This morning, I got out of bed, walked down the hall to where our smart thermostat is mounted on the wall and looked at the settings. The function indicator was set to ‘cool’ where it had been since late May of this year. The desired temperature setting was 76, as it had also been since that time.

The inside temperature read 66 degrees Fahrenheit as I stood there shivering in my skivvies (sorry, I’m not a pajama kind of guy). God forgive me, I was so  cold I could not wait any longer so I did it. I took a deep breath, pushed the button switching the heat pump system from cool to heat and the furnace kicked on immediately.

I wasn’t going to do it; I was hoping to hold out until November 1 but the gloomy skies, cold rain,  the 50° temperature outside and the 66 inside was just too much for my pansy-ass, arthritic bones.

As I stood there already feeling the warmth from the registers, I thought back to my childhood days when there were no smart thermostats or even dumb ones; the days when my mom had yet to put the money aside for a load of coal to feed our pot-bellied stove, I was ashamed of what I had just done.

Back then, I would have just pulled my aviator cap farther down over my ears and toughened it out. 66 degrees was not going to bother me. It would have to be at least November before my mom would have the money to order that coal.

I prayed that none of my forebears would glance down from their heavenly reward and see just exactly what I had done; see the namby-pamby that I had become in my old age. Oh my god, what would the Donner party members think of this?

There’s no hiding what I have done; In a week or so, my thermostat will send me an email report on the system’s usage, including the fact that the heat came on that morning of October 24th. Now, any  one of the idiotic, seemingly endless email hackers hiding in their mother’s basement will know the truth about how weak-willed I have become.

I have no idea what they would do with this information but should it spread it to my friends and neighbors, I will just blame it all on Susie. Her feet are always cold; so cold in fact, that when the day comes, her feet should be donated to science for study.

That’s it, it’s all Susie’s fault. Of course it is, I wouldn’t have turned on the heat were it not for concern over Susie’s comfort. I wouldn’t have. A man’s man such as myself would just put on a sweater and have a piece of cold jerky for breakfast.