A Friday Chat About Apartments and Heat

NICOLE: Happy Friday! How warm is it in your apartment right now?

MEGAN: I’m wearing a backwards Snuggie with an airplane blanket on my lap, like a monster made of cheap fleece. I’m drinking tea. I’ve taken a lot of DayQuil. It’s pretty cold in here, if that didn’t sum things up nicely. Is it cold where you are?

NICOLE: I’ll answer that question in a second but first I want to focus on the fact that you are wearing a Snuggie for the exact opposite of its designed purpose. The only reason Snuggie was invented was for people to wear it the way you are NOT WEARING IT. I love it.

MEGAN: Here’s my thing with Snuggies. Prior to this conversation I had it on the right way — with my back exposed, like a wizard’s hospital exam gown — but my back was cold. A Snuggie shines when used as it was intended, you’re right — slumped on the couch with your back against cushions, but I’m sitting in an uncomfortable desk chair staring at my computer. Also, I don’t have a robe (I should buy a robe) and so this works. I’m very glad my roommates have left for the day. I’m an embarrassment.

NICOLE: One of the ways I am combating the fall chill is by snuggling up in an enormous shawl cardigan, which has the advantage of being able to be worn like a robe without actually being a robe. It’s daytime clothes! Or it could be “worn over pajamas” clothes, also good! I feel very cozy and also a bit like Miss Fisher. Minus the “discovering murders every week” part.

But you are not an embarrassment for wearing a Snuggie backwards! Also try a shawl cardigan. I paid $35.70 for mine.

MEGAN: I LOVE A SHAWL CARDIGAN. I have one that I got on sale at H&M thinking I’d wear it out in public, and wouldn’t you know it, It’s hideous and so it remains in the “house clothes” pile. I should find it though, I love a Felicity sweater. Every day when I’m working from home and not at the office, I walk to Buffalo Exchange down the street, fondle sweaters, consider buying one and leave. It gets me out of the house. Keeps me young. One day I’ll actually just buy one, though. Soon.

NICOLE: I’ve spent most of this week indoors. It has been pouring rain and I’m all “eh, there is no reason I need to go outside.” But back to your question of how cold it is in my apartment: now that I have a thermostat on my wall, I can tell you. 63 degrees.

MEGAN: That sounds nice. Toasty, even. I am extremely jealous of your thermostat, by the way! My apartment has old radiators that clang in the night like a bad steel drum band and wheeze out clouds of dust and dry heat. Right now, I’m pretty sure the heat isn’t on, but when it is, watch out, because it’s a freaking inferno in here. Something that sounds so luxurious to me is being able to control your own heat. Is it great? Is it expensive? Is it everything you’ve ever wanted?

NICOLE: I’m actually much happier with it than I thought I would be. I haven’t gotten the first bill yet, since my electric heaters were just installed in September, but I’m coming to appreciate their value. (I might not appreciate their cost, when I get that first bill.)

My apartment has two rooms: the bedroom and the living room/kitchen, as well as a little bathroom. So there’s a heater for the bedroom and a heater for the main room, and I can keep the bedroom heater turned off during the day and the main room heater turned off in the evening before bed, that kind of thing.

I’m really confused about the thermostats, though. I believe they’re accurate but they don’t feel right, sometimes? Like right now my thermostat says it is 63 degrees but I feel very comfortable (so I don’t have the heat on at all), and later this evening the thermostat will say it is 65 degrees (I only keep the heat up to 65, when I turn it on) and I will feel very cold.

MEGAN: Thermostats confuse the shit out of me, I gotta say. I never trust them!! Ike, 63 degrees seems…fine? But I realize that I have no concept of how hot or cold that is in a manufactured environment. If you told me it was 63 degrees outside right now, I’d understand what jacket I needed to wear and whether or not I can wear shoes that expose my ankles. But if I walked into a home and was asked to guess what the temperature was, I feel like there are really just two options: open a window, it’s too hot or please, find me a blanket, I can’t feel my feet.

Have you tried really cranking it to, say, 70?

NICOLE: Sometimes I’ve just turned it on full blast for the five minutes it takes to brush my teeth before bed, so my bedroom will feel toasty as I fall asleep. I think the deal with the thermostat at night might be that the thermostat is right above the heater, so it registers the entire room as being warmer than it actually is. And then the dark night outside sends colder temperatures through the windows, or something.

MEGAN: That makes sense to me. I hope your heat isn’t too expensive, though it sounds like it won’t be. Despite not having any control over my heat right now, I’m glad that I don’t have to pay for it. In college, some friends of mine had to pay for oil for their heat and one winter, someone broke a window and it was freezing and I think they ended up owing like $500 or more. Also, once the oil was out, they just didn’t get another barrel or however it worked, so I think they just wore sweaters. It was not good.

NICOLE: I’ve done the oil heat thing in one of my previous roommate experiences. We ran out of oil and it was several days before we could get more, for some reason? We bundled up. It was terrible. My sister was visiting and I was all “I’m sorry my house is awful!” I’ve also done the apartment radiator thing where it clangs and where you have to open your windows in the winter because it’s so hot inside. All in all there is no good way to do heat? Maybe?

MEGAN: There is no good way to do heat. Fireplaces are great. Wood stoves seem fun if not dangerous. Otherwise, I think we should all move to Hawaii and be done with this. Seems fine, right?

NICOLE: Thanks to global climate change, if we wait long enough, Hawaii-like temperatures will come to us.

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