I love my family and that’s why I have traveled home for the holidays all these years.
My mom is still living and her house is the center for the family Christmas. I have two sisters who live pretty close by and they both have families. I’m single and live in the south where I don’t need a gas furnace at Christmas so I have to be the one to travel. This has been going on for a long time. When I graduated college, I moved to the land of the heat pump for a job. And that job came with an office that had zone controlled HVAC so I was quite cool and comfortable during the hot summers. However, the winter is really my favorite time of year. And I have to leave for a week each winter to slog back north and endure more HVAC heating than I could ever stand. I think the older my mom gets, the more she pumps up that thermostat. It’s getting sort of ridiculous. I freeze my butt off up there unless I’m in her house. And then, I have to wear shorts just to deal with the subtropical thermostat setting my mom lives with. Even my sisters have been quietly complaining about how hot my mom keeps her house. I know that dad left my mother very, very comfortable when it comes to finances. But I hate to think about what she’s spending on HVAC heating costs. It’s got to be just a bundle because I don’t think the gas furnace ever really stops running.