Thoughts on... what we can learn from our toes

Ever have a day when you wish you would have just stayed in bed?

You know, those days when the dog wakes you up because it's sick - puking in the corner and when you run over over the put something underneath it to catch it from soiling the carpet, you stub your toe on the bedpost. Yeah, you know what I'm talking about.

From there, it gets better and better. You're late to work, didn't eat breakfast, are half dressed and get into your car to start your daily commute. It's already 100 degrees as you back out of the driveway, reaching for the A/C only to discover - you don't have A/C anymore - so you proceed to roll down your window only to have a bee fly into the car.

After you fail about, giving the bee the worst day of it's life (and incidentally, also causing your neighbor who is watering his lawn to laugh at you hysterically), you proceed to the freeway, with your hair flying in your face, sticking to your lipstick. As you sit at the red light, waiting to turn right onto the on-ramp, the guy behind you starts to lay on his horn, but the sign says, "No turn on red before 8am" so you point to the sign, hoping he understands and, of course, instead, he decides you need a crash course in not-so-creative body language. At this point, you figure, "heck with it!" and proceed to turn right to avoid any more embarrassment and when you finally make it onto the freeway, you're crankier than an old lady with tight underwear. That's when you notice the cop behind you is signaling for you to pull over to give you a ticket for blowing past the "8am" sign. Meanwhile, Mr. Middle Finger cruises past you, laughing hysterically as he goes.

By the time you get to work, you're so far into having a stinky day that everyone skitters out of your way; you and your little black rain cloud make quite a show. And suddenly it dawns on you - it's official: they'd rather hug a kid with a leaking dirty diaper than try to cheer you up.

Ah, yes! Don't you just love those days?

I just had a day like that. It all started in the middle of the night... I had consumed a huge bottle of water a few hours earlier which started it off. I got up, went to the bathroom, came back and proceeded to kick my bed frame with everything my little pinkie toe could muster. After hopping around, doing the "silent scream" dance for 2 minutes, I finally settled back into bed and went to sleep. The next morning I woke up and looked at my toe - it was swollen, didn't feel all that great, but was good enough to walk on, so out the door I went.

Although I didn't participate in any "moving violations"- my whole day seemed to go downhill from there. It wasn't anything big, just lots of little things - the car was almost out of gas, Sarah was asking the same question over and over again, I was late, etc. It was around that time that the pity-party moshers showed and started slamming around the inside of my head. (Some days it's so hard getting those guys to go away!) By the time my day was over, I felt like someone had beat on me - I was mentally worn out. And as I sat on the bed, I pulled off my shoes, then my socks and looked down at my feet and noticed, my pinkie toe (which was now sporting a rich hue of purple and blue) actually looked how I felt emotionally.

Needless to say, it was just my toe and even though it looked as bad as it did - it wasn't broken. The way I whacked that thing, I don't see how it made it through the day without sending up an SOS - but I guess my pinkie toe is much more resilient than I thought it was.

I had to chuckle... I guess there's a lot we can learn from our toes.