One degree of separation in heater battle
Jack Frost doesn’t just nip at my nose in the morning during the winter; he takes a full-on bite.
This week’s freezing temperatures finally put me into winter mode, which inevitably leads to friendly heater battles with my wife. When I get home from work and it’s as cold as it has been this week, I am fine with setting the heater at 65 degrees and getting the house relatively toasty.
I even throw some logs onto the fire and get the family room heated up so we can enjoy some family time in front of the television. So far, so good.
Then bedtime rolls around and I turn the thermostat down by one degree, to 64, figuring that we’ll all be tucked warmly into bed and we can spare the extra degree and the extra expense associated with it.
If my wife gets out of bed before falling asleep and walks down the hall, it’s safe to assume she’ll bump the heater back up to 65. Since I usually stay up later than she does, I’ll often make a second trip down the hall to push it back to 64. Wow, what a victory.
Since I also usually wake up first in the morning, I’ll then bump the thermostat back to 65 because, again, that one degree really makes a huge difference, I tell myself.
Our morning heater battles cool off for awhile until we get into the car to take our youngest son to school. This is where it gets odd because while I like the house one degree cooler than my wife because that single degree means a lot, I like the car about 40 degrees warmer than she does.
When I go out to warm up the car, I blast the heater so that we’ll be nice and warm when we sit in the vehicle. It seems like something my wife would like – I am such a considerate guy, I think.
But since she often has a hot cup of tea or hot oatmeal with her, apparently raising her internal temperature in addition to warming her hands, the car gradually becomes too warm for my wife – regardless of how cold it is outside. Two blocks from home and she’s trying to divert my attention to something out the window so she can turn down the car’s heater. Two blocks later and I point out something or someone on the side of the road and turn the dial back to the red.
I am having a heater battle with the same person who insists that 65 is barely warm enough at home. In the car, though, it’s a different story.
I usually wear a hooded sweatshirt to keep my ears warm as I drive, freeing up each hand to put it in front of the heater vent that is blasting in our faces. As my wife begins to pretend like she’s melting – or at least sweating – I’ll mix things up by moving the heat blast from the upper vents to the floor vents, forcing a temporary heater control truce.
When the vent dispute, well, heats up, I jokingly suggest that my wife drive on our way home from school so that she can have temperature control. She declines, as would I, because she has warm tea and oatmeal to consume while I try to defrost my hands.
After all of that, we make it home neither too warm nor too cold, our argument about car temperature having cooled down. Even though I’m usually the driver and our family agreement is that the driver controls the radio and heater, certain battles you just have to concede. Keeping my cool while trying to stay warm keeps the home fires burning.
Check out Adam’s blog at http://thebreenblog.blogspot.com. When he’s not engaged in heater battles, Adam chills out at San Benito High School, where he teaches newspaper and yearbook classes. He is a reporter for the Pinnacle and former editor of The Free Lance.
