04/22/03’s illustrious band:

The Foot Doilies

Brought to you by my Easter weekend in Sioux Falls.

Over this most recent holiday, I met up with Mother Media, Sister-san, and Brother-in-Law-san in Sioux Falls. Our attempt to dodge the Easter Bunny was unsuccessful, and we were all forced to eat large quantities of candy. All but BIL-san, anyway; he alone had the willpower to resist.

As usual, we camped near the Empire Mall in Sioux Falls and managed to squeeze in a little shopping between trips to restaurants. We saw many entertaining fashions, most of them foot-related for some reason. First came the Foot Tube, which is a tube top for your foot. It’s just a circle of material meant to make slipping into your open-toed sandals a little easier. We were also introduced to the Toe Sock, which covers your toes but not your heel and is suitable for pairing with closed-toe sandals. Foot Tubes are available in a variety of colors (including neon!), while the Toe Socks seemed to be mostly nylons.

How do such things get invented after thousands of years of footwear evolution? You’ve got to wonder if someone was simply pulling on a holey sock one day, noticed which part of the foot stayed covered, and said, “Hmm, maybe I could make this decrepit rag into a fashion, or at least a fad.”

My favorite foot accessory turned out to be the Foot Thong, or Foot Doily, as I call it. Foot Doilies are bits of crocheted, macramae-ed or beaded material that you drape over the instep of your bare foot for decoration, or for when you set an elegant cup of tea on your foot. Secure with an elastic loop over a toe and one behind the heel, and voila! That’s it. Maybe they prevent sunburn or something. But so would a squirt of Coppertone, and I think it would chafe less. Of course, I’m notorious for my lack of fashion sense, so I could just be missing the point here.

We managed to make our own fun even without the doilies. When we weren’t munching, and sometimes even when we were, we played silly word games and pawed the contents of our Easter baskets. In addition to candy, I received items as varied as washable suede gardening gloves, books on tape, a shower curtain liner and a book of crossword puzzles.

I also had the pleasure of borrowing the first two seasons’ worth of The X-Files on DVD from Sister-san, which ought to keep me amused for quite a few evenings. I used to have a good-sized crush on Agent Mulder, the handsome, brooding FBI agent played by David Duchovny. I was really into the show until Mulder was abducted and snuffed by aliens (or maybe it was the government), then came back to life for further contract negotiations. Rising from the dead is OK if you’re, say, the Son of God, but for TV characters it’s just not cool. I quit watching the show after the resurrection. Which still leaves me four or five more seasons to revisit before things start getting . . . spooky.

I had the additional pleasure of presenting Mother Media with several varieties of Marshmallow Peeps. She and her sisters actually eat those indestructible pastel horrors! And they don’t like ‘em fresh, they like ‘em slightly stale and crunchy. They’re probably chowing down right now, in fact. I’m a junk-food junkie to the core, but even I cannot stomach Peeps. Hats off to those who can.

I returned from my sojourn to find tulips cautiously poking their heads up on the borders of the vast, manicured lawns at Sensational Acres. Guess it’s time to take the lawnmower in for its yearly checkup. I’m in the process of refinancing the mortgage, too, and received welcome news about the appraisal I had done last week. Sensational Acres is a hot property! And finally, an ex-husband-related problem seems to be on its way to getting resolved at long last, so I’m pretty happy about that. All in all, an auspicious start to spring!

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