The Fight

It was an idyllic day in our house - except for the fight. The whole family was home, snow was falling, the dog was napping by the fire (in between bouts of intense barking at the plows), my stomach was grumbling in anticipation as the smell of homemade cinnamon rolls baking in the oven reached my nose.  It was nearly perfect, but for the chill in the air.  It was imperceptible at first, but with the outside temperature in the single digits it didn't take long for everyone to feel it. I had decided to bypass our regular heating schedule and keep the heat up all day. The first time my smart thermostat ignored my direction and set the heat to 64 I didn't think anything of it.  An hour later, I felt cold.  Once again, my Nest thermostat had turned the heat down.  The rollercoaster of hot and cold continued throughout the day.  I started talking to it as if it was a person, "If you're so smart, why haven't you figured out we're in the middle of a blizzard and I'm trying to keep the house warm in case the power goes out?"  It didn't care. So it went, my perfect snow day punctuated by a battle with a thermostat.  I have a schedule for weekdays and another for weekends, but I also enabled my Nest to 'learn' my habits and adjust accordingly.  That day, it was using what it had learned.  At first, I was flattered.  "It really gets me!"  It was like an extension of me, the enforcer. Then, as the day went on, I started to take it personally.  "Do you really think I'm that inflexible?"  In the end, I won the battle. The whole ordeal got me thinking about how I became the heat police in the first place.  It started when my husband and I were first married and broke.  We heated with oil and lived in a drafty old house.  We were on a budget and oil was expensive, so we kept costs down by rationing heat.  That was almost 20 years ago.  We no longer heat with oil; our home is well insulated and considerably less drafty but I'm still reprising my role as the heat police each winter. That narrative no longer serves me, it is a relic from the past and should be retired.  I have created a new story of comfort and warmth, abundance rather than scarcity.  I just have to figure out how to break the news to my Nest.

For rebates on smart thermostats and more, check out www.masssaves.com or www.nhsaves.com