GO SHOELESS TODAY!

Check out the video, above, to learn why lots of folks are going shoeless today!

I'll post a little more here, later today, about the weird experience of what it's like for someone with chronically injured feet to go shoeless for a day. Scratch that--"what it's like for someone with chronically injured feet, and a fabulously comfortable lifestyle, to go shoesless for a day". There, that's better.

For now, enjoy these pasty pale feet.

It's later now. Here are some weird inconvenient highlights...

LunchMaking: Because the kids can get their own breakfast, my only responsibility before driving them to school is to make their lunches. When I knew I’d be shoeless, I imagined myself in some Norman Rockwell scene, sitting at the kitchen table serenely spreading peanut butter and jelly onto bread. Of course, stuck in my chair, I depended upon the kids even for that.

First World Shoeless Child: The morning’s unforeseen snafu was that my youngest son couldn’t find his shoes. The irony wasn’t lost on me. Nor was it even very unforeseen. It happens all the time. On the upside, it’s because he only owns one pair of shoes which fit. So there’s something to be proud of on a day when the over-shoed remember the needy. On the downside, I can get really ugly when the boys can’t find their shoes. Though I won’t go into detail, it wasn’t pretty. I eventually found them under my chair. Though he never admitted it, I suspect my son had shoved them under the skirted chair when he put his soccer cleats on last night (Yes, specialty shoes) so that I wouldn’t notice them and tell him to put away his shoes so that he’d be able to find them in the morning. Yet another bitter irony.

Driving: I wasn’t entirely sure that I’d be able to drive the kids to school barefoot. The problem with my feet is that the tendons on the bottom are very tight. Pressing my foot against a piece of metal seemed worse than limping outside onto chilly cold pavement. When two neighbors, grad students, caught me hobbling out to the minivan, I felt embarrassed. I wanted to feel like a cool hippy mom who drives her kids to school barefoot, but I felt like an old hobbly lady who can’t walk right.

Because I think that inconvenience was part of the significance of the whole experience, it's actually going quite well.