Joey and Sarah subplot in "petro wars"

joey sarah

"What if we turned off the electricity in the house?" That's how my husband proposed this self-sustainable lifestyle. Can you believe that? Talk about tact. That "boy" of a husband had the audacity to sell the harshest idea with the most basic of questions. Well, looking back, I'm slightly embarrassed at my response. Something along the lines of "hair, alarm clocks, freezer, cell phone, laptops, reading at night" etc etc.

Two weeks later the idea had rooted in my brain to throw the question back at him by marching downstairs and turning off the main breaker. When he got home and the garage door opener didn't work, we got our first taste of what we weren't even thinking about. He came inside, whispered "thank you" and we made love a good three or four times before passing out.

There is more to life than the distractions we force into our own.

Don't get me wrong, there are times when we used power from the grid initially. We love to entertain and many forms of entertainment require power. So we basically used it until our entertainment took different forms. Instead of playing console video games, we have a bonfire and play backyard games.

Eventually our power saving and power creating devices were saving too much energy. So we took some old car batteries (not too old though) and converted a shelf or two in the yard-shed-thing to an energy outpost. So now we're able to charge our cellphone (which we share) laptop (which we rarely use) and even bake in an oven, use a dryer in the winter or if we're really feeling wasteful, turn on a light.

The hardest part for us wasn't the energy loss. It was the daylight. What time does the sun set? What time does it rise? If you can't answer either of those you are still a slave to the lightbulbs in your house. Our schedules match the natural rhythm of the daylight, and I have yet to miss seeing a sunrise or sunset.


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notes: I don't like this format... she's preaching... I'm going to create a more storylike method of revealing these points, but it's nice to have them written down.