Sleeping in Ice-Cold Temperatures

Last week I found some rather large bugs around my bedroom window. Still not exactly sure what they were, but they reminded me of the boxelders that used to plague the farmhouse I grew up in. Wisconsin summers would yield a disgusting number of boxelders and no amount of vacuuming from my mom could keep them at bay.

Needless, to say, I was disturbed by the two bugs I found. The next day, there were two more. The day after that, six more — and one of them flew at me. I began to wonder what portal of hell I had accidentally opened.

Turns out it wasn’t hell: but the window to the bedroom was slightly opened, enough for the bugs to make their way inside. This is the result of a window air conditioning unit we added about a month ago so that I could force the bedroom to be colder than the rest of the house.

I’ve always heard that sleeping in a cold room is better. It has to do with the body’s internal temperature and circadian rhythm, with an optimal temperature being between 60 and 67 degrees Fahrenheit at night.

I never bought it. I grew up in a house without any air conditioning, so I was used to being hot at night. The house also used woodstoves in the winter, plus my bedroom had a baseboard, so I was nothing short of dripping with sweat while sleeping in the cold months.

However, in late June of this year, our basement flooded. The necessary repair work forced my two older kids out of their basement bedrooms and into the master bedroom where they could share the large bed and bathroom. My husband and I slept on the daybeds in our respective offices.

My office was part of an addition we put on our home a few years ago. Rather than hook it up to the existing ductwork, the office has its own heating and cooling system. By accident more than anything else — I think it may have been a very hot July day — I ended up with a frigidly cold room one night.

Somehow one night became two nights and before I knew it, I was setting the temperature to 66 degrees every night. Without really realizing it, I had been struggling to sleep in the summer since I need a weighted blanket. The cooler temps meant that I could snuggle beneath my thick blanket and not overheat.

When our basement repair work was done and I moved back into my bedroom, it didn’t take me long to realize how much I missed the ice-cold temperature of my office. No amount of lowering the overall temperature of the house would get me what I needed (plus it was really inefficient to try). I told my husband that I needed some type of window AC unit.

That window AC unit has been working beautifully… until I realized that it was an Entrance for Bugs.

And so… the window AC unit has been removed. The bug arrival seemed to coincide with the drop in outdoor temps, though it has not dropped enough for me to really be comfortable sleeping at night. I have found myself waking around midnight and relocating to my office, just to get a few hours of ice-cold slumber.

The weather forecast shows that the overnight temps will drop about 20 degrees over the next few days, so I can only hope that I will have only a few more days of discomfort.