Notes from the Den

I mentioned at beginning of the month that I'm planning on hibernating through the winter. So far, I haven't found any downsides to this. It's required a bit more forethought with grocery shopping to ensure that everything can be gotten in one go (arranging my pick ups so that what the first store doesn't have I can get at the second store) and without having to make midweek trips to get items I forgot or ran out of sooner than anticipated, but that's also been good in that the kids have learned if they insist on eating the entire economy sized box of fruit snacks in one day, they will not be having fruit snacks until next week. A minor loophole I've found is asking my partner to get iced coffee for me on his way home from work, but given that my main objective was to keep everyone healthy and also to rest and not to drink less coffee, I don't see a problem with it.

One thing that's surprised me has been how quickly we all adapted to it. There's a Monday evening level 0 yoga class I like to go to (when there's not a plague spike) that is essentially lying on piles of supports which are shifted at five or ten minute intervals, for an hour. Very peaceful. Very low energy. Sometimes people snore during savasana (I haven't yet, but it's honestly only a matter of time). But I've noticed that, even when I go every week, when I first lay down on my mat, my heart rate spikes. I try to get there a few minutes early to give my body time to wind down from the constant demands that I'm normally under. I anticipated something similar happening with this - that there would be a period where we all came up with increasingly ludicrous reasons why we needed to Go Somewhere... but it hasn't happened.

Maybe it helps that I timed it in the appropriate season. I've attempted a sort of hibernation in the height of summer because I loathe the heat and wrangling kids in and out of cars in the heat, but it's never gone well. Possibly because I didn't prep for it properly, or more likely because summer is not when we're meant to rest. Summer is for watering and weeding and patching the leaky places in the roof that we noticed last winter (in simpler times), and maybe for afternoon naps during the hottest part of the day, but bracketed by outdoor exertion. Winter is for sitting by the fire, mending and making and telling stories, and leaning over to add a log or stir the soup occasionally.

I'll check back in in March, but I think any cabin fever I'm feeling at that point will also be a part of the system - the friskiness of spring, waking everyone up and calling them back outside to frolic in the sunshine and green grass again.

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