As with most of our marital battles, I win by default

Our air conditioner is broken.

It broke the day before we left for our vacation, so that was fun.

And it still isn't fixed. I called an Air Conditioner Fixer guy, who looked at my gimped A/C, pronounced a bum motor and whacked me in the head with a $700 bill. Which, you know, would have been one thing if it had actually fixed the problem, but it didn't. Within 30 minutes after having had it "fixed", it was gimped again. Current ETA for fixing: Friday.

So while all that part of it is uber annoying (AC guy swears its the motor but when the unit breaks down in exactly the same way it did before I gave him $700, I have a feeling he's full of shit), I'm finding something very interesting happening.

We haven't missed it.

I'm not a huge fan of A/C except in extreme (ie. hideous heat and humidex) conditions. It seems more natural to me to have your body adjust to the ambient temperature outside rather than having to adapt to artificial environments inside these hermetically sealed homes and buildings. And it's totally overdone. I find nothing more frustrating than wearing my pretty summer frocks to work, then freezing my ass off all day in an over-air conditioned environment.

The control of the A/C has been a point of contention in our home. The Husband likes it just so. He prefers the "20 degrees inside - 35 degrees outside" model of summer survival, the artificial wall of coolness that blasts you in the face when you open the door, welcome relief from the heat but leaves you clammy and freezing five minutes later. I like it just so too... so off. As you can imagine, this caused some debate. He would leave in the morning and I'd immediately turn off the A/C, not willing to sit in a sweater all day. I'd be pleasantly temperate all day, then he'd come home and wonder, why isn't it climate controlled in here? We'd have long, pitched battles, me saying we don't need the A/C, that it's a total energy pig, that it can't be healthy to breathe processed air all the time. He'd respond with, "but it's hot!"

Theory vs. experience.

I didn't know A/C until I moved to Ontario. Nobody has A/C in Nova Scotia. To be fair, most of the time you don't need it; it cools off beautifully in the evenings. You sleep with the windows open. You turn on fans. You strategically open air portals in your house to let the breeze blow through, removing the old stale air and blowing in new, fresh air. You don't use blankets on your bed. Yeah, there are days when it's unbearable, those hot, muggy days when it's over 30 and it doesn't cool down at night. Those nights you really need a fan. But for the most part, you live quite nicely. And we got used to this while we were there. So coming back to having no A/C here wasn't that bad of a transition, because we were already used to it.

And to my surprise, the husband is adapting surprisingly well too. He is quickly learning that an open window and a breeze, combined with appropriate skin exposure (i.e. sleazy tops, which he wholeheartedly agrees with) are good things. He's realizing that we don't "need" to have the A/C on all the time.

If only he'd realized sooner that I'm usually right, there'd be a lot more peace in this house.