20 Good Reasons to Pay Your Electric Bill

Pysch! (I'm trying to bring that phrase back...).

There aren't 20 good reasons to pay your electric bill. There's only one-  it sucks to not have electricity.

I wrote this last night, but am posting it tonight. You’ll read why:

I am sitting in the dark in my living room typing by glow of candlelight. Not because I thought it would be romantic or whimsical. Nor was I inspired with any energy-conservation intentions.

I simply forgot to pay my electric bill. That’s right. No financial woes here; I just never got around to paying it this month. Even after several statements and a disconnect notice came in the mail, I managed to blow it off. I even sat down a couple of times to pay the bill online only to get distracted and work on something else instead. Well, apparently the electric company is serious about getting paid. Noted.

This has never happened before and I’m usually fairly intelligent. I read the Harvard Business Review here and there. I had a (nearly) perfect GPA in graduate school. (I got one B in a one-credit hour class my first semester. Grrr).

I’m sure there are other examples of my ability to function in the world. I should be able to remember to pay a bill.

I thought about making the proverbial lemons into lemonade, but poured myself a cocktail instead.

I thought of all the great things about having no electricity. I thought I could sit down and work on my blog without getting distracted by those Jersey Shore kids. But, it turns out my cable modem doesn’t work so well without electricity. Effingham. Oh, well. I can still type in Word and copy and paste later. Here's a thought- how about I blog about my crappy week?

Another great thing about my evening was that it took very little time at all to wash off my makeup since I had already cried most of it off. That was a good time saver.

Shortly after that, I took the time to review all of my flaws. This is a favorite pastime of mine. I usually reserve it for nights when I’m awake at 2am and can’t get to sleep, but thought I might as well think through the current ones. (On a really sleepless night, I like to review past, current, and potential future flaws. It's a flaw of mine).

Back to the current flaws:

• I just caught up on my gift giving last week. I managed to take care of Father’s Day (3 months late), my mom’s birthday (6 weeks late), my nephew’s birthday (2 weeks late) and my other nephew’s birthday (2 weeks early!).

• I competed in a Toastmaster’s (speech/ public speaking) contest last Saturday. I didn’t win. I was irritated by this because I like to naturally be good at things. I find this to be the best ROI of my time.

• I’m not sure what to do with my two year old when she refuses to get in her car seat like she has for the past week or so. I’ve been battling with her because she has a little game she likes to play whenever we get in the car. It goes a little like this: I try to put her in her car seat, she screams, arches her back, wriggles out of my grip and then throws herself down on her stomach on the floorboard of the car. It's exasperating.

• I was doing such a great job eating healthy the past few weeks, but completely fell off the wagon the past couple of days. Tonight I found myself setting a frosted sugar cookie on top of my copy of the cookbook Skinny Girl Dish. I’m pretty sure that’s not what Bethenny Frankel had in mind for her book’s use.

• I fed Ella McDonald’s chicken nuggets tonight for dinner.

I have more proof of my imperfections, but I’ll stop there. You probably never even thought I was perfect, but sharing this makes me feel better in some strange way. And blogging is cheaper than therapy.

Update- the electricity was turned back on today and all is right with the world for now because of this.