Hiatuses, I have discovered, are proper and necessary when it comes to creativity, particularly my own.  I earned some days off that I had to use before the calendar clips to January 1st, 2014, and have been trying to group them together to give myself long weekends.  I did that last weekend and it was divine.  Glorious idleness overtook me and I enjoyed doing nothing immensely.  Upon my return to the office, my coworkers inquired how I’d spent my days off, what I had been doing, and when I responded with, “nothing,” they stood with mouths agape.  Nothing?  You didn’t do any Christmas shopping?  You didn’t visit friends?  Go to the movies?  No, nothing.

“Nothing”, of course, is never just nothing.  In my case, I caught up with Love #2, Cooking and Baking.  I made Chicken Piccata and Zucchini Risotto.  I made dinner rolls to hold “Taco Joes”* with a side of oven fries.  I sauteed succulent chicken thighs in a spicy, lime and butter sauce and served them alongside Sweet Potato and Corn Hash.  Felt the need to bake and mixed up a batch of Pecan Shortbread** and Black Bean Brownies.  I also spent a lot of hours playing Sims 3.  I hadn’t played in a while and I missed my Sims, controlling their lives and seeing what they could accomplish.  In essence, I relaxed.

Of course, in my rampant quest to relax, I’d overlooked one thing.  Finding my slippers for the cold weather that has settled in for the season.  As a person who has perpetually polar piggies, slippers are a must-have item for the cold months.

A few years ago, the pair of slippers I’d been wearing, a gift from friends in England one Christmas, were wearing out.  The inner lining was tearing apart from the hard sole.  Seams were splitting that’d I’d resewn once before.  It was time for a new pair of slippers.  Mr. Muse wears leather moccasins with sheepskin lining and I wasn’t sure I wanted that same style but I’d had my eye on the Slipper Socks from Acorn.  They were washable, had leather soles and seem to be the answer.  Of course, I wouldn’t be wearing them to bed, as tempting as that sounded to myself.  I’d placed the slipper socks on my Christmas Wish List and come Christmas morning, I’d found that Santa had tucked them under the tree before I awoke.

I wore them with pride.  They were versatile, keeping my feet toasty in the house, though admittedly there were times where I still needed to put a pair of socks on with them, and allowing me to run out to the mailbox to pick up the news or mail.  If they got dirty, which me being me, you can safely assume they did, I could just toss them into the washing machine for a cleanup.  Over the last few years, because of the wearing and the washing, they’ve taken on a curved, sloped appearance, reminiscent of elven shoes without the pointy toes and bells (and I would totally wear those).

This morning as I rolled out of bed and donned my hoodie, my mind went to my slippers.  At least my mind went to where it thought my slippers were.  For years my slippers spent the warmer months encamped under the bed, waiting to be called to action.  I bent down and flailed my hand about, fingers digging into the carpet pile expecting to hit slipper and not carpet.  I was perplexed.  Just where exactly did I store my slippers?

So, here I sit at the dining table, Indian-style, with my toes tucked into my knee-pits to keep warm, sipping my coffee and writing, my brain churning out my plan of action to locate my sloped slippers.  I know they are somewhere.  I’m sure that wherever they are, I stored them there with the thought, “this is a much better place to put these while I don’t need them,” or something to that effect.  I’m apt to do that to myself, which causes me some perplexity and consternation.

I will close this installment of Sunday Morning with a wish that as the cold weather descends upon your location, or for those South of the equator the warmer weather arrives, that you find your slippers – or at least store them in a location that you’ll remember when next you need them.

Do you wear slippers?  

Do you have a favorite pair?  What are they?

Do you put things in places where at the time you think it’s a brilliant storage location but later find that you can’t remember where it is that you put the thing that you could really use right now?

* Recipe is from the Country Ground Beef Cookbook, copyright 1993, page 11
* Recipe is from the 2010 WE Energies Cookie Book, page 13