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Don’t call your MOM.

Overheard:

Adult Man 1 …but was he alive during the civil war?

Adult Man 2 gets out his cellphone

Adult Man 1 Aw, man, don’t call your mom.

I woke up around three a.m., sweating and shaking from a nightmare about zombies. Todd and I were in the rowhouse we lived in before Paul was born, and the zombies were congregated across the street. They were very stupid zombies, who would bypass a house if the shades were drawn. Unfortunately, the window itself had to be closed for this to work, and after Todd and I ran around the house putting all the shades down, we found a window in the back that had fallen off its tracks.

I’d been confident up until then, but when I realized our lives depended on fixing the window? I knew it was all over.

Saturday I went out searching for a pair of boots. I have never liked shoe shopping. Given my long-standing tendancy towards butch clothes, you’d never have recognized my fourteen year old self drooling over the high, spike heeled, circa 1864 schoolmarm boots. Which, you know, had a width approximately half that of my foot.

I’ve been putting off this trip for about six months, which is when my feet started hurting again. Before Paul was born, I was diagnosed with a heel spur. The doctor told me I had very high arches, and needed to wear arch suppots in order to fix them. He told me horror stories of heel spur operations and scared me into wearing the supports faithfully until the spur went away on its own.

But then Paul was born, and summer came around, and the pair of boots with the supports in them got all wet in the rain and stank so badly they were never wearable again, and so I threw them away and later, I realized, the supports with them, and meanwhile I was able to wear pretty much any shoe I wanted (that fit my mutant hobbit feet, anyway) and I thought I was done with the old lady podiatry of it all.

About six months ago, both of my feet began hurting, to the degree that getting out of bed in the morning necessitated limping to the bathroom. I tried finding arch supports (could only find pale imitations), wearing tennis shoes instead of sandals, but nothing worked. And when I saw these clunky shoes that not only fit, but made my feet look twice as big as they really are, I bought them. Even though they were cheaply made and basically began to fall apart from the moment I paid for them.

So Saturday, even though I hate shopping so much I actually considered staying home and cleaning both bathrooms instead, I headed out to find a nicely made pair of boots that would make my feet stop hurting. I ended up at the Fluevog store, because I admit to believing that the more expensive the shoes are, the more likely they are to cradle your foot in happy comfort, which - given the number of women whose feet are actually painful to look at in their summer sandals because after years of wearing high heels their toes have curled in on each other like frightened mouse babies - I should know is utter bullshit.

The clerk took one look at my 3-for-$12 shirt and Zellers pants and decided that I wasn’t going to buy anything. I was determined to prove him wrong, but hated the Fluevog style so thoroughly that I couldn’t. He asked what my size was, and I said I didn’t know and asked for the foot measuring thingie. “We don’t have those in our stores anymore,” he said archly. Really? I mean…what, were they deemed too Payless or something?

I wanted clunky; he gave me a pair of shoes that looked clunky on the shelf, but made my feet look as tiny as they actually are, so much so that I couldn’t imagine doing anything but tip-toeing in them while wearing fairy wings.

I thanked him for his time, told him the style just wasn’t for me, and headed back into the snow. The next shop sold shoes I liked, but that only came in certain sizes, so there were tags like, “Doc Martens: UK sizes 4 and 13″. After some sushi, I went to the St. Clair subway stop (where the consession storekeeper asked me to watch her store while she ran to the bathroom, and, pleased, I wondered what it was that made her trust me) bought a pair of boots that I didn’t particularly like - but they fit, and I was tired, and it was snowing, and there were wolves - then went for chocolate cake and espresso at the Wellesley stop.

As I left, I spotted a tiny, badly lit boot store across the street. I ran in, found the perfect pair of boots, bought them, zipped back up to St. Clair, returned the pair I didn’t like, and was home in time to spend a lovely evening with Todd and Paul (who had, in the end, decided against going to see the World’s Biggest Poutine being made).

Sage and Paul are going up the subway escalator. Sage spots a man dressed up as Santa Claus going down the stairs, and pokes Paul and points. The man has bushy white hair, sticking out from under his hat.

Paul, excitedly Mama, look! It’s…it’s, it’s our LIBRARIAN!

Sage, taken by surprise, snorts Well, I can see that his hair is just like the librarian’s hair, but I think that’s -

Paul It’s our librarian, dressed up like Santa Claus!

Sage Um. It’s a man, actually.

Paul, pulling Sage down so he can whisper in her ear I think he wants to go trick little kids into thinking Santa Claus is real.

Sage, straightening up I think he’s probably got a job at a mall, so…

Paul I whispered that because, you know, some people just like to have fun this time of year.