Unfortunately, the gods gave us fire, not hibernation.  Actually, we stole fire, I think.  Or Prometheus stole it for us.  In any case, sleeping the Christmas cookies off is not in the cards for the foreseeable future.  Yet, our somnambulant bodies want to do precisely that.

And why not? This year, scientists began to induce hibernation in humans to determine whether the human metabolism can be safely lowered for extended periods of time.  The reason isn’t so much to let people like me snore the coldest part of the year away, it’s to save lives.

When Kevin Everett of the Buffalo Bills was injured last fall, his prognosis would have been extremely grim - death or permanent crippling disability - if the Bills orthopedic surgeon Andrew Cappuccino hadn’t heard about hypothermic treatment.  They cooled his body down, and, to his teammates eternal relief and surprise, only 14 weeks later, he walked into the locker room two hours before the last home game of the year to wish them well.  That had to be the sweetest Christmas present ever, even though the Bills went on to lose to the Eagles.

Another possibility for hibernation is traveling to distant planets and actually being alive when you get there.  Fraught with peril, of course ... if you happen to be traveling with HAL 3000 or crashing onto the Planet of the Apes ... but until and unless we can travel faster than light, it appears to be the only way to get from here to there and still be in any condition to do anything when we get there.  I wonder if your memory stays sharp in hibernation?

In the meantime, though, we have to keep moving through the winter, while our mammalian family members are quietly using up their summer stores of fat.  That seems unfair to me.

Down at Turning Tide Cottage, with the visitors gone, we are once again snuggling up in our den to save on oil.  This week’s January thaw definitely had a hint of spring in the air, but as we all know, before too long, t-shirt weather will disappear and we’ll be back to long underwear (2 or 3 sets!) and fuzzy socks and fleece overclothes.

To combat the natural ... yes, natural ... desire to hibernate, I am making myself get up and go swimming every morning, whether I feel like it or not.  Most times, I don’t feel like it at all, but I am always happier after I have been.  The swimming pool over at the Wiscasset Community Center is warm, the room is sunlit, and it is almost always deserted when I show up, which can’t be a good thing for them, but is great for me. 

And after my ten laps and my water exercise, I get a nice ten minutes in the hot tub, which definitely is the way to start a winter’s day.  If one MUST start a winter’s day at all, that is.

Weekends are harder, somehow, because I don’t have to be anywhere, so it’s relatively easy to find excuses not to go out.  This Saturday,  I had to run several errands before noon, but if I hadn’t had to do that, I could easily visualize myself staying in all day and watching reruns of the Iowa caucus stump speeches on CNN.  In the afternoon, I put all the Christmas stuff away, seeing as it was going to be Twelfth Night Saturday night, so at least I Kept Busy.  Now the bare Christmas tree is in the stand in the coffee room until I can figure out when the next collection day is.

Sundays are already dangerous, because I start the day with Meet the Press, and then it is all too easy to slip into the Chris Matthews Show, Face the Nation, and CNN’s Sunday Talk show, whatever it’s called.  This past Sunday, I did a bender on all the talk shows, but Chris eventually came home and we went to the movies.  We hadn’t been to a movie for a while at a Multiplex, so I was kind of fascinated by all the television commercials they show before the feature film.  I mean, they show commercials for television shows At the Theatre. That seems like it’s contrary to good business sense to me. 

Okay, okay, I’m resigned to being awake for the winter.  But in the meantime, let’s keep the good books coming out and the hot tea flowing, and someone, please, finish those Christmas cookies before I do, okay?