If she sits here long enough, spring will come.

Because record snowfalls and ice storms weren’t enough to punctuate our brutal winter, March greeted us with flooding.  As if dodging potholes so deep I think I can see various levels of Dante’s hell weren’t enough, we spent a few days dodging flooded roads.  I heard my parents’ County finally got “disaster” status, which is a label that should be permanently stamped onto my hometown.  If it rains here, my Mom calls to say she is paddling out to the mailbox.  If we get snow, they’re so desperately buried that she has changed her name to Happy Feet and is living in an igloo she and her husband built in the backyard (I know I’ve mixed my Poles here with my analogy, but I’m trying to be more flexible these days). White River runs right through the middle of Indy, which, while it’s the world’s most useless river (too shallow for boating, too polluted for play), it’s great for causing natural disasters.  So there’s that.  I don’t know why people call us landlocked.  We have a small-ish, nasty river that floods the city every few years.  Awesome.

March is a month of survival in the Midwest: not quite spring, not quite winter, weather so psychotic that it might be 60 degrees at 6 am, and pelting snow at 20 degrees by 3 pm.  The temperatures have absolutely no relation to the time of day.  Most days are gray, just in case “weather” is a-comin’.  It’s a month that we start pulling out color and throwing parties, just to raise our spirits, giving ourselves the promise that spring is almost here.  I’m doing my best around here to think “rainbow” several times a day, and I pulled out my stash of tiny beads for crafts last week.  TINY beads should never be given to TINY hands.  I’ll be regretting (and sweeping) these things up until the 4th of July.

I tucked these into lunchboxes all week to raving reviews.  Brach’s candy by the pound never disappoints.  They have “old lady candy” down to an art form. If you are looking for some bright eye candy for springtime inspiration, check out Sweet Paul Magazine’s Spring Issue Online.  It’s a super fun read.

What are you doing to survive ucky blucky March?