i'm always barefoot

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Except when I put on two or three or four of five pairs of socks in celebration of my sock thing, I'm always barefoot. I'm the anti-Imelda. Sometimes I gotta wear shoes, and that's almost always unlaced sneakers... or my Uggs... but, really, I'm always barefoot. Shoes seem almost uncivilized to me.

My husband-hoarding neighbor is scandalized by this, as though I were traipsing around topless, and I used to wear a pair of old canvas sneakers I'd kept embroidering back together until they were almost solid embroidery with a fancy Christian Dior pantsuit and silk t-shirt when I needed to be fancy for something, but, truly, most of the hours of my life are barefoot.

So this recent development of a chilblains problem—that started last winter and has upped itself this winter with my greater disinclination to turn the heater on—is really bumming me out. They are unlovely, for one, but, worse, they are extremely uncomfortable. I was up all night, remembering an old boyfriend, not because of the memories, but because my toes were driving me wild. It's the creepiest sensation, a combination of severe itching, tenderness, burning, and tingling—all at once—plus, you feel like some of them are crossed, but you look and they're still in the right order, just blotchy and angry-looking... bright red and purple with some white splotches and the skin is all shiny at the ends. You put yer socks back on.

This is the more vexing because I have never suffered the cold feet and hands thing in my life. Even in the coldest weather they're not any colder than the rest of me. I know this gets to be problematic for many when they get older, but I do NOT fit the profile. Hell, until they gave me some estrogen to help reinstate my brain, it was summertime year 'round here. I could be naked in the snow. Sixty-eight degrees seemed like the fires of hell.

Well, it finally occurred to me to really read up on them and it seems that leaving my heater off and my windows open until my teeth won't stop chattering, and then closing the windows and turning on the heat so I can put my feet on the heater vent just next to my desk, is THE recipe for giving oneself chilblains. This also explains why my nose has been so red so much of the time.

I don't know how in the hell I'm going to train myself to do my sock thing as a matter of course instead of a matter of spirit, but I have made it quite apparent to myself that this is now mandatory....
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