Every October, I fight a losing battle against climate change. Not global climate change. Everyone smart enough to figure that hot-button issue out realizes that it’s nothing but a sleight of hand attempt by bureaucrats in Washington who seek to distract us as they ruin our country.
I am referring to the only climate change I care about: household climate change.
I face an uphill struggle every October as I try to stay warm with various layers of clothing and scalding hot showers. I am stubbornly under the belief that I can will the temperature of my home to my own liking. For more than a decade I have attempted to use endurance and mental fortitude to stave off the coming winter weather — and every year it is to no avail.
Every autumn I endeavor to go the entire month of October without turning on my furnace.
As a resident of Ohio there are only three days a year where I don’t need to alter the climate of my drafty, century-old home. I heat with propane, which is a colorless gas tirelessly mined from the molten core of the Earth and jealously guarded by an army of subterranean trolls. That’s the only explanation I will accept for why propane is so expensive.
My fundamental aggravation with heating my house is the realization that I am paying hundreds and hundreds of dollars in cold, hard cash for something in the cold seasons that’s free and annoying in the summer months.
Each year, I always break down before Nov. 1 and prematurely turn on the hear. And, when I finally decide to bite the bullet and kick-start my furnace it is a glorious occasion to behold. It entails the pageantry that rivals ticker tape parades.
I am like the Chicago Cubs of household heating. No matter how hard I try I always fail miserably, but I thought this year would be different.
“This year I am going to do it,” I declared to my wife. “This is the year I will go the entire month of October without heating the house. So batten down the hatches and Katie bar the door, because it’s going to take every pair of long johns and every ski mask in the house to finally beat this thing.”
The good news is — if you can even call it that — I finally made it all the way to November before flipping on the thermostat.
The bad news: I managed to get myself sick because of it.
I tell you, I can’t win for losing.
So now I am here on the couch sucking down Dimetapp like a pet gerbil from a feeding tube. I am wearing twice as many layers of clothing than I was wearing yesterday. The heat is jacked up higher than I normally would allow since I am on the mend. In fact, I probably would have saved more money in the long run by turning the heat on in October.
In a lucid fever dream last night an epiphany was relayed to me in a serious of flu hallucinations. If only I turned the heat on last month I would not be sick at the moment. The cold gave me a cold.
Sometimes I hate irony so much.
But it serves me right for intentionally giving my furnace the cold shoulder.