The Luv Doc: Thermostat Settings

Dear Luv Doc,

This recent cold snap has me convinced I married a reptile. If I had my way I would keep the thermostat on 60 all the time, but I realize relationships are about compromise so I let her keep it at 65, which is about as cold as we can get the house in the summer anyways. Last week I was feeling faint-headed and I walk by the thermostat and it reads 78. I go into the living room and she is doing yoga in front of the TV in sweatpants and a hoodie, so I tell her I am going to turn it back down, and she says she is freezing and that she was doing yoga to keep warm. All the time I am sweating buckets in a T-shirt and pajama pants. I can't take it. I tell her to put on more clothes and she says to take mine off. Am I supposed to walk around the house buck naked? Even if I did I would still be too hot. She can always put on more clothes, I can't. The solution is obvious, but she's not having it. How do I fix this without getting a divorce? – Sweltering in South Austin

I sat for a while in the steam room at the gym today cogitating on your problem. I'm not going to lie: It was steamy as fuck; gloriously hot too. I've never been a fan of crackly, dry, desiccating sauna heat. I like me some of that Mississippi Delta, towel on the neck, witheringly moist, foggy heat that makes everything look like Vaseline got smeared on the camera lens. As I sat there cogitating on your dilemma, I was enveloped in a shiny patina of artificial sweat. I say "artificial" because it wasn't an organic sweat. In Mother Nature, the places to work up a steam room schvitz also come with swarms of mosquitoes, congregations of alligators, or perhaps one of those enormous Floridian Burmese pythons that's still coked up from the drug lord it swallowed before silently slithering off into the Everglades. You know why it swallowed the drug lord, don't you? Because he kept manically resetting the thermostat set to 65.

Anyway, I was thinking about your problem, but then I got distracted by a little droplet of sweat that was dangling perilously from the tip of my nose. I remember thinking, "Should I unstick my hand from my disturbingly moist thigh and wipe the sweat droplet off, or should I simply endure the possibly interminable wait for it to fall to the floor?" Fucking steam rooms, man. I tell you, they really make you think. Maybe that's because they're a hostile environment for boomboxes, chatterboxes, and those overly jittery types who can't simply sit still and contemplate the homogenous, proletarian uniformity of tiny glistening ceramic tiles. As near as I can tell, there is an unspoken steam room etiquette that encourages quietude and meditation, and I think that's just marvelous. If you've never been, you might think steam rooms are a safe place for the airing of grievances, but you'd be wrong. No roomful of absolute strangers – or even loose acquaintances – wants to hear about how worked up you get that Jeff from accounting always leaves his dirty coffee mug in the break room sink. People go to steam rooms to chill. Embrace that irony and you will be rewarded with clarity.

So yeah, I sat and sweated out a solution to your problem, and you'll be delighted to know it's embarrassingly simple: If you get too hot, go outside – just like the steam room! Imagine having stripped down to your jockstrap and you're still sweating bullets and then, eureka! You step into the 10-degree polar vortex wind chill for an hour or two. Not only will you burn through an impressive amount of calories, you'll also develop a newfound appreciation for your wife's thermostat setting! You might even feel inclined to crank it up a notch or two, because intense cold can make you a bit impatient and really, what has ERCOT ever done for you – well, besides keeping you from sweating back in February 2021? Anyway, who knew the solution to your problem was just outside your door? Maybe you should hit the steam room yourself! It's like a piping hot soup bowl of solutions!