Overheated

Living heat-free by choice is the latest trend! At least with the handful of masochists The New York Times was able to scout out around the county. I’m still not convinced and throw it in that things-people-who-are-not-destitute-do-to-prove-some-point-I-don’t-understand category.

A few months ago I was talking with my sister and was reminiscing, “Remember how freezing it was when we'd get up in the morning?" I can’t imagine sleeping with the heat off at night as an adult.

“You keep the heat on at night?” she asked. I should've known better. When she and her husband stayed with us a few Februaries ago, I let them have my room. In the morning I walked into the kitchen past my door and I could feel cold air on my feet. It turned out they were so hot that they'd cracked open one of my windows.

I hate waste, but I'm not the one in my household who pays for the heat (it’s not free radiator heat that people often complain about being too hot, like in my office where it's always 90 degrees and makes me groggy and cranky). If I did, the thermostat would certainly go down a few notches.

I guess I'm spoiled but I do not have any love for those chilly mornings when we'd stand over the freshly turned on heat vents in ankle-length, Little House on the Prairie nightgowns doing that "Look, I'm pregnant” puff. (The girls also used to play that in preschool, which was good clean fun, apparently. I did, however, get scolded in second grade for pretending to smoke a white Crayola.)  I also recall lying on the ground covered in a blanket also tucked over the arced plastic directional vent over the heating grate when it was still dark out. We must've been making Jimmy Carter proud.

Now, inside, I wear short sleeves and go barefoot in the middle of winter. The only time I genuinely needed to wear a sweater this entire winter was in Chicago, when even three layers topped with wool and down couldn’t cut it.