I have lived in the upper level of a 100 year old duplex in Minnesota with my girlfriend since September 2014. The place is small, not very well insulated and doesn’t have A/C. Every degree change in the temperature outside seemed to change the internal temp to the power of 2. Summers sucked, winters were cold. But I came from a family that would regularly tell their complaining, “freezing” children to put on a sweatshirt.

The winters were never really a huge issue for us. I think my girlfriend of five years agrees that 62° Fahrenheit is more than bearable after walking in from the subzero temps of Minneapolis. Toss on a hoodie, grab a blanket, use the cat as a breathing version of a cool fox-skin scarf, it really isn’t bad at all.

Summer. That’s when the issue came to life, died and rose again the following year. The upright air conditioning unit sitting in the corner when we moved in should have been an omen of what was to come. Being the naive, desperate renter I was at the time, it looked unnecessary and only there so the rental could be listed as having A/C.

We moved in in September 2014. We spent the winter binge-watching The Office and Arrested Development for the 4th time, liking how “cozy” our place was, oblivious of what was to come.

For April showers bring May flowers. And May flowers bring June-Augusts’-Passive-Aggressive-Battles.

Actual graph of our power usage over the past 24 months.

Sidebar: You might now be asking yourself, “what the hell were you two doing January-February 2016? We’re you running a Crock-Pot, toaster, microwave, fans, a handful of neon bar signs and one of those ol’ timey work out machines that shake the shit out of you to make you skinny nonstop, 24/7?” The thing about that is, no. Our power meter was conveniently set up to keep track of both the very upstairs unit(where we lived) and the basement. The basement was largely unused, except for our neighbors to do their laundry. We rarely used the room and did our wash elsewhere because the washing machine kind of sucked and was coin operated. Our neighbors decided that running an old space heater continuously in that room was a great idea, despite only spending about an hour a week down there. After going back and forth with my landlord for a couple weeks, I finally learned that the basement power outlets were linked to our meter — a convenient omission of truth.

Take a look at the energy usage for April 2015. Know what that energy bill was? $21.71. That’s right. How about that spike July 2015? $85.22. Eighty-five dollars and twenty-two cents.

So what changed? We still were gone every day for 10 hours during work. Only really used lights, the T.V. and kitchen appliances from 6pm-10pm on the weeknights. We were rarely home on the weekends during the summer. Not much changed from April 2015 to the June-September months.

The 3 foot tall demon was released upon us from the bowels of the storage closet. Its accordion tube fashioned to the half open bedroom window, its three-pronged cord plugged in and with its first blast of cold air, it unleashed the most passive-aggressive, petty subject for a fight I’ve ever been a part of.