depression,  family,  kids,  parenting,  seasonal affective disorder,  spring

On Seasonal Affective Disorder… I Mean Spring

I wrote a version of this blog post a few years ago at a low point of seasonal affective disorder or, as we call it here in the midwest, spring. I’m republishing it today, with GIFs, because it’s April 16 and has been snowing for two days. The tulip shoots are buried in white and I have to laugh about it or I’ll go mad.

The Real March (and April) Madness

My husband says that waking up on the first day of the NCAA tournament is like Christmas morning for him. But I’m familiar with the real March madness, and its evil cousin, April madness, and basketball has nothing to do with it.

The real March (and April) madness is the feeling you get when you watch the thermometer on your car dashboard drop from fourteen to eleven to five degrees Fahrenheit. It’s the first day of spring getting bitch-slapped by winter, year after year.

It’s devouring gallons of coffee and carb-loading with baked goods because winter will never end and you’ll never need to wear a bathing suit again.

It’s straitjacketing your toddler into his parka and boots yet another time—a process that looks, to bystanders, like nothing so much as a greased-pig contest at the state fair. And you’re losing.

It’s questionable patches of dry, red skin that make you envy the shiny produce under the mist sprayers at the grocery store. It’s nosebleeds and hair static that makes you look like this:

In a word, it’s madness.

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