is there anything better than coming home from work on a 6-degree winter’s night to find that your husband has already made a vegetarian lasagna and cleaned the kitchen?

lately B and i have both had the overwhelming urge to hibernate (hence all the blog posts about food). i think i’ve started to realize that the body really does just naturally want to hibernate in the winter – it’s cold, it’s dark all the time, and by time you get home from work at 7pm, there’s no effing way you’re leaving the house again. and it takes all the will power we have (and sometimes more*) to peel ourselves out of bed in the morning to keep our swim-before-work new years resolutions. The lethargy follows us into the house eve; with a free evening and and a full slate of projects and hobbies, we still find ourselves on the couch watching the Daily Show. i’m not suggesting that we should just stay home, eat lasagna and croissants (shut up) and skip all the workouts. but it makes sense to me to embrace the cyclical nature of the seasons and maybe cut some slack now and then.

B pointed out that in Chicago we’re also getting shorter short winter days and longer long summer days than we did in California. i didn’t think the difference in latitude was all that great, but sure enough he was right. the difference in change-in-span-of-daylight between the bay area and chicago is about an hour**.

* once, working at Idaho Shakespeare Festival’s outdoor ampitheatre, we came to work at 5 in the afternoon to discover that during the night a bat had nestled its way into a fold in the drawn-up curtains. when we let the curtain down in broad daylight, the bat refused to fly away. he just nestled his face deeper into the velvet folds and clung on for dear life. when prodded gently with a broom he opened one eye*** and hissed at us. after that we left him alone, and at dusk he woke up and flew away. this morning i was like that bat. the alarm went off at 6:30 and B got up and i just nestled deeper into the bedcovers and hung on with my eyes squeezed shut. he had the good sense to leave me alone or i probably would have hissed at him as well.

** in the process of looking this up i found this cool website that lists any data you could possibly want to know about the movements of the sun, earth and moon. it’s another great way to procrastinate your workout and stay on the couch under a blanket and a cat.

*** in fact-checking this blog entry i also learned that bats do, in fact, have eyes.