Dueling Thermostats

With cold weather around a windy corner, my spouse and I prepare for our yearly winter conflict. I call it “Battlestar Thermostatica.” He calls it “Sweat Wars.”

I dig out my industrial-strength long underwear, the kind with the waffle-weave design on them. He fluffs his breezy cotton tank tops and running shorts. Then he tests the bedroom windows to make sure, in tribute to Clement Clarke Moore, he can tear “open the shutters and throw back the sash,” in case an arctic front blows in.

I avoid cold. My husband dislikes heat. But it seems that Solar Woman and Ice Man are forever bound by marriage. We will wrangle over the room temperature for much of the winter.

I once suggested he move onto the patio for the season. He’s hinted that I should settle into the furnace room or find a nice den to share with a hibernating grizzly. The only other option is separate houses. By the time the cold has moved on, the thermostat will be demanding combat pay.

When it’s chilly, my husband wants the room temperature set on a bracing “Hang Meat.” I prefer it set on a toasty “Incubator Petri Dish.”

During the day, we manage a fragile truce most of the time, thanks to my layered wardrobe, wool socks, fluff-lined boots, and a space heater humming at my feet under my desk. When home, Hubby shuffles around in his shorts and almost-barefooted flip-flops. He considers goose bumps a winter fashion statement.

At night, I prefer to burrow in for sleep in purring warmth. If visions of sugar plums dance in my head, I want them thawed. Hubby needs teeth-chattering fresh air and sub-zero drafts. His theory is that no self-respecting flu virus can stand up to his tolerance for cool temperatures. I’ve noted that his wife can’t either and suggested a flu shot.

In the early part of our marriage, our diverging inner thermostats created more of a problem. But over the years, we’ve reached an armistice that mandated the purchase of an electric blanket. The inventor should be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Dual controls ended most of our temperature duels.

My husband thinks I’m rushing the season, but I’ve just retrieved our blanket from summer storage under the bed to put it into winter storage on the bed.

He refers to my blanket control as “Hell” and his as “Hell Freezes Over.”

Though my snoozing body stays warm under the blanket heat, I continue to risk above-the-blanket frost-bitten body bits. I’m fond of my earlobes and the tip of my nose.

In the morning, I cringe at the thought of my bare feet hitting the frigid floor when I crawl out of bed. And I say if you have to pop your slippers into the microwave before you can put them on, it’s too cold in the bedroom. Hubby says that if he awakens to a lizard basking on his alarm clock, it’s too warm.

Our truce accord includes agreement that if I wake up with a corncob pipe, a button nose, and two eyes made out of coal, I turn the thermostat up. If his nighttime perspiration has short-circuited the electrical wires in the blanket, he cools the room down.

And no matter what the temperature, I find it peculiar that the guy who professes to love the cold so much flinches at icy feet on his warm back. I’ll bet a grizzly bear wouldn’t mind.

Hope Sunderland is a registered nurse who's retired her enema bucket and bedpan. A freelance writer, she wrote a humor column for Gulf Coast Lifestyles, and has been published in ByLine Magazine, Journal of Nursing Jocularity, Daily Probe, and is a Hall of Fame contributor to TopFive.com, whose lists have been featured in Readers Digest, The New York Times, network news shows and plagiarized by radio disc jockeys across the nation.