These Feet

The kitchen is a wreck right now: evidence of a New Year's Day well spent, cooking then dining with my mother and her companion (he is eighty this year), football humming pleasantly in the background while the fruitcake, and then the ham and side dishes cooked on the stove and in the oven. Taking the lid off of the chopped dried fruits one has soaked for hours in Cointreau: an exhuberant smell, nostril clearing, heady. Nibbling at the alcoholic fruit along with one's morning cappucino while proceeding with the recipe: shameless. A peerless sense of warmth and well-being.

I can see I shall be going to bed late, waking early for the return to work, and the kitchen stands a very good chance of remaining in shambles as I attempt to avoid tomorrow by avoiding going to bed.


Feet: I have done this two years in a row now on my Christmas vacation: I have become taken with shoe shopping, or shoe window shopping. I am not Imelda. I tend to find one pair of graceful and comfortable shoes (Liz Claiborne Flex Lynx has been the one), buy several pairs, wear only this shoe and neglect all others in the closet unless I'm in flats for the weekend, slip-ons for biking, etc. I have slippers that I do not wear and go barefoot in my own house. I do not have trouble with my feet, pedicure my feet, or any such special allowance. What I do not do is go to Zappos and click through the entire inventory; instead I start out looking for something reasonable, say a new pair of Lynxes, but end up following out links, and not very shoe-fetish titillating ones either: Land's End, Clarks, Ecco. It dawns on me that, say, it might snow, and I then would need some snow boots (LaCanadienne Tillie's, but I have not yet purchased them), or I find a deal, say the polartec boots at Land's End, and then go looking for other deals. So far boots are ahead, whereas shoes of various styles took the lead last year. I have, or will have, when the orders come through, ankle boots, sort of snow boots, and dress boots. Perhaps I simply have all the clothes I need and am focusing on something where variety could do some good (?).
No remaking of the self here in a conscious way, but I do recall that I used to have dreams in which my feet figured prominently, though shoe buying or wearing did not.
Maybe it is simply easy, all this passive and mostly virtual window-shopping (the purchases, save one, were made in person). Besides the Tillies already mentioned, I also covet what looks like a perfect pair of dress pumps made by Ecco. I apologize for all this brand-dropping. When I get a shoe I like, I will wear it until I kill it. I will buy one after another until the company stops making them. My last Lynxes have a frayed hole near the sole (irreparable), so I shall be forced to choose from among my collection of "occasionals" tomorrow.

Tomorrow is sure to be bothersome, isn't it ? Messy kitchen (too late to clean it now), not enough sleep (too late to even rush to the bed now), not my usual dress shoes. Or will I, in my certain fatigue to come, find evidence of life welling on the surface? Will it carry me through the day ? How shall I stand ?

Oh.I have had the sound off on the television. On Jay Leno, a balding largish man in yellow swimtrunks is holding his nose underwater in a bathtub. Clearly time for bed.