I do admit both KT and I are going to bed with a thermal undershirt on underneath our PJ's.

I am trying to stick to the 4minute shower thing for the sake of water conservation and also reduced heating costs ... although I do sometimes find that hard to do in winter when the shower is so lovely and warm. It is much more comfortable since we got our new hot water system (a few years ago) the old one was useless.

I am only using the econo option and fast wash options on our dishwasher too ... but they get the dishes clean so I don't see much point in using the longer hotter dishwasher settings. I used each of them once just to test them out at Uni's request ... but found that some of our plastic utensils got blasted and discoloured under 70 -75 degree water heat.

I am also thinking of doing the electricity audit to see if there are further ways to cut down on our electricity costs. I really didn't like having $500+ electricity bills we used to have ... and ideally would love to cut them below $300 if possible.

The biggest test of course will be the next bill ... due in September because that one is traditionally the highest ... covering all the winter months (most of June, July and August) ... I would be thrilled if that one were only $1 more than this one!!!