Who Knew?

Let me start by saying this: There is a dizzying array of space heaters on the market.

I had no idea.

What prompted this discovery was my obsessive desire to ward off any huge, high gas bills this winter. Look, I am a first-time homeowner and first-time homedweller (since BIRTH, people!). All of this is new, and often scary to me. Really. I do NOT love being a homeowner. I know, I know, I am supposed to be giggly happy about how wonderful and exciting it is to own and fix-up and decorate a home.

I hate it.

I miss the simplicity of an apartment. I miss not having these types of choices. I miss having rather fixed costs each month, and not having to speculate in terror what my gas bill will be, WTF I will do if something breaks, and I still have solved our lawn care problem (to buy or not to buy the lawnmower -- dammit, can't I just get a hot guy to come cut the lawn every 3 weeks?! Can I not have ONE "Desperate Housewife" moment?!?!)

Our house is half-decorated, half-painted, sorta-styled, and no where near how we want it to be -- if only we had (1) the money, (2) the know-how, (3) the time.

Back to the space heater. So electricity is waaaaayyyy cheaper in this region than cranking the gas high enough to heat the house. Yes, it's on a minimum level. Yes, I know about closing off rooms that we don't use, shutting vents, wearing slippers & six layers of clothing. We already have a dual-control heated mattress pad (and my gawd, that thing is dee-vine, lemme tell ya!)

So we decided to get a space heater for our bedroom, just to run for a few minutes at night, or while we sleep. And possibly to bring into the living room. We spend an average of 3 waking hours in the house on a weekday. There are like 6 gazillion models of space heaters out there. Really. We went to four stores to compare, and this is after Dr. J researched the whole thing online.

I already knew about getting one with the auto-shutoff if it tips over. But now I also know to get one with the infared beam that shuts it off if it becomes obstructed (by a fallen blanket, a child's toy, etc.) I also now know that a quartz heater is designed to heat objects, that there are varying degrees of "quietness," you can buy a sleek space heater that can be wall-mounted (looks like a flat screen t.v.), and they even make space heaters with REMOTE CONTROLS. Really -- no shit, they sell ones with remote controls! ("Oooh, snap!")

It was at the fourth store, as we stared at the numerous options on the shelves, that I remarked to Dr. J, "It took us less time to select a country from which to import a baby."

And folks, that IS the freakin' truth.