D'vorahDavida
Yetzirah

  Did I ever mention my proclivity to go barefoot? (Oh gawd. What a way to begin a conversation. I think you have sunk to ... as unfathomable as this seems given your vast talents... a new low in oversharing. Change the subject quick. Preserve your last shred of dignity I beg you.) No can do (), it's part of the story. (Sigh.) Ha! Your turn! Anyway, I'm a barefoot girl from way back. I've cleaned tar off the bottoms of my feet from bubbles of it that I stepped in on hot summer days. My mother used to wring her hands and worry that people would think they couldn't afford shoes for me. I used to have a bedroom in a separate building from our main house growing up, and even if there was a skiff of snow on the ground, sometimes I would walk [quickly, I'll admit to that] over to the house in the morning. For some reason that even I do not fully understand, I do not care for house slippers. I don't even like to wear socks around the house. My feet feel the need to be able to see the light evidently, or need more oxygen to function properly or something. I'm barefoot right now. (Oh lord....) In the spring and summer and fall, I go outside barefoot virtually every day, and sometimes even in the winter when I just want to pop out and look at Venus rising in the east or some other celestial event in the early morning darkness I go out there and stand in the frosty grass. Did you know that if you stand in one place, your feet melt the frost, then start to warm the spot you are standing on and your feet don't get so cold. Now if you start waltzing around, you will regret it instantly and be running for the door. Just a friendly little tip if you ever want to try it. Now the reason I'm telling you all this (Whimper......) is that my yard is full of really BIG oak trees. I mean big ones. And one of them hangs over my house. For the last several weeks all kinds of stuff has been falling off it.  Little acorns that never fully developed are in the majority of this detritus. Then acorns proper, which the deer come and eat every night. THEN there's the shells of acorns that the squirrels drop while they are feasting high in the very tops of the tree. They also knock down all manner of this and that while they scurry around up there. Bark, leaves, bits and bobs lie strewn all over my porch and the surrounding lawn. Acorns bang, bounce, and roll on my roof day and night. I even went to the front door yesterday thinking someone had knocked. It's very annoying, not to mention the unnerving sound of squirrels galloping across the roof, and sometimes chasing each other around and around up there. Here's our variety of culprit... a stock photo. Squirrels are VERY hard to photograph, even for me. A gray squirrel. I sweep my porch almost every day, and every day a new pile of unsightly litter shows up. But none of the things I have mentioned annoys me more than trying to walk barefoot outdoors right now. It's like a minefield of lilliputian proportions. Thank goodness they don't explode when I step on them. However, quite often explatives DO explode out of my mouth. All I want to do sometimes is go out in the evening and sit in the swing under the maple tree, which is a barefoot friendly space. But I have to run the acorn gauntlet to get there. Today I'm going to do something to ameliorate the situation. I'm going to mow the lawn and once the grass is as short as I can get it, I'll rake the acorn bits and throw them in the burn pile. I know more will fall before it's all over, but I can't wait around for that. This is war. Barefoot girls of the world, UNITE!