Another reason my wife can't die: The house would never again be the right temperature

There are many things my wife Terry does well, and one of them is making the inside of our house comfortable.

Here I don't mean "comfortable" in the sense of "welcoming" or "inviting," though she does do that. I mean she has figured out how to get the interior temperature just right at any given time of the year.

You probably don't think this is an especially difficult thing to do, what with the convenience of modern digital thermostats, powerful home furnaces, and central air units. And maybe for you it's not.

But any time Terry isn't home and I try to manage the temperature, it inevitably ends up either feeling like a meat freezer or a sauna in there. I can never seem to find the happy medium.

That's especially true during transition weather months like September, October, April and May. Terry spent a week in Florida with her sister at the end of September, and to me the house felt "off" the whole time she was gone.

I tried to do that thing she does where, if it's going to be one of those early fall "cold in the morning and warm in the afternoon" days, you open the windows in the morning to let in the cool air and seal the house tight around mid-day as the temperature starts to climb.

Sounds simple enough, but I never quite hit the sweet spot when it comes to closing all of the windows and doors to trap the relatively cold air.

I either do it too soon – in which case the house at best matches the outside temperature and icicles start to form in the living room – or I wait too long, in which case the cold air has already been replaced by warm outside air and we end up sweating.

Neither of these things happens when Terry is home. She instinctively knows when it's time to open or close a window, turn on the AC, or crank up the furnace.

Again, none of this is likely complicated for you, but the art of it simply eludes me.

Part of me wonders whether I'm actually just missing Terry herself, and that feeling manifests itself by me feeling physically too hot or too cold.

Chances are I just don't have the knack, which is true when it comes to a lot of things in life for me.

In the end, this woman needs to outlive me, or else I'm going to end up dying from self-inflicted frostbite or heat stroke...all without ever having left my own bedroom.