I have been apologizing profusely to my man for years now, desperately trying to earn his forgiveness for being the way I am. I know that it isn’t my fault, deep down, but I still feel like I need to make retribution for all the extra stress that I cause us. If there was anything I could do to change the situation, I would do it in a heartbeat. But alas, I feel powerless in this struggle. Yes, I’m talking about my body’s broken thermostat and the ways that impacts our actual thermostat. You see, for the past decade or so, I have been continually cold. It doesn’t matter if we’re in the dead of winter or the middle of a brutally hot summer – I will be unreasonably cold either way. This means that I make a lot of difficult demands on our central thermostat, of course. I simply can’t stand the feeling of being covered in goosebumps, or my muscles clenching up tightly against the chill of air against my skin. Therefore, I run our furnace through its paces on a daily basis. In turn, the energy company really slays us at the end of each month, and my poor husband gets stuck picking up the pieces. Recently I was trying to come up with a solution for my continually frosty body, and decided that my best bet was just to wear outdoor clothes indoors for the season. Thus, I went to the thrift store and bought an old smoking jacket to wear as a full length robe. I got fur-insulated boots to serve as seriously warm slippers. And I made a new invention out of fingerless mittens, which I cheerily call “house gloves.” I might look completely insane this winter, but hopefully our energy bill will be less crazy.