too early to make a noise by breaking the lock box (and Connor would be scared shitless by the "violence" of that, considering what he saw/heard/experienced when we were living with his father)...
What to do?
We share this house with another family - a 60-year old mother and her 31-year old son and 20-year old daughter.
I'm not being unreasonable about wanting to be warm... 68F is not unreasonable; I have physical issues that require that I stay warm but not by dressing like an Inuit going out into a blizzard!
I'm not the crazy person here; my housemate's justification for wanting it this cold is that she spent several years living in Fairbanks, Alaska, while her son boasts about spending two winters living in an unlined, unheated garage - that's the part that's not normal!
I spent two years living in Singapore in the mid-70s, and then eight years living in Brisbane before we came to the US; Singapore and Brisbane are tropical and sub-tropical cities...
Should I insist that the whole house be kept at 75F (24C) because that's what I'm used to and most comfortable at?
I'm not the crazy person here; my housemate's justification for wanting it this cold is that she spent several years living in Fairbanks, Alaska, while her son boasts about spending two winters living in an unlined, unheated garage - that's the part that's not normal!
I spent two years living in Singapore in the mid-70s, and then eight years living in Brisbane before we came to the US; Singapore and Brisbane are tropical and sub-tropical cities...
Should I insist that the whole house be kept at 75F (24C) because that's what I'm used to and most comfortable at?
This is not just a thing about personal comfort and preferences and not wanting to pay for high heating costs - this is about power and control; just what I left Connor's father for...
We had an agreement - 68F in the day and 55F at night... and they were angry I woke up and was working at 5.30am yesterday (Friday) and had raised the temp from 55F...
The son (who lives downstairs), says he had warned me that if I turned the temperature up to 70 he was going to put a lock box on the thermostat, and they have a log they've been keeping to prove I did on 4 or 5 occasions over the past month turn the heat up to 70 (the temperature gauge is in two degree increments, so there is no real separation between 68 and 70)...
This is the second time in two months my housemates have done an end-run around me to get things to be the way they want them to be - leaving me with no options to act without making things worse....
Last time, they were angry I was taking too long to unpack and settle in, and that our bedrooms are a mess.
One day, again when we were out for the day, they put the remainder of my boxes (which were neatly stacked in a corner of the lounge) downstairs, in the garage and hung all their artwork on the walls, leaving no space for mine, and nothing for me to do to even things out - anything I did would have seemed petty...
Their contribution to the dialogue was sarcasm: "oh, we're sorry we got so enthused about cleaning up that we just kept going and took care of your mess - it's been here long enough"... How do you respond constructively to that?
What to do, seeing we can't right now just pack up and leave - that will take time...
We had an agreement - 68F in the day and 55F at night... and they were angry I woke up and was working at 5.30am yesterday (Friday) and had raised the temp from 55F...
The son (who lives downstairs), says he had warned me that if I turned the temperature up to 70 he was going to put a lock box on the thermostat, and they have a log they've been keeping to prove I did on 4 or 5 occasions over the past month turn the heat up to 70 (the temperature gauge is in two degree increments, so there is no real separation between 68 and 70)...
This is the second time in two months my housemates have done an end-run around me to get things to be the way they want them to be - leaving me with no options to act without making things worse....
Last time, they were angry I was taking too long to unpack and settle in, and that our bedrooms are a mess.
One day, again when we were out for the day, they put the remainder of my boxes (which were neatly stacked in a corner of the lounge) downstairs, in the garage and hung all their artwork on the walls, leaving no space for mine, and nothing for me to do to even things out - anything I did would have seemed petty...
Their contribution to the dialogue was sarcasm: "oh, we're sorry we got so enthused about cleaning up that we just kept going and took care of your mess - it's been here long enough"... How do you respond constructively to that?
What to do, seeing we can't right now just pack up and leave - that will take time...
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