Ohio, Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Kansas…all these places I’ve lived. Typical exterminator service plans in these areas are offered on a quarterly basis. There were times perhaps when I wanted them out sooner, but for the most part, 4 treatments a year seemed to work.

Down here, the guy comes monthly. I thought it was excessive at first, but since my landlord included it in our rent, I wasn’t going to argue. When my girlfriend contacted a different company, they said the same thing. I had seen very few bugs in the house, so I figured I shouldn’t mess with a good thing.

Every time he would come, he would ask me: “Seen any bugs?” Perhaps I had seen one small silverfish in the last month. Or a spider. He would grimly nod his head and charge off to deal with the invertebrates that dared cross his spray lines.

A few weeks ago, Bill killed a roach. I don’t do roaches. I just don’t. They scare me. They make me scream. They make me cry. So, when the bug guy called to set up a date to come, I told him about the roach.

“Yeah, you’ll see those,” he replied.

“Oh, no, don’t tell me that,” I whimpered.

“Ah, come on,” he said, “This is Georgia.”

Between the bugs and the heat, I’m becoming convinced that joining a mission in a poor country and helping them build water treatment facilities (my retirement plan) is something I just don’t have the fortitude to do. Or maybe this time in the Deep South is part of my training. And I’m failing.

This morning, I took something into the laundry room and turned to find a roach on its back in the doorway. I do not know how I missed it coming in, but now I was trapped. I am not fooled by the “dead bug” ploy. I have experience enough with roaches to know they aren’t dead unless they are squashed.

“Fritz,” I called with alarm in my voice, “get your father!” Bill came quickly, worriedly.

Good man. He didn’t even tease me about hiding behind the washer from a dead bug.

I did warn him that it wasn’t dead, and sure enough, he witnessed some wiggling legs right before he crushed it. My hero. What would I do without him?

Laundry. Until the thing managed to get away.

It occurred to me yesterday that I didn’t have to wait a month to see if my electricity saving measures were having an effect. The electric company did tell me what the meter reading was on May 31st, and I can read numbers off a digital meter and do the subtraction.

So I did. And then I divided by the 8.5 days that we were into the month and the number was HIGHER than my average usage for May. After completely freaking out, I realized that I had not begun trying to save energy until 5 days or so into the month, so the numbers were skewed.

This morning, I tried to find the scrap paper where I wrote yesterday’s reading down and could not find it. I estimated what it was and then did the math and that number was so astronomical I wanted to cry. I decided my estimate was wrong, but to confirm this, I’ve gone out twice this morning to check the reading. So far, in 4 hours, I’ve used 6 kwh. I’m totally cool with that. That would only be 36 kwh per day, compared to the 121 kwh per day I had last month.

Except, of course, that mornings are not quite as hot as the afternoons. At least I’ll have a baseline and I can see how efficient my A/C units aren’t. My goal is 90 kwh per day or less. I’m willing to be extra hot on the weekdays to make things more comfortable when hubby is home on the weekends.

May’s electric bill was high. You would think I kept the thermometer set at 68 degrees or something similar, which certainly is not the case.

Coincidentally, the morning of the day I got the electric bill, I was upstairs for perhaps the third time before lunch and noted, with some amount of annoyance, that I was turning every single light off for the third time that morning. Little fairies seem to magically appear whenever I go downstairs and flip all the switches. So, my kids are getting a fair amount of blame for the expense and have been clearly instructed to keep the lights off or else. I’m not sure they know how serious I am, but when they find out that or else means no TV in the afternoon, it might help jog their memories.

I thought that keeping the upstairs thermostat at 80 was reasonable, but I’ve moved that to 85. The downstairs one is now at 80 from 78. At night, I switch those temperatures. If the bill is not significantly better next month, I will turn off the A/C, at least when my husband isn’t home.

But I suspect that the biggest culprit is the clothes dryer. Eight people generate quite a bit of laundry. My clothesline broke last month, and I used the dryer a lot. The line is now fixed and I have vowed to not use the dryer at all, unless I am desperate. This will be a challenge. The humidity levels are already pretty high, so it takes maybe 2 hours for thicker articles to dry out. I have limited space, so hanging up 4 or 5 loads just isn’t possible. And we seem to get a deluge every afternoon; anything hung up after 2 pm is at a serious risk of getting even wetter if it’s still up when the storm passes through.

I am on a mission. If you know any other energy saving tips, please let me know. Nighttime temps are above 70 degrees down here, so opening the windows at night isn’t going to help much. I did that in April, with much success, but summer comes early down here.