heating season

[dragonlady7]

I can never adjust to heating season. The heat woke me up this morning as the Weekday Morning program kicked in. We still haven't figured out our thermostat, so we have a program set for weekday mornings, but that's about it. The rest of the time we just go push the up and down buttons when we're hot or cold.

I love winter, don't get me wrong, but I cannot adjust to heat from the furnace. The first day the heat was on, it made me sweat uncomfortably and now I have an eczema flare on the insides of my elbows. I had been relatively free from eczema for six or seven months now (barring the times when I, say, decided to do dishes, but it never lasted long after that kind of stupidity: not with the lovely cool damp weather we had all summer). But the first little hint of heated air, and it's back.

Dave and I had different upbringings, and so what to us is normal behavior for a thermostat varies widely.

He grew up at the edge of Buffalo's line to the suburbs, in a very quiet residential neighborhood that to me seems almost suburban. (It is, in fact, the neighborhood where we are now, or within two tenths of a mile of it.) The houses are quite close together, and are generally smallish, pleasant little ranch houses-- the American Dream like you see in sit-coms. I would not say he had a wealthier childhood than mine: his parents had their share of struggles, and there was some Old World thrift in their lifestyle (his grandmother lived with them and was a Latvian WWII refugee who never threw away food or anything made of metal or cloth, and she repaired everything around the house with medical tape and old panty hose).
But for the most part, he lived in a nice house on a nice street in a nice neighborhood, and besides the (more than) occasional remodel (his father was a carpenter / contractor, and was continually improving their house until at this point it is the pinnacle of its style of architecture, with everything from not one but two additions on it to the custom-built island in the kitchen, to the pocket doors upstairs, to the recessed lighting in the bathrooms, to the skylight in the hallway...) the house was usually in a nice, finished, presentable condition.

I grew up on a dead-end dirt road, in a farmhouse that had been abandoned ten years before my parents bought it. They moved in while Mom was pregnant, taking showers outside with water left to warm in the sun in the hose. (The hot water wasn't connected until late in the summer, so they started this hose lark in March. MARCH. And continued it until I was nearly born. Imagine: a pregnant woman with one baby already and no shower. I can't, really. It boggles my mind.)

They had a one-year-old Katy then, and no floors, so Katy never learned to crawl, but spent all her time in a walker until she was old enough to walk (they had rushed to get the floor down, but Katy was too fast). There are photos of Mom and Dad working on the scaffolding, and Katy on the ground nearby in a playpen, happily watching them.

So I grew up in this under-construction house, with my parents fixing things as they had the time and the money. The thermostat, once installed, (and this is the point of the story) was set to 55 unless there was a special occasion or guests were over.

We had an electric heater in the bathroom that we would turn on to raise the temperature in there to 65 when the kids bathed, because even Mom and Dad understood that 55 was awfully cold. We were always bathed at night because you could then go get under the covers and fall asleep and forget that you were FREEZING.

Anyhow.

Dave expects that in winter, the house will be at least 68, if not warmer.

Last year, in Hastings, I ruthlessly controlled the thermostat. I kept it at 65, and turned it all the way down whenever we were going to be gone for any length of time. I also turned it down at night. (It wasn't programmable.) Dave made sarcastic commentary, but aside from a few rebellions, he didn't really protest.

But he decided that this year, it was going to be 68. It just was.

Every time the heat comes on, it seems to do so for an interminable amount of time. And I get so hot, and begin stifling, and have to throw off all the blankets and gasp and puff...

So the thing came on this morning at 6:30, and by 6:35 I had to get up and go push the button to get it to stop at 67, and go take a shower because I was so sweaty. I don't know, I can't explain it. 68 isn't that hot. But me and heaters...

So yes, in other words, I'm crazy. But I think in winter you should wear sweaters, and Dave thinks you should always wear t-shirts, and given that I am slightly overweight (insulated) and he is severely underweight with a lackadaisical circulatory system and perpetually cold hands... His plight is more pathetic when the heat is down than mine (red bumps! ugh!) is when the heat is up.