the acorn slippers/coming home

I couldn’t find my acorn slippers anywhere today. It drove me nuts (dum dum tah). I went around blaming everybody, even questioning if I somehow took them off while pushing through the day-after-Thanksgiving Target crowds and came home barefoot. I had to wear mom’s Crocs the rest of the day. I hate those shoes. They make my feet feel really nice but they look ridulous.

I can’t believe I actually went out today. I came home minus a pair of shoes and with a bruised ankle from some lady who decided to push me out of her way with her cart and hit me right in the achilles tendon. Her lips formed the word “sorry” but all I heard was “that’ll teach you, ya lard, for standing in the middle of the way while I’m trying to rush to that last turkey fryer on sale for $30!” But, it’s all a part of coming home to the Christmas season. This is what we do. And I like it. Mom and I find any excuse to “run errands” and drive through Wendy’s along the way to get our medium-sized Mr. Pibbs.

I’m surprised to find coming home isn’t much of a shock to me. All year I went around thinking my cat since elementary school, Miss Kitty, had died while I was in Colorado because no one had mentioned her on the phone to me. She’s not regular conversation, but no one said a word and I knew that meant she finally died and nobody wanted to tell me. I walked into the house Tuesday night and there she was, back turned to me, totally ignoring me in her cute hateful way. I reached down to pet her, exclaiming my joy that she was alive, and she growled, hissed, and launched a fist at me. I also had figured some of our stray cats would have disappeared by now, but they’re all still here, almost still in one piece. The one, who we always dubbed the “smart” one, seems to have dislodged her brain from her spinal cord or something. She doesn’t see too straight anymore and she walks around shaking her little head and it makes a loud rattling noise. She has a defense mechanism now only rattlesnakes had before, and I think that’s cute.

Ohio has surprised me with sunshine and almost tshirt weather. Three days now. Sometimes I feel like celebrating global warming. The house looks and feels mostly the same, except for the old fart bedroom my parents built on the first floor. My brothers all came home for my birthday and Thanksgiving and I’ve been farted on and burped at and it feels somewhat nostalgic. The neffew, Carter, is humongous and walks around singing and smiling. The greesedog sleeps with me every night. My first meal I requested, tuna noodle casserole. And I gulped it down with several big glasses of milk. After ten months of living on $4 a day for food I’ve realized that’s pretty much how we eat anyway, except you get to eat more yogurt and drink more milk now.

My acorn shoes are sitting under this desk I’m typing at. I think that’s kind of funny. Now I remember that’s just where I left them and I feel bad for yelling at my brothers for stealing them. I feel like this is the setting for a good tv show ending… camera zooms in on the shoes, then me smiling, then pans out the window with some slowing piano music… because I left my shoes here, then lived a full day, and came back to them, right where I left them. In January, I drove off to Colorado, lived 10 months of life, and came home and found things haven’t really changed. And I like that.