Slippers dangereuse

Boxing day! I have nice memories of this day back home in Canada. Many people would hold Open Houses. These "parties" were very casual and usually included left-overs from the Christmas celebrations - pickled eggs, stuffed eggs, boxed chocolates, nuts, Christmas cookies, Christmas cake (yuck) and booze. Presents would be on display - clothing in the boxes with the wrapping paper still partially on. You'd look at the presents and ooh and aaahh and then eat a little bit, have a drink and go on to the next Open House.

Richard gave me a pair of Beatrix Ong slippers - they are beautiful, hand made and expensive, but don't fit at all. He is hoping I can get inserts that will make them fit but I fear the gap is too large in every sense. If they were just a pair of regular slippers, I'd fake it to make him happy, but these are tres chere and he ordered them from a boutique in London. I'd love to wear them, but they fall off my feet with every step and I can walk out of them. With my wobbliness, they are actually dangerous. But they would be perfect for an Open House display.

I checked the Winnipeg weather and found out it's -8 centigrade but feels like -14 centigrade. According to the Free Press people actually stayed up all night, waiting for retail stores to open with their fantastic Boxing Day sales. So, this is a different kind of day than I remember. Boxing day was definitely a holiday; nothing was open and that is probably why people had the parties. It's likely another lost tradition.

Here, the day after Christmas is the day many people, who I believe are crazy, go to the stores to return gifts. The lines are endless, it's frustrating and totally ridiculous - if you don't have to go on this particular day, why would you do it? Most of the stores give you a month at least for returns. Penney's gives you six months. Nevertheless, you can be sure the return counters have long lines snaking out the door. Particularly at places like Coles. Ugh.

I on the other hand will be scraping floors today. What a joy! After the floor scraping, I'll move back on the window cleaning which is half finished (a specialty of mine). The carpeting people looked at the closet floor and said that every bump on the floor would be perceptible under the carpet. I pointed out the bumps because I hoped they would offer to scrape them off with some kind of fancy scraping device. No such luck.