Whenever it’s hot, I’m cold. And whenever it’s cold, I’m hot.

I know it’s not cool to say this, but the cold fact is that I am not hot enough to be a magazine model or cool enough to be a movie star.

The real problem is that I am a geezer for whom no temperature — inside or outside — can make me feel comfortable.

That’s especially true now that my wife, Sue, and I have a new air conditioner. The powerful unit is in the family room, which feels like a meat locker when the AC is on and a sauna when it’s off.

We need the air conditioner because we recently had what sadistic meteorologists call a “heat dome,” which sent temperatures soaring into the high 90s, but with the “heat index,” another measurement of misery, the “real feel” was in the triple digits.

What this means, mathematically speaking, is that when it’s 102 outside and 42 inside, the average temperature is 72 degrees.

Now you know why I can’t be trusted to do our taxes.

The opposite is true in winter, which features what TV weather forecasters love to call the “windchill,” yet another cruel meteorological term that explains why, if you take even one step outside, arctic blasts will freeze you like a Mrs. Paul’s fish stick.

But back to the AC, which in my case stands for “arthritic codger,” an old guy whose blood has thinned to the point that even a two-degree change in temperature can make him shiver like a nudist in a blizzard or sweat like a broken fire hydrant.

The hefty appliance is in a wall sleeve behind the chair where I sit to watch TV, drink beer and eat popcorn, some of which invariably falls under the cushion, only to be found by Sue, who will get hot under the collar, even if she isn’t wearing one.

The main issue, aside from the fact that I can’t hear the TV when the AC is on, is that permafrost forms on the back of my neck and can’t be melted without the aid of a blowtorch.

The safer option is to get up without pulling every muscle in my body (the chair is sunken like a shallow grave, where I will end up anyway) and turn off the air conditioner.

This, of course, defeats the purpose of having one.

We had central air installed upstairs a few years ago and it works except when it doesn’t. It’s an energy-saving system that goes on and off, the latter being when I wake up because it’s too hot.

My idea of saving energy is to get a good night’s sleep.

Anyway, we couldn’t have central air downstairs because of some technical gibberish involving the misalignment of air ducts. This meant, to use layman’s terms, that we couldn’t get our ducts in a row.

Plus, the cost would have been greater than the gross national product of Finland.

So we bought a new downstairs air conditioner to replace the old one, which was even louder and may have had mold, dirt and a colony of bats inside of it.

With the exception of making the family room feel like a hockey rink, the new unit does a decent job of cooling off the rest of the downstairs.

But this doesn’t solve the problem of why I can’t get comfortable no matter where I am. Neither, it appears, can anyone else my age.

That includes Sue, who sometimes wears shorts and a sweatshirt.

How can it be warm enough to bare your legs but cold enough to completely cover your arms and upper body?

Heat rises, doesn’t it?

The only good thing about the whole temperature dilemma is that I don’t have to change my seasonal wardrobe. I just leave all my clothes out and dress accordingly.

Then I’ll sit in front of the air conditioner — in a parka, gloves and a ski hat — and chill out.

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