BRAVING THE ARCTIC BLAST

Most everyone will acknowledge that this has been a relatively mild summer. We have not even had a day above 95 degrees, based on my detailed research that involves looking at the ceiling, cocking an eyebrow and reviewing my short-term memory, which should be taken with a grain of salt, because I am trying to figure out what I had for lunch and have narrowed it down to a hamburger or a live muskrat.

But despite the practically balmy weather we have had, you would not know if you were to set foot in my house, where my carpet is permafrost.

You see, my wife has decided that anything above about 40 degrees is sweltering, and we should answer that by lowering the thermostat to any level that is below our age. (By the way, is it just me, or do you always cringe when someone says, "I'm hot. Turn the air up." No, you turn it DOWN. Otherwise, you're just making it hotter. It's just me? Bummer.)

So I have adjusted to life in my own little tundra. I do this by routinely cranking the thermostat up to 80, which is a perfectly acceptable temperature inside. To my wife, however, it is as if she is wax statue heading towards Mercury. She turns the air down WAY too low, and then is happy. She has figured out that I turn the air up, and has offered this simple compromise: She can turn the air as low as she wants, and I am allowed to continue living there.

Actually, that's not totally true. We have developed somewhat of a compromise. Our house is two-story, and has two separate units. The deal is this: My wife keeps the upstairs temperature at its current frosty level, and she also keeps the levels down on the downstairs unit, but I am allowed to routinely turn off the downstairs air and make loud comments to no one about hot air rising, which means the downstairs will cool on its own, and why do we even have ceiling fans, and people pay thousands of dollars for a sauna. I go on and on like this, often for hours. They, of course, cannot hear me, since the purr of the upstairs air conditioner drowns me out. That and the sound of icicles crashing to the upstairs bathroom floor.

My wife used to be far more tolerant of hot weather. Then she experienced the joy of being pregnant in the summer. Apparently, being pregnant in the summer is roughly comparable to having sandpaper sheets. It will never be comfortable, and you'll never quite be able to explain it to someone who has not experienced it.

Ever since she had our daughter, heat has been a sworn foe. With our first child, the third trimester was conveniently timed for June, July and August, so the comfort level was beyond miserable for her. Similarly, it was beyond miserable for me, too, since I was constantly building small fires inside to stay warm.

Our second child was born in March, so I thought that this relatively cool third trimester would revert her to her old ways of extreme heat tolerance. Apparently not. The damage is done for good.

I must now live in our arctic wonderland, strolling through our upstairs with parkas, descending downstairs, preparing to shed down to next to nothing. I am somewhat concerned of the two extreme fronts meeting on the stairs and causing an enormous indoor thunderstorm.

I guess I will ultimately brave through the cold air, as I have done since our first child was born. After all, it will be winter soon, and there is just so low our air conditioner will go.