Stop feeding everyone

With limited food storage space, our food supply diminishes pretty quickly after a shopping trip. I would have to say this is about the most frustrating part of living in the shop. I feel like every time I turn around, it's time to get to the store again. We will have to go this coming weekend, but before then (by Thurs/Fri) I am going to be out of eggs and milk. I can't wait until I can have a normal stocked pantry and refrigerator again! and be able to stock up when I see a bargain!

and then it doesn't help that DH seems to have this incessant need to feed and beverage everyone that is here working on this house! Tuesday night he came back in the shop and wanted me to heat up the insulation guy some taquitos. I said no, we only have about 5 left, and that is part of upcoming meals until we can get to the store again. I said it's not my problem that he shows up here to start work at 5pm! For the first almost 4 months we kept the cooler outside stocked with sodas and water. That was not cheap - one of the guys drank more mountain dew a day than DH.

I was trying to figure out why DH (who himself doesn't know how to cook or bake any thing) is like this. Then I realized it really isn't about the food, per se.  He just has this incessant need to make everyone like him and in this situation food and beverage are the way to go. Part of the same reason he's out there helping them all (in addition to he does have to keep busy)....he wants them to like him.

Me, I could care less if they like me, LOL. Just do your job we are paying to have done. Sure, I don't mind taking them out a snack (some cookies baked in the toaster oven) or a pizza or two I went and picked up at the local tavern, but I'm not supplying them with food every day.  Or like last week, the insulation guys were working late in the the evening again. I had gone into town to do some banking and stopped at the store deli and got enough fried chicken for all of us, and some bakery cookies.

We did have at least some good news with our house build costs. The drywall/tape & texture amount is going to come in about $4500-$5000 under what the contractor estimated. Finally - one of the costs went a good direction. That will help out, for sure. We were very surprised, to say the least.  I remember our friend saying drywall is where the builder totally underestimated on his house. We also had our gutters come in $500 than the guy had quoted, but this is a local guy that we found, not through our contractor.

We just had our propane tank filled up again. The guy was here, filling up neighbors, and said ours was at 35%, so he filled up ours too. We probably could have gone another month, but oh well. Now I have an $831 bill to pay soon. I totally do not really understand how the billing works with these propane companies. When we got the tank installed and filled up in August the price was like $1.25/gallon. This bill it's $1.75/gallon. It was my understanding that we are supposed to be on the type of billing plan where they check and fill it on their schedule, but we get the lowest price year round...how do you even know what is the lowest price of the year? LOL. When I google propane costs, it seems like everywhere around the country it's over $2/gallon. So, our 1000 gallons of propane lasted about 5 months living in the shop and keeping it well heated. Really, we used 475 gallons, because they only fill it to 80% max and refilled it when it still had 35% left.  This fill up should last us longer than 5 months. The weather is going to start to get warmer in a couple of months. We should be in the house in a few months and from then on the shop won't need to be kept at this high of heat, nor will we be using the propane hot water heater to take daily showers. When we are in the house, the only thing we are using propane for will be the gas fireplace. Originally we thought we were going to have a gas furnace -  hence the big 1000 gallon tank for the house and shop. But, our hvac guy changed us to an electric furnace with heat pump, so I'm thinking after this fill up, that tank shouldn't need to be filled for quite a while.