And If It Was Possible, I'd Join the Chipmunks Right Now. I Feel It Coming On.

I miss my wood-burning stove. I also miss weekends in CNY where I could stop at this house or that house or whatever house to be fed by family, then return home to my wood-burning stove. Where I was warm. Where I slept well. Where I made no money, but somehow survived and lived in a tiny little house that squeezed me in. Now, however, I am definitely feeling Jack Frost whispering his cold gossip on the back of my neck. I feel like I could curl up into a ball and sleep for a decade, even when I first wake up. I'm simply exhausted and I want to rest.

This fantasy, of course, prompted me to think about hibernation and I couldn't resist reading more about chipmunks. I never thought about it before, but it is true we rarely see them from December until April. Why? They got it right. They are hunkered into a deep, deep sleep for several months and I'm wondering what they thinking about. I wonder what a creature dreams about when asleep for that long and, somewhat more frightening, what happens if they awaken and can't fall back to sleep. Does that make the chill and hunger that more severe? I need to read more.

I'll have to ask them in the spring when they return from their slumber and are scurrying here, there, and everywhere again.

For me? I just want one good night of sleep, and not this pattern I'm currently on where it takes me two hours to stop thinking, only to be awake again two hours later. Then I fall sleep, but wake up an hour later. I think it's because of the cold (and the stress and the traffic and the 19 year old moving about and coming home late and the bright lights of the screen I stare at 12 hours a day and the constant stimulation coming at me in every direction).

I'm sure others are feeling the same - the onset of holiday commercials puts me in a panic, as does the finish line for another semester. Zoom...aging just like that. But from now on I'm counting the breaths of chipmunks curled in their winter cupboards, nestled under leaves, ground, soil and snow. If they can do it, I can to.

Such inspirations.