Michigan: A Frozen Mitten to the Face

I live in northern Michigan, in an area surrounded by trees and lakes and so much nature you're in danger of running over it at every turn (I'm looking at you, fancy free and footloose deer). But right now I currently live in northern Michigan in February. If you didn't just metaphorically clasp your pearls and cross yourself you've either A) never been in Michigan in February (or December. Or January. or sometimes May), or B) are one of those rare unicorns who enjoys frigid temperatures, shoveling your driveway only to have the plow man come by and push it all back in, and driving in conditions where you can't see five feet in front of you. If you chose option B, kudos to you! I don't know how we'll work out our differences enough to be friends, but kudos, Snow Warrior. 

In northern Michigan, the weatherman says things like, "If you think today was cold, just wait until tomorrow!" Why, Weatherman? Why you gotta play me that way? I did think today was cold. I will think it again tomorrow. I will think it again until its 50° out wherein we the people of northern Michigan will declare it warm and collectively we will start wearing shorts and swimming in Lake Superior. Don't patronize me, Weatherman. I'm an adult who CHOOSES to live in northern Michigan. I know what cold is. 

In northern Michigan, you spend your winters desperately scanning Facebook for friends who made it out of this frozen hell for a vacation in some place warm and magical (or Florida). You live vicariously through them as they post the current temp every seven minutes and Instagram themselves staring squinty eyed into this beautiful, foreign object called, "the Sun." (I should be clear that this feeling is not extended to those who managed to move and permanently escape the frozen tundra. Yes, you're somewhere warm! Yay, we're happy for you! But once you start posting beach photos with captions like, "Its so hot here! Sorry, Michiganders! ;) ;) ;) ;)" while we're in the middle of our fifth blizzard of the season, forgetting from whence you came, all bets are off. Vacationers have to come back. They'll come back to negative temps and through the grace of God maybe they'll let us touch their hand in hopes of feeling the faint memory of warmth. Movers MOVED. Have some compassion. Don't kick us while we're already flailing around on the ice.)

I live in northern Michigan. An area that subdues you with her beauty and occasionally (read: six to nine months out of the year) places her icy Elsa like hand around your neck and squeezes. And I'm friggin' COLD.