And then they stole my shoes...

Happy new year. I really don't think we'll make it till midnight, 2007 will just have to see itself in. Although I think some of us who are living in our house will still be wide awake by then. The girls drove to Keystone to watch the Torchlight Parade, the Keystone ski instructors on River run hill, carrying torches, followed by fireworks. On the way home they stopped at Starbucks, the reason they may actually make it to midnight by the time the sugar and caffeine wears off. It has been a hellish week, and not a whole lot of an end in sight. I really don't remember the last time we were not stressed out about something. I actually stopped to count all the people we have in our house the other day. There are eight of us sharing our modest, four bedroom home. in addition to the five of us, B., me, Marci, Amber and Scarlett, my cousin Heather is sleeping in the den, and B's brother Jay and his wife Wendy are sleeping on the living room floor. One dares not sit down in the living room without prodding the piles of blankets on the couches to make sure there is nothing alive under them. One dares not throw anything away, because out of eight people, it is bound to be precious to someone. And one certainly dares not go to the bathroom without first making certain there is enough toilet paper- just because there was a full roll last time does not mean there will not be an empty cardboard tube this time.

And to top it off, in the middle of a frantic rush this afternoon, trying to get somewhere between ten and twenty (I really have no idea, I've stopped keeping track) back to back cleans done- back to backs are units that check out in the morning and back in the same afternoon, giving us six hours to clean and repair them- somebody stole my shoes. I stepped out of them by the door of one of our units, elbowed my way past the guests still loitering around after their checkout time was past, and three hours and a sparkling unit later, went outside to get some paperwork, and my shoes... nowhere to be found. I have giggled to myself at the mental picture of them pulling my smelly old tennis shoes, with their ragged backs and the rubber and soles stained with dark red Moab dirt, the laces permanently knotted and the lumps on top where my big toenails are working their way through, out of their hip rolling luggage, and wondering which of their kids would think to take such awful, dead shoes on vacation. They may ask around, may even bring them along the next time they are all together, that pair of rank old tenny shoes, and only then will they remember that the cleaner did start cleaning before they left, and could they be HER once blue and white Skechers? I wonder if they'll even feel slightly bad about it? I wonder if they'll wonder what I did? Because I had to drive myself home in my socks, the ice and muddy water soaking onto my socks from the Jeep's floormats, tippytoe over the ice in our driveway, and find myself myself another pair of shoes.

The pair I wore the rest of the day are the pair that dumped me flat on my bottom on the lobby steps of one of our buildings the other day, and got me twenty bucks for the effort. (Stories of my clumsiness, of bizarre things that could only happen to me are actually quite easy to come by) One of our guests had left a few valuables in their unit when they checked out, and needed me to let them back in to search for them. I gladly obliged, except when i got there, I could not find any person who matched the discription of "a big black guy in a black sweatsuit". The women in the vehicle outside the lobby assured me he was inside waiting for me. Long story short, three fast trips through the building yeilded nobody by that description, so I went running outside to tell the women so, didnt notice the slush on the front steps, forgot how little tread my natty heeled slip-on shoes possessed, hooked my arm over the handrail on my way down, jammed it into my ribs and armpit, slammed my tailbone onto the steps, unceremoniously slid down a few of them, and came to an undignified stop in front of the horified guests. Hopped up as jauntily as possible (if I had been a cat, I would have yawned and licked myself for a moment, as part of the whole nonchalant, it-happens-everyday act) assured them that I was much more rubbery and resilient than they might expect, yanked down my jacket to cover the giant expanse of soaked denim back there, and let them into their danged unit, where they found their stupid wedding ring, and I stubbornly refused to limp as I escorted them back outside. As I told them to drive very safely on their way back to sunny San Antonio, and watch those steps on the way out, the wife who witnessed my undignified splat slipped me a twenty, which I feebly tried to refuse. I waited till I was in my next condo of the day to pull down my pants in front of a mirror and survey the damage. An impressive, but by no means unususal for me, bruise on the left cheek. To bad every such decoration of my hinder regions does not pay as well. I could retire comfortably.

Well, it is 11:02 pm, and I still don't think we'll make it until '07. I just heard a sleepy sigh, which ended in a snore, from the lump under the covers in our luxurious, pillow-top, king-sized bed. The minute the lump wakes up and reallizes I am still sitting at the computer, the whining may start. I shall just very quietly turn off the computer, peel off my socks, and try not to let any icy appendages venture into the warm cocoon he has created for himself. G'night, love you all.