Let's Sleep Till Spring Gets Here

It's a bad news and good news story. The bad news is it's Christmas Eve, with lots of bad winter weather threatening our happiness for the foreseeable future. The good news is I have a plan to deal with it. With safe, wonderful, beautiful sleep being the answer.

Recently I've come into an abundance of time, with official retirement. So obviously I have the inside track. But even if you're not retired, you can do your part to get rid of winter ... quicker. Yes, I'm the first to admit it, we can't get rid of winter just like that. But if each of us does our little part -- none shirking -- we can overcome this bastard winter weather much more speedily.

Of course winter weather is not an enemy to everyone. To those folks, I lift my thumb to my nose and make a rude noise. Including guys who plow the roads, folks who run ski resorts, winter tire dealers, snow removers, etc. It's people like you that make things harder for people like me, who'd just as soon winter didn't even happen. If it were in my power, yes, I would obliterate winter, damning the consequences. If it meant the calendar was screwed up, the atmosphere were half lost to outer space, the ice caps were transformed into a few trays of ice in a museum, I'd do it. Remember a few years back, when I proposed mirrors in space to increase global warming -- strictly for comfort's sake? It didn't go anywhere because I'm just a guy, with no connections to speak of. I have indeed met politicians, some of the strongest men (and a woman or two) in the world, but they were more or less only interested in me as a hand to shake so they could claim to care about the average joe. They exploited me.

Today's idea to get rid of winter -- or drastically curtail its reach -- doesn't have anything to do with mirrors or species-decimation. It's more a scheme of individual initiative, involving something each of us already does, SLEEP. It's an indisputable, provable phenomenon that sleep speeds up time. I've said it since I was a kid. When we were learning about the Lincoln-Douglas debates, and later the Civil War, I not only held forth on the subject of Sleep and Time, but demonstrated it (many teachers had disputed it) by sleeping through everyone else's presentations. "It's disruptive," the teacher told my parents, but Mom and Dad were happy I took the initiative to stand up -- or sit down -- for my beliefs. I put my head on the desk, dosed off, and when I woke up a minute or so later, the class was over. True story. The most regrettable consequence is I'm a complete moron when Jeopardy's on.

That's my plan to get rid of winter. We sleep through it as much as we can. Hey, if you have an argument about it, take it up with the bears. The bears know! They crawl into their cave, plug in an electric blanket, and sleep. The cubs are nestled in their little cribs, each with a nipple and a 20 gallon bottle of milk, and the parents doze off. The only time they wake up, as I understand it, is every other week for a few minutes to change the babies, then back to dreamland. Before they know it -- and the perception bears have of time has never been sufficiently explained -- it's 20 minutes later and winter's over.

As soon as I get done writing this -- and I'm typing so fast, it'll only take another 3 minutes tops -- I'm headed straight to bed. And I don't plan to wake up until next week at this time. Just to check my Super XL Adult Briefs and take care of any hygienic needs there might be, maybe eat some Chex Mix and have some eggnog, and I'll be back to sleep. Oh yeah, and the dog. Probably change her diaper, take her out, refill her bowls, and wish her a Happy Rest-of-Winter till next we meet.

For this project I actually bought one of those super thermal sleeping bags. The kind that has so much innate heat you'd swear it was a living creature. They're awesome. You crawl in and it's like being at the Center of Existence. Nothing but heat and darkness, like in your mother's arms, or better yet, her womb. That's when we were all happiest, after all. These sleeping bags have everything mom had, except an off switch. You crawl in, set your Inner Man to wake at such and such a time, and doze off. I love the sensation of tumbling down and down and down to my own safe secure place. I haven't exactly worked up the ability to realize everything about it, but a few more years -- let's say when I die -- it's going to be blithe consciousness the whole way, baby!

This is much more limited than that, obviously, but still very useful. I'll sleep, I'll wake -- likely to face the unpleasantness of a dirty diaper -- then sleep, with the cycle going on and on, but seeming to be a couple days tops, and weeks and months will have passed. Winter will be wonderfully over! No more snow. It'll be Spring! The greatest time of year. There's only two seasons I like, Spring and Fall. If I successfully obliterate Winter, you know what this means for Summer.

A Hiatus For All Seasons

I've always been a fan of the seasons. There are four, of course, as is familiar to all, and they are called Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter. So far, so good...

When Spring is here we know it's time to fall in love. "Birds do it, bees do it," and so do we. Spring is when we howl at the moon every time something in a short skirt breezes by, or for the ladies, something in a skimpy pair of underpants. I believe nature's technical word for it is fecundation.

Summer follows Spring and is also a time to fall in love, if you missed your chance in Spring. In Summer we climb the walls and make wolf calls every time something in a tight little bikini and saucy tan struts by, or, again, for the ladies, something in a skimpy pair of swim trunks.

Then there's Fall and Winter and they're not much good for anything. It's hard to fall in love in Fall or Winter, unless your hormones are wacky. But the seasons are what they are and there's no getting away from it.

One thing I've always thought was cool is to use the seasons as metaphors for the other aspects of life. Hear me out. Let's say Spring is like your childhood and teen years, Summer your young adult years (up to 39), Fall the mid adult years, and Winter your golden years, or, as it is with Grandma, last call.

So, thinking like that, we could say, I'm still in the late Summer of my years. Or, like in my actual case, I'm in the Fall of my life but sometimes it still seems like Summer. I actually believe I'm still not too old to cut the mustard if the opportunity were to present itself and could enjoy the sight of, hypothetically speaking, something saucy in a tight bikini. But I'm in the Fall years. True, but I'm not in the Winter years.

I'm wondering what the Winter years will be like. Already I know the Fall years are a time of some dropping off, some interest is waning. If you ever see Cialis ads on TV, look closely. You'll see most of the guys with this problem are in their Fall years. But one day I saw one who seemed closer to his Winter years, and I thought, You old goat! I'm thinking the Winter years will be a time to focus on the issues of morality, such as saying your prayers with more diligence. Not worrying about bikinis. Hope I'm wrong.

Well, I was thinking of the seasons in relation to my hiatus. The seasons relate to everything! A few months ago was the Spring, when I was bucking free like a baby lamb, feeling my oats and enjoying a bowl or two. Then came Summer, a great time to stretch out and feel the full sunshine of my time off. But quickly followed Fall, a cautionary time, still a time to try for happiness even if it means taking medicine. And now, it seems, I'm into the Winter, a time for prayers and diligence. I'm second guessing even what it's all about, what I'm here for, whether any of it was worth it. And thinking, to recapture the youthfulness of Spring I'm going to have to terminate the hiatus.

That's a great way to look at it. It's not that I personally am done for, even though I definitely am in my Fall years. But I can revivify myself mentally by bailing out on this Wintry hiatus, and change it all back to Spring and get into some halfway decent mental fecundation. I have a few spry cells left in my hiatus-addled brain. How could I imagine it if I didn't? I can see before me many many Spring-like days to come!