Incoherent Scribblings

Ice Cold

About a month or so ago, I came across this note hung on the community bulletin board in the hallway of our apartment that was politely reminding us about how much oil prices have risen in the past year and how luckily the owners of our building had been able to get a good deal when they filled up our heating oil last. It then went on to request that we think about this while we were heating our homes, taking our showers, and all of the other one million things we do that require heat in some way shape or form this winter. Finally, it notified us that if we went through our heating oil too fast and they had to refill the heating oil too soon our heating bills would see a significant increase.

I am sure nearly everyone reading this (except maybe those in the southern hemisphere who are enjoying summer right now) has a similar story to tell concerning oil prices and heating this winter.

The problem with this whole thing is, upon entering this winter I have discovered I have lost ten pounds. Normally, losing ten pounds is a good thing and believe me, I don’t want them back for anything. However, since I no longer have ten pounds of padding around me to keep me warm, I have been freezing since mid-October!

For the past two winters, I have kept our apartment at 20 degrees Celsius (that is 68 F) and I have been quite comfortable with sweat pants and t-shirts. A. complained the whole time that our house was too cold. At the time I didn’t think that extra ten pounds was keeping me that warm. I defended my choice of temperature by telling him that we always kept our big old drafty Iowa farm house at 68 and it wasn’t a problem. Somehow, I seemed to have conveniently forgotten how I used to moan and groan to my dad about how cold I was or that I used to wear long underwear under my jeans and turtlenecks under my sweatshirts.

Ever since it started getting colder here I have been inching the heaters in the living room and bedroom up. Suddenly, though I was wearing sweatshirts and heavy socks with slippers, the heaters were at full blast.

I complained to A. that I am always cold now days. He chuckled, teased me about how in the past I had all that extra padding to keep me warm, and said finally the apartment was a good temperature… until he looked at the thermometer and it said 21.5 degrees (71 F). That was when the message on the bulletin board came back to haunt us. We had raised the temperature in here by 1.5 degrees Celsius and even without expensive oil it was obvious that we would end up paying dearly for those degrees.

So, as I lay shivering in our warm waterbed in my flannel pajamas under our thick comforter he hit me with the reality: instead of raising the temperature I was going to have to wear more layers because we needed to lower the temperature!

That was two days ago. Now as I sit here in my layers typing with ice cold hands, our apartment is back down to 20 degrees Celsius and god dammit I am still freezing!