Late winter on my mind

If we never have enough money to send Max to college, these shoes will certainly be the reason. These are the Birkenstocks I bought.

For Christmas we bought Max a volcano kit and have slowly been working on it. Yesterday Philip and Max painted it. I think it looks great! I'm excited to get to the step where we mix up the stuff that makes the lava that will ooze out the top.

This pile amounts to nearly all the clothes and towels in current circulation. All right here, clean, and on the floor. Philip folded at least two thirds of it today. Happily, I cleaned the bathroom and did some cooking too. I love the evenings when my house has been freshly cleaned and it smells like good food.

I really love this time of year. In December and January everything in nature seems quieter; being deep in hibernation can have that effect. The end of February is not so quiet. Everywhere you look buds are swelling, shoots are pushing up, and I swear you can almost hear the sap beginning to run. The daffodils around town, and in my own yard, are all on the verge of unfurling. This kind of anticipation is the best kind. I already know the end of the story, so there's no anxiety about it, but I know what beauty is about to burst open in this grey wet landscape, so I'm almost holding my breath waiting for it.

I always want to write about seasons and gardening, but it's almost impossible to say anything about them that hasn't been said to death already. It's always the same words. I think it would be an incredible feat to write about gardening with a completely fresh vocabulary that says essentially the same thing but without sounding precious and annoying. Has any writer managed to do this yet?

One of the most profound, beautiful, troubling, and irresistible words I've ever encountered is entropy. The true ruler of the whole universe. Special nemesis to the Williamson family. One of the first concepts Max not only understood, but vehemently rebelled against. Where Philip speaks most eloquently with his art; with the tangible evidence of entropy.

Entropy.

I love words.

I eat them for breakfast.

I roll them around all day long.

A lot of the best words tell the darkest stories.

I'm going to go figure out what my favorite sunny word is.

That could take a long time.

Best to drink a beer.

The orthopedic age

(Because being crazy just isn't enough)

Do I look like a Birkenstock babe? Do you imagine that a person who wears a tiara for fun is the kind of person who would waltz through life wearing negative heel sandals that aren't even as pretty as the ancient Romans probably wore? I can't deny that there are sunny pictures of me as a naked "flower child". Proof of my initiation into a life of carob treats and endless bowls of granola with apple juice and adults sitting around in mushroom clouds touching base with the "cosmos".

I'm pretty sure I remember saying at least once in my life: "I WILL NEVER WEAR SHOES AS HIDEOUS AS BIRKENSTOCKS. NEVAH!"

I wasn't accounting for the nature of my feet. As far as feet go, they aren't unattractive. They have a pretty nice shape. The toes are well formed, not too long, not too stumpy. I have an elegant high arch. All in all: pretty good feet. Except for the fact that they are a DD width and though they are a size 9 in length, I have had to wear mostly size ten shoes to accommodate the width. Which means my shoes are almost always too long for me. And even when I wear size 10's, usually they still aren't wide enough. I've experienced an extraordinary amount of foot pain and blisters. Not to mention, that "elegant" arch of mine, never gets support. Shoes have not been my friends.

Which is why I think it's understandable that I loathe the expression "If the shoe fits..."

BECAUSE IT NEVER EVER DOES, DAMMIT.

To top things off, I have been experiencing, in the last few months, a periodic sharp pulsing pain in the ball of my left foot. Completely random. Impossible to ignore. It's been getting progressively worse. I haven't gone to the doctor because this is the type of thing they typically can't figure out, or if they do it results in amputation. I don't like going to the doctor because it makes me feel like a hypochondriac.

My mom has exactly the same problem with her feet. Wanna know what is the matter with hers? She has calcium deposits on her big toe joints. Yeah, and they can't do anything to help her. You know what eases the pain considerably? Wearing Birkenstocks. Or any shoe with a negative heel which takes the pressure off of the ball of your foot. Except that almost no one besides Birkenstock makes such shoes.

Now, it's true that Birkenstock has worked hard to come up with less hideous designs for their product. But I still hate them. I hate them because in order to make my feet feel better I have to spend a fortune on their shoes. I feel like I'm being punished for having special shoe needs. I feel like they are taking advantage of people like me. I bought a pair yesterday at my local "comfort" shoe store. I had to spend $160.00*. You know what kills me about spending such money on a pair of shoes? I have a very special talent that few people know about:

I can ruin the highest quality sturdiest shoes in a matter of months. Without even trying. I know, I'm amazing aren't I? I've got all this daintiness without losing my ability to crush good shoes in superhero time. Some of us are just born with more gifts than others. I try to remain humble.

I like to say (often) how aging doesn't bother me. Which I think annoys people who find aging upsetting. While I'm going to stick to my stance that getting older doesn't worry me, I will admit that while I don't care about my grey hair or my wrinkles, I'm pretty worried about the fact that I managed to break my hip at thirty five years of age, and have reached the orthopedic shoe stage at thirty seven years old. You can tell me that all I need is to limber up with a steady regimen of yoga because it's the panacea of our time, but I always injure myself doing it. Oh yeah, the back problems don't make me feel invincible either.

With all this foot pain, back pain, and recurring hip pain, I limp around like an eighty year old. So no, being thirty seven is not exactly old, but with the way my body is aging I seriously wonder if I'm going to have to use a cane permanently by the time I'm forty. How am I going to make that look cool?

Not that I'm obsessed with looking cool or anything that shallow. My cool factor is at an all time low. You know what I'll probably have to get next, to really cement my cool factor? I will probably be getting a pair of those "Crocs" for gardening in. Yeah, rubber clogs are just about the height of hippie chic. (I'm a boot chick. Always have been. I love work boots. Really tough ones. My favorite boots of all time were my Justin's. Oh boy, those babies were expensive too. But at least they came in my width.) I've been longing for a good pair of boots again. Now I'm not sure they will be good for my feet. The nice thing about garden clogs is that you can just rinse them off when you're done. A plus if you manage to get as dirty as I always do. I wonder if there's a way I could make them look like Dutch peasant-wear? If I don't mind looking like a huge potato I'm sure I could pull that off.

So I suppose I will now spend a tremendous amount of time looking for discounted Birkenstocks and Keens online. As if I have nothing better to do with my time.

On another subject... I have been thinking about the merits of starting a second blog to dedicate to weight issues. Lots of people have second blogs and they don't seem that appropriate for me because I like randomly jumping from subject to subject right here in one place. The only reason why I am considering it is because I won't stop needing to talk about that issue until it is no longer an issue in my life. This could be a long time from now. I feel a little self conscious about it though because for many people this is just a tired tedious subject. I need a place to give myself pep talks and to record progress. I could always start one and not tell anyone. I don't know. (By the way, I'm not considering this because of Oprah. I was considering this BEFORE she mentioned it in this month's issue of O.)

Speaking of magazines... I finally got a copy of Romantic Homes magazine. The one with the article about Alicia Paulson's house. I think we can all agree that is a great sign of my endless maturity that all I will say about it is: what a pretty house she has. All that sweetness didn't make me want to rip my own arm off at all. I will definitely not be writing scathing poems about it either. Because I am a very mature human being. Quite advanced, really. You know, evolved to the max.


*See, how can a person be thrifty when even your feet demand the most expensive shoes? That's not fair.