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Tough time to be a Pollyanna



Remember when 9/11 was just a date or a number you called in an emergency? Our lives changed dramatically post 9/11. For weeks after that September day, we seemed to walk around in a fog, like the haze that loomed over the now-fallen twin towers. I remember trying to minimize my obsession with the news, trying to keep the three little Piggins away from the enormity of the disaster.

Remember when corona was simply a beer best served with a lime wedge? It now and forever will be instead associated with this virus that has upended our world in ways we could never have imagined. This tiny little, microscopic virus has brought the mighty to their knees. It has us quarantined and distancing socially (though I believe we've been doing this emotionally for years) and working from home. As anxiety peaks, our economy tanks. As toilet paper and hand sanitizer flies off the shelves, we are looking for new ways to stock our pantries. A good friend observed, "I never thought I'd see the day when buying toilet paper was more difficult than buying pot,"! 

I am on day six of quarantine. I've not seen anyone but my husband and dog. My children are on the east side of the state - Delaney drove from St. Louis to be with Michael and Carmen and Matthew is holed up in his dorm at UofM Law. Originally we thought they might come home; I imagined an extended snow day where we would bake cookies, binge watch some show, play games and make a holy mess and mounds of laundry. But the three not-so-little Piggins talked as Delaney was driving north and decided that it would be best not to potentially  expose me, with my MS, and John, with his heart issues. Both conditions put us in the immune compromised category.

 Today, I will  do more exercise than the diddly squat I've been doing. I feel like a slug. That may be inaccurate because I think I slug moves more. 

Have a great shelter in place day!

#msadvocate
#coronalime
#tomorrowisanotherday

Comments

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

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 be