on feet and other things of interest

Linette, Clementine and I spent the weekend up north, staying with friends that had rented a cabin in East Jordan, on the shores of Lake Charlevoix’s “south arm.” Not much of interest happened, which was good. It was laid back. We just floated around in the water, trying not to let our feet get sliced to meaty ribbons by the zebra mussels, ate great food and sat around talking. No one cried. No friendships were dissolved. There was only love.

Actually, there was a bit of drama, but it was good drama. You see, one of the people there, the nine year old daughter of a friend, very well might have been killed if she hadn’t gone on vacation with us. While she was at the cabin, her bedroom was hit by lightening. The roof fell in, and the resulting fire destroyed almost everything… She got to see pictures of her smoldering room on television… As you can imagine, we were all very happy that she was given the opportunity to live on and reach her full potential… In completely unrelated news, she gave me a pedicure.

Yes. God apparently spared her so that she could give me, and a few other folks, French pedicures. (“French” pedicures are the ones where they paint the tips of your nails white, so as not to show the dirt, slime and scuzz beneath them. In this image, in case you can’t tell, she’s covering her nose so as not to inhale molecules from my diseased feet.) I found that funny.

There was much talk of feet this weekend. People sat in the hot tub (the oldest operating hot tub in North America) and compared feet. People photographed each other’s feet. There were playful insults about bunyons, warts, boils, open sores and other disgusting defects. Linette told everyone that my feet looked like hands. Someone else said that I should cut off my fingers and replace them with my toes. I challenged the nine year old to a “Beautiful Foot Contest” and won handily. (The second picture here is of a toe-off between me (at the bottom) and another French pedicure victim. Notice my disturbingly-long toes.)

Linette and I talked about staying an extra day, as long as we’d driven all that way, and spending the night somewhere like Petosky, but we ended up running back to Ypsi so that we could each address our various, life-draining projects. Between coordinating the Shadow Art Fair and the Ypsi Mayoral Debate, I’m barely holding things together, and she’s busier than I am. My guess is that both of my eyes will have exploded again by the end of July, and I suspect that something equally as troubling will have happened to Linette.

Anyway, I’m so busy that I’m not going to be able to write anything else tonight. No congratulations letter to my old friend Gillian who was mentioned in today’s New York Times by William Safire. No RSVP’ing to the Hamtramck Star’s Jimmy Hoffa search party. No forwarding of the People for the American Way’s petition to save the Voting Rights Act. No venomous posting about the successful Republican effort to keep the minimum wage at $5.15 an hour. Sorry, everyone. I promise to do better in the future.