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Cabin fever made me do it!

Like nearly ever person in West Michigan, I have a serious case of cabin fever. 

I won't waste your time however, complaining about the two-hundred feet of snow that's fallen in the last two hours. I won't share about the twenty or thirty times I've had to shovel my walk today as gusts blew it right back in my face. And I certainly will not lament about the temperatures that hover around negative double digits making your nostrils freeze together within moments of stepping outside. To bore you with tales of how we have to shovel areas in our yard so that our large dog and can do his 'duty' because the snow is deeper than he is tall and dogs for whatever reason cannot poop in the same place twice, is not what I will share. You will not hear about how when I open the slider to let aforementioned dog outside, gusts of wind blow drifts of snow inside and require a shovel to once again close the door.  Nor will I share how some roads around here are drifted shut because the plows have given up since shortly after they're plowed, the gusts of wind create drifts four feet or more deep across the road.

I will not drone on and on and on about winter in Michigan lasting six months. Or about when I was young how we had fifty foot snow drifts and we had to walk to school uphill both ways despite even frigid-ier temps carrying a hot potato to keep our hands warm in our thin knit mittens since PolarTec and Under Armor weren't invented yet. And how, despite the temps being even colder than today's, we didn't sit inside whining we went outside like real hearty Michiganders. We tied on or zipped up our boots, donned our snow pants that made us look six-sizes larger and our puffy jackets (no sleek ski outfits then!) and grabbed our wooden sleds with the dull blades or our saucers made of tin and went to a neighborhood sledding hill. Or we grabbed our shovels and went through the neighborhood looking for driveways to shovel or to help one of the many rear wheel-drive cars that got stuck in one of those fifty-foot snow banks. It would be just cruel to waste your time with these tales.

Besides, like a mirage in the desert witnessed by a parched person, Michigan winters like this one can make people do strange things. And cabin fever made me write this partly fictitious tale. And cabin fever, likely, made you read it!

Spring officially starts in about fifty days.

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It's not a popularity contest, but ...

When an ass is so much more

  Body image. Body positivity.  Or about coming to an appreciation for a previously much maligned back end.  In junior high (that's middle school for all of you non boomers), I was given the nickname "big butt Bowen". It was a nickname that stung because I did indeed have a large ass. I tried to mask it, a difficult endeavor since the current fashion (and remember this is junior high when fitting in was paramount) was wearing hip hugger jeans with midriff tops and my disguise of choice were peasant blouses or dresses. That style choice earned an additional nickname, Mama Cass. For those of you that don't know who Mama Cass was, she was part of the Mamas and Papas and known for her beautiful voice but also for her large body.  All about Mama Cass I was cruelly nicknamed at a time when nicknames can really mess with a girl's psyche. And I spent a lifetime as that girl with the messed up psyche. I'm sure there are more than one of you out there that can relate. B

Peter Pan no more

                          It's time. Peter Pan had to grow up.  For nearly 18 months of his life, Matthew dressed in this costume. In this picture it's new, just out of the box. He picked the costume out of a catalog and when it arrived, two weeks prior to Halloween, he asked daily if today was the day he could finally wear his Peter Pan costume. He didn't like the hat and only wore it on Halloween, but the rest of the costume he wore daily! You read that correctly - DAILY. He wore it to Meijer (for those of you unfamiliar with Meijer, it's a cleaner, friendlier, more 'upscale' version of WalMart), to church, to play dates and preschool ... Heck, he was three and adorable and it worked for him!  (Yes you read that correctly, he even wore it to church on one or two occasions when it seemed arguing with a three year old about not wearing a costume to church was not a battle worth waging. He once mentioned the priests wore dresses . . . I don't think Joh