Carbon Footprint Confession

We met a homeschooling family, A. and her kids, at Brookfield Zoo yesterday. It was a perfect day, breezy, not too hot, on the cool side, great for the kids to run from building to building, see the animals and then take a break at the playground.

At home, as we were getting ready for the day, I realized that I was cold yesterday morning. I had looked at the thermostat in the living room and had seen that the temperature was 62 degrees. Lately, we've had the furnace off and just deal with the temperature whatever it is. It's hot and it's cold and it goes back and forth every day and it's Spring in the Chicago area. But, I was cold this particular morning and I turned the thermostat all the way up to 68 degrees to stay on while I had my shower and then I'd come out and be toasty warm and get dressed. I instantly forgot all about the thermostat.

We were already running a little late when we had to run to the bank first, before we got on the highway to the zoo. My son had to run back into the house to get something before we set out, and I had to call A. and tell her we'd be a little late, and we were just in a hurry all the way around. So, I didn't notice that my son left the door open on his way out. Not only that, but we have our screen in now so we can get the fresh Spring air.

We were gone for about 5 hours. So, for 5 hours, our furnace was trying to heat our whole house and the outside world too.

Uh oh.

I found out about this from my husband who came home from work, on his bike as usual, and saw that our front door was WIDE open. When I got home, he told me all about it and laughingly wondered aloud how much biking it might take to offset the furnace trying to heat Very-Republican-Town. I'm not sure, but I think it's probably a lot.

Ooops.

Below, you see an artist's depiction of my husband after he's done offsetting my carbon footprint goof of today...


Yeah. That looks about right.