Guilty Pleasures, I’ve got lots.  I’ve been wishing for this one for awhile now.  Every winter, the same request.  I ask Santa, I ask God, I ask my Employer.  They won’t let me.

I just want to frickin hibernate.

My Potential Future (source: timeinc.net)

Many of you know, I’ve been working on this writing thing.  I have 6 restarted drafts of the same story to prove it!  I had been so good.  I was waking up early, writing in the mornings, typing like a madwoman on writeordie.com, renting less movies, reading more, blogging more, doing all I could.

And then winter rolls it’s big ugly head into Wisconsin.  The eternal days of darkness, the driving at 10 mph, the constant wet socks from stepping in other people’s snow tracks!  I CAN’T TAKE IT ANYMORE!!!

Here’s my proposal for why hibernation would really be the best option for me:

• When you hibernate, you don’t miss the sun.  Is it still there?  I haven’t seen it.  I go to work when it’s dark, and it’s dark when I leave.  Sometimes, when I walk past the entrance doors, I see a glimmer of a sunray, but then I realize it’s just a headlight pulling into the parking lot and I have to excuse myself and cry in the cosmetics stockroom surrounded by thousands of citrus scented tester bottles, tricking myself like a third world child that I do smell sunshine, I’m not missing it at all.
• Hibernation is really my favorite kind of dieting.  In order to sleep for so long, one has to induce a food coma.  That means that in the end days of September leading up to November, I can hoard and devour as much comfort food as I want.  I mean mash potatoes for breakfast, pancakes for dinner, a late night snack of an entire can of pringles.  I NEED it to last me in my blissful cocoon of sleep.
• 

  Don’t Feed After Midnight…Or Else! (source: google images)

  Hibernation is the ultimate heat source.  I hate winter.  I’m grouchy in it.  And I’m always cold.  I’m the girl who wears long underwear and double socks for months at a time.  I’ll go to bed with sweatshirts on underneath all the covers.  By hibernating, I’m delightfully cozy until the temperature gets back into high double digits!

• In Theory…  The sad truth is, people have never been allowed to hibernate, so we don’t really know just how beneficial this process could be.  Like what if the myth of getting all your sleep at once means you’ll never have to sleep again is true?  Imagine what a productive and warm summer I’ll have?  My novel will get written, I’ll visit the beach, I’ll steal other camper’s food cause I’ll be starving again!

I mean really, can you think of a reason NOT to hibernate?  And if any of you mention a winter sport, I will bite you.  All those in favor of hibernating from this day forth, say ‘aye’!  Good!

Yours in Slumber,

Jess Witkins Van Winkle