Overthunk

Some habits persist, and some come and go. Although my driving instructor bud tells me it's terribly dangerous, I must confess that I've been creating a new habit over the past few months: driving unshod. I can't seem to get home through the all-too-long afternoon commute with my shoes still on. Really, this is just an extension of my lifelong practice of eschewing shoes as often as I can. As a kid, I would refuse shoes to ridiculous levels: Hey! Let's see which barefoot kid can stand on the oven-hot Texas summer baked concrete the longest! Hey! Let's walk barefoot across Grandaddy's cow pasture full of torturous stickers to get to the pony that lives next door! How about over and over, for years!? I'm not quite that ridiculous about it anymore, but even now, the callouses on my feet are probably at least 1/4 inch thick (which was my handy excuse to the adult remedial involuntary driving lesson -- "my feet are like shoes"). Fifteen or twenty secon...

The pugcupine is rumoured not to exist, but know all ye by these presents that I removed about the FIFTH black pugcupine quill from deep within the skin of the sole of my right foot as it was burrowing deeper and deeper. Deceptive are these quills, for they look like single regular black dog hairs, but somehow they penetrate into the skin as I shamble about here shoeless in this pseudo-redneck dwelling like the sort of hick that I am. Sure, I could stop the madness by just wearing shoes around here, but that is nigh unthinkable. Just keep in mind that the ancestors of the hound shown here once had truck with quilled rodents. They MUST have done.