Power Lament

My public service message for today:

Have you ever considered living “off the grid”? Before you make the leap (or tell me how lucky I am) please consider the whole lifestyle picture. Are you raising a small child? Working outside the home? Pumping mama-milk to store for later? Suspecting that you have an excess of a certain enzyme that makes milk go sour soon? Frustrated with a freezer that can’t store much or freeze very cold?

Then, by gosh, DON’T DO IT! Stay connected to that massive grid, hold tight to your power cord, for now. Yes, I appreciate that we get most of our energy from the sun, but I am ruing the day that WF made this decision (before my time here). Mostly because of the freezer situation, again. A Sunfrost refrigerator is a lovely investment in efficiency, but in practice, the thing is damp, tiny and not very cold. Fine for single ascetics, not so great for moms trying to work and pump and store milk safely for the baby.

Granted, I am also likely dealing with an enzyme issue that the freezer can’t help, but I HATE pouring out the hard-won human milk that has become foul-tasting in our lovely fridge/freezer.

In a perfect world (or at least my current view of perfect, ha), I wouldn’t be away from Bean so much and therefore wouldn’t need to pump and fret about storage for later. I’m struggling with the separation, no matter what our silly electricity situation may be. It’s so hard to stay motivated at “work” when it feels like there are more important things to be doing in my own life. Sigh…

And I’ll admit that the solar panels ARE appreciated and entertaining sometimes, and WF had no way of knowing that this would be our current life situation way back when he made these decisions. Just trying to get up the oomph and sort out logistics to make some changes to our life SOON, one way or another.