drdawg said:Yeah, Sandy, both extremes is difficult to deal with. The difference is that we can only take off so many clothes when it is so hot and humid it takes your breath away. We have indecent exposure laws here. At least with cold, you can layer as much as you want. You might not be able to move and will look like a snowman, but layering works.

With that layering thing, just be sure you don't put on so much that if you fall you won't be able to get up -- very embarrassing!

I fell once at work when I was layered up pretty good. I was pulling a pallet of ice melt and my boots slipped on a wet spot. I laughed so hard because it was such a soft landing and everyone was making sure I was fine. I can't hurt when I'm so bundled up it's hard to pull a pallet on a wet floor. I managed to get up but it was a bit of a struggle.

I currently have two yellow green bruises on my knees...one scraped knee ...AND an ugly purple thing on my stomach...

I have not fallen in quite some time..last time was off a chair.. I was hauling myself up onto it to dust the top of a buffet and the "H" apparently was not in Haul like it should of been. ..quads weaker than they used to be. 🙄

This last fall..last week..was an encounter with me and a Christmas tree at my sis'S house..helping her. It was not pretty. I would like to say "you ought to see the tree" but I think it did not even lose a needle.

I can just imagine. My wife's pet-name is "turtle". I gave her that name when she was first learning to snow-ski. We no longer ski (broken leg, skiing, for her and back surgery for me), but the name endures. If she fell down, bundled up in the shape of a snowman, the term: "I have fallen down and can't get up" immediately comes to mind. I would never say that in front of others though.

Weedwhacker said:I just stay in the house as much as possible!

HAH!
See that is the problem, you do not get used to it unless you are in it, same for hot weather which is why often in a car with air-conditioning I do not turn in on for trips around town.
Twenty years ago when I used to get a lot of nasty sinus headaches in winter, I would go outside and shovel snow. Usually back then as the snow was deep, widening the parking lot or side walk by hand.
I do not know what it was, while it did not make the headache go away , it reduced it greatly.

I am one of those who when weather is in the thirties often drive around with the window open and the heater on.
Unlike the cars I grew up with where all the heat was down on your feet, the newer ones with vents that can be aimed directly at you are sweet.

RpR said:
HAH!
See that is the problem, you do not get used to it unless you are in it, same for hot weather which is why often in a car with air-conditioning I do not turn in on for trips around town.

I agree and that is why I never had AC down here until last year. You don't adjust and then when you have to be out in the weather it is much worse. I'm sleeping with AC or at least with the dehumidifier on in the summer now because my doctor said it would help my breathing. It has, this last summer was much better than the one before it. Still, as soon as I can, I turn it off and try to get myself adjusted again. I've found I'm sneezing more in the summer when I first walk out of the AC in the bedroom. I have a kind of sneeze fit for a few minutes and then it is gone.

It's COLD here, so I'm grumpy - it's minus 4F and minus 20 celcius........

Pipes froze again today, but got them thawed and we have water again. I'm worried about the electricity we use - I can picture a $1k bill next month (and I'm not kidding).

Wow, Susan. Surely nothing like a $1K electric bill.

Gas & Electric. They missed charging us Gas for 3 months, and are playing "catch up", then with using the portable heater all day to thaw out the pipes for 4 days, and now having to run it still, to keep it thawed........ yeah, not kidding about the bill. Electricity is NOT cheap here.

Layering is good....but....at this stage of my life I need to allow for extra time to peal off the layers when nature calls/hollors

Susan what about something like this to keep the pipes from freezing? I think they also have low voltage tapes with thermostats, seems like some of the farmers in our families have used them to keep pipes from freezing.
http://www.homedepot.com/p/Fro...

We use something just like that on our outdoor pipes leading from our well to our well house. Normally we're only around freezing here in NM, but one year we did go to -18F and had pipes break.

Holy mackerel, Susan -- I think I will stop complaining about my electric bill now... ours runs about $200/month (on the "budget plan," so that it's the same every month). That's with an electric clothes dryer and electric stove, but the water heater runs on our hot-water boiler. I thought $200/month was pretty high until I was recently talking to a friend who is on the same power company and she said their bill is about $500/month; and now, after seeing your post, I'm really convinced that ours is not too bad.

The heat tapes are used in our area quite a bit to keep pipes from freezing, but be cautious; a lot of fires also seem to start from them. Do you have any sort of insulation around the base of your mobile? I know a lot of people here use straw bales to help with that. And, as you probably know, let the water run... things get really expensive when pipes start bursting!

And to think, winter is just beginning...

our bill will be because of 1 month of electric, and 3 months of gas, plus this month's electric & gas. The electric will be high because Bob's been running an electric heater to thaw the pipes.
Our normal electric is about $129, and it's high because Bob's been running a compressor for the work he's been doing on the addition. Current bill is $302 for gas (3 month's worth) & electric combined, and another $300 for our tv & phone, so that's $600, and then we'll have Dec on top of it, so another $200 for gas & electric seeing as how our electric will be much higher for a week of double electricity... sounds like $800 to me, without our tv & phone bill of $85. Ok, so not $1k, but too close for my liking.....

Susan, I feel for you. We have had rather large bills sometimes in Florida. I remember several years ago we had an electric bill of over $500 one month, however, we had a problem with the heat pump. Bills are much better now.

Susan -- it sounds much better when you put it that way... I'm happy your electric bill alone isn't going to be $1K !! I'm hoping for another relatively mild winter like we had last year, so the gas bill won't be too horrendous.

We're supposed to have a terrible winter - worse than we've had for years, and just 1 hr to the south (where we moved from) it was so cold the other day that some businesses had to be closed (Canada Olympic Park, where they have skiing, for instance).
We don't normally have cold the likes of what we've been having this year....... brrrrrrr It's -8F right now...... and is supposed to get colder the next week.

Our bill runs $150s.. ish 😊

We do set the propane delivery on the budget plan...it works because last FILL was a BIG FILL and they charged regulsrvprice..we called and said we are on budget plan and $201 came off.

We only get 3 fills a year and the 3rd..is the 1st of the next year! We heat with propane and cook and hot water is propane.

The house is an SIP and so like a big McDonalds cup walls and ceiling

Our bill is combined bill to GRU...gas/water/electricity. Runs 500-600 a month. 5th highest rates in the US. 2nd highest property tax rates in FL.

Our electric bills are the lowest in the state. I just had a mini split system installed through the Weatherization program and my electric bill for last month was only $15.00 higher than last year when I was heating with wood.

Last month's bill was $70.00 with $24.00 of that being access fee.

Propane costs $1.00 per gallon more up here than what my sister has to pay further south. It's the most expensive type of heat. I avoided using my old furnace because it gulped propane.

I do miss wood heat. Even tho' the thermometer says the room temp is the same, for some reason, I just don't feel as warm with elelectric heat. However, this is the first time the whole house has been warm during the winter, so I have gotten a LOT of cleaning and decluttering done in the last two months while it has been raining.

I can't turn this system down at night ... , so I close my bedroom door and don't use the head in the bedroom so that I can have a cool bedroom at night.

Actually, it's a pretty good system. The only thing I really don't like about it is the noise and it is a quiet system. It's just that there is NO noise when you are heating with wood. I kind of got used to that ...