When April arrived all I could think about was that I had five days until I would be turning the furnace off.
What worried me was that it was still cold outside.
The temperature hadn’t left the 50s, and I worried that when I turned off the furnace, my wife and I would be cold every night. The reason for the turn-off was a rule we set – April 15 wasn’t just tax day ,it was when we turned off the furnace for the season. Sept. 1 was the common day for turning off the air conditioning. We were consistently looking for a way to conserve energy, and this was one of the things the people I was with, and I had come up with. My fiance came home from work, and asked if I had heard the weather. The forecast called for several days of near freezing, and then rising into the sixties. This didn’t make me feel better, when I knew my fiance would insist on turning off the furnace – on the first day after days near freezing. I bit my lip, trying to find the right way to talk to my wife about this. She was heading into the basement to complete projects when she turned around. She told me that we should put off turning off the oil furnace, until the temperature reaches the 70s. The kids would not get sick from all the changing temperatures, she argued. I agreed and told her that was a fine idea!