Take Your Shoes And Shove Them Up Your Ass

Dear Neighbor,
   You gave me the dirtiest look as I stepped out of my apartment today. I was fully dressed. Jeans, not sweatpants; a t-shirt, not a pajama top, which seems to be the fad. The only thing weird was the fact that I was wearing flip flops. Yes, I admit, the temperature outside is 37 degrees; the ground is covered with frost - but not snow. That is valid, there is no snow on the ground. Flip flops may not be most people's choice of shoes in this frosty (but not snowy) weather.
   However, I am not most people. I just don't like shoes. Yes, I own them. Yes, I wear them, but only when required to do so. It's my day off, there is not a required uniform that I must submit to on this day. I am not going hiking, or doing any type of extensive, rigorous walking that would require the use of more supportive shoes. I am just going up the road to the mailbox. It is not so cold that I am going to get frostbite in the five minutes it takes me to get to the complex's mailboxes. And yet, even if it was, that seems like frostbite would be my problem. My shoe issue just seems like it wouldn't affect you at all. Maybe I just don't feel like I need all ten toes. Maybe I can make do with nine. Shit - I've broken them so many times that half of them don't even bend properly in the first place. In fact, part of my issues with enclosed shoes is the fact that my damaged feet, broken, sprained, and strained many times over the course of my 34 years of life, just don't feel comfortable in enclosed shoes. In fact, enclosed shoes can, over extended wearing time, cause my feet actual pain. The other issue is, I was raised Southern country, and I just didn't grow up wearing shoes. I was outside barefoot, with all the poisonous snakes, bugs, and snapping turtles, with bare feet most of my childhood. So I just don't see shoes in the same light that you do. They aren't really necessary.
   Okay, dude, I admit - if the world ends by a new ice age - I am ill-equipped. I will probably die, and I will probably be among the first. But... again, not your problem. More resources for your superior ass. Have fun with that. In the meantime, I'll continue to check my mail, in 37 degree, frost-covered weather, wearing flip flops. If I can listen to your loud-ass TV, then you can deal with my flip flops and wind breaker.
Sincerely,
Your shoeless neighbor.

Cherry Blossoms and Mist Monsters

   I walked my daughter to the bus stop this morning, and I actually got to do this in daylight. For almost the entire school year, we have been trooping out to the bus stop in the dark of night. Let me tell you something about these dark early mornings in Washington: rain or fog. Those are your choices for early morning, predawn walking to the bus. Rain. Fog. Rain is wet, and for the majority of the school year, it's freezing. I walked my daughter to the bus one morning, with slush rain falling on us because it was too warm to completely freeze, but it was too cold to just be liquid, so we got a shit load of semi-liquid dumped on our heads and we were miserable.
   Fog is a whole other story. We have had some incredibly thick fog this year - fog so thick that you can see only a few feet in front of your face. So you are standing at the corner closest to the bus stop (because your daughter no longer allows you to stand at the actual bus stop - geez, Mom, that's not cool), anyway, you are standing at this corner, and you start seeing weirdly shaped figures emerging from the pea-soup-thick fog, and you start thinking about every foggy horror movie or book scene that you have ever read or watched (think Stephen King's The Mist) and you are cursing the day that God ever thought of granting you that over active imagination because these kids, with their bulky outer wear, overstuffed backpacks, and slumped shoulders looked effing creepy shambling out of the fog. Now you want to grab your kid and run home before the mist monsters eat you - at least, you do if you are me.
   But my over active imagination loses the power to scare me in the daylight, and now it's spring. The days are starting to get longer, and when I take my daughter to the bus, not only to I have the power of daylight to burn off fog and negate the mist monster effect, I also have a gorgeous walk to the bus stop. Washington is a beautiful place to live, my friends, and at this time, all the cherry trees are in bloom, so we have pink blossoms everywhere.
  Nor am I walking out in weather that is frigid. People laugh because I complain about both the cold and the heat: I want neither. What I want is a steady stream of 70 degree days with an occasional hike to the 80's and an occasional drop to the 60's. That is the perfect temperature for me; and the other day, we actually got a day in the 60's. Spring is here. Also, cherry blossoms. Enough said. Spring is one of the two best seasons of all - the other being fall.

   Note: All of these cherry trees are on the way to my daughter's bus stop. There are even more on my way to work and down the walk to my mom's apartment. The only thing prettier than cherry blossoms is the fall leaves, when all the trees turn to brilliant red and yellow.

The Weather Outside Is Frightful

   This morning, I woke up, with a brain that was not yet functioning, and found myself contemplating my foot. You see, my foot was cold, and in my groggy, I-just-woke-up-and-can't-think state, I couldn't figure out why my foot was cold. I stretched my toes out, wondering what the heck was going on, when I FINALLY realized that I was missing my sock, and with a shriek that would put a banshee to shame, I dove back into my blankets and found the runaway sock.
   How cold is the weather right now where you are? Some of you are going to laugh your asses off at me, because I am complaining about weather that is in the teens and twenties, and you are gonna be looking at numbers in the negatives. I can't remember where this place was located, but I remember somewhere in the states, they hit a record breaking low of -39 degrees, and I swear, I felt my skin attempting to get frost bite just at the thought of that type of cold -- just at the very thought! I have a friend who posted on her facebook page that she was having a 'warm spell' at -7 degrees, and I just about died. I can't deal with that cold!!!
   Once upon a time, I did live in a chilly-ass place called South Dakota. Maybe I have lived in colder places, but I don't remember them. I do remember South Dakota however, and I do remember blizzards and snow so deep that you could tunnel in it; I remember snow forts and snowmen and snowball fights with the neighbors. I remember liking that stuff.
   My daughter wants to build some of her own snow memories. Ever since we hit November, she has been praying for snow. Hoping, begging, all that good stuff, while I am over here frantically thinking, "Hush your mouth!" Because I don't want snow. I don't want to go outside and try to  scrap the thin layering of slush that we get and call snow, into something resembling a snowman. I don't want to get hit in the back with an icy wad of melting snow that will soak into my coat and drip down my back. No thanks; not me.
   Don't look at me to participate in that crap now. I am the wet blanket of winter fun. In case you hadn't noticed, that stuff's cold! You see, after we lived in South Dakota, we moved to Mississippi. My dad did some overseas work while we stayed there, and then he eventually retired, and we stayed in Mississippi. What does that have to do with cold weather? Well, ever since I was nine years old, I have been having Christmases that were in the 60's, 70's, and sometimes even the friggen 80's. My body got used to hot weather.
   Of course, then  I moved up here, and those of you where reading over the summer know this already, and once I had lived here for a few years, I lost my tolerance to extreme heat. As kids, we used to run out the door in 110 degree heat (although honestly, we were usually looking for some sort of body of water to go jump in), but now 80 feels too hot. But here I am saying that 20 is too cold. So what the hell do I want already? Well, I should think that the answer to that question was obvious. I just want the temperature to be in the 60's and 70's year round. Is that really too much to ask for?