*MY* Two Cents Worth, dammit!!!

Upon returning from my morning cig run yesterday, I discovered The Man was trying to maize-hole me on the water bill again by manipulating the meter readings. The little black City Utilities pickup was parked by the intersection just below me.

It had only been 22 days since the last time they read it. Last month they read it late; this month it was early. It figures. And dollars to doughnuts they'll read it late again NEXT month.

I had rationed my water usage to achieve the 20-unit minimum for which I would be billed at 31 days. Yesterday, I reached 14.3. That meant I would be billed for 5.7 units I didn’t use, which I’m pretty sure is 570 gallons.

I was pretty sure the meter maid hadn’t gotten to my house yet.

So I did four loads of laundry, washed out the bathtub, mopped the bathroom floor, watered the ‘maters, filled the watering can for the next day, and refilled all the bottles of sugar-free Kool(ish)-Aid in the fridge.

I did so much laundry, I had to dig out the pink Pantycopter to fit it all on the clotheslines.

I managed to use up another 1.8 units of water.

When I later ran the numbers, the electricity I used doing the laundry cost two cents less than those 1.8 units of water would have cost if I had waited to do the activities after the meter was read.

That was an awful lot of work for those two cents, but it’s two of MY cents that I kept the city government from getting.