Ten days later I still have a cold. A couple of days ago I felt like I was about to shake it for good but no such luck. Here’s an excerpt from an email I wrote Shirley today:

“I still have a cold. It’s horrible. I can’t get warm in this house. Not true. I can’t get this house to be consistently warm. The lowest setting on the gas heater in the bedroom makes it too hot overnight. One click lower it gets too cold overnight. THERMOSTAT! I never thought I’d miss that word so much!”

Urofish has an excellent entry on his blog about home heating and insulation (lack of) in Uruguay. I echo a lot of his observations about growing up in a cold climate, in my case Westchester County, followed by the mountains of New York State, and finally Eastern Long Island. We had our share of very cold and snowy winters, especially when we lived in the Catskill mountains. I seem to remember being covered in snow before the end of November with it finally melting in April sometime. Mom couldn’t afford to run the heat 24 hours so at night she’d lower the thermostat a few degrees and when us kids woke up for school we would raise it. (Ahh, the days before automatic thermostat timers.) Sometimes we’d supplement the central heating with a wood-burning potbelly stove. That thing put off a lot of heat and really helped save on the oil bill.

Once, as an adult, I was living in Manhattan in a pre-war (cica 1920s) apartment building. The bedroom had large corner windows plus one large window off to the side. I think they were the original windows. One winter morning I wake up and notice that I could see my breath! Sometime during the night the oil burner in the building broke down. The high temperature for the day was 18 degrees (negative 8 degrees Celsius). A friend of mine who lived on the first floor and I made our way to the elevated subway (brrrrrrr) and took the train north a couple of stops to the Bronx. We spent several hours in the sauna at Bally’s Fitness. This is my only clear memory of being cold in a home up north.

In Uruguay the winter weather is mild. Today is 55 degrees (12 C) and sunny. It’s beautiful outside and it feels nice walking in the sun. The problem is that it’s 55 degrees and shady in the house. Because of the way this house is built we only heat the master bedroom and the office. As I noted in my email to Shirley, the bedroom is either too hot or too cold. The office is smaller, has lower ceilings, and has a built-in electric heater with a thermostat. It’s very easy to keep the office at a comfortable temperature. The bathrooms, hallway, and entire first floor are without heat. I found a scarf in my closet today. I’m going to start wearing it every time I leave one of the “safe rooms.”

For those of you who haven’t moved here yet, remember to check on the heating situation of wherever you choose to rent or buy. Read Urufish’s entry for the details on the types of heat available here. Mild winters feel brutally cold with inadequate heating!