Heels are a plague on the earth. I'm surprised that heels weren't one of the plagues, actually. Nothing says weeping and gnashing of teeth like the never-ending onslaught of heels.

That's the thing, you see. Heels are never-ending. They have been around for centuries, even on man-type feet -- la, the sheik of powdered wigs and cuffs to keep a hippopotamus in! -- and thus, heels aren't going away anytime soon. I have always grumbled about them, both to myself and to a select and honored few, and the more ardent fans among you know this. Rather, you should know this. All right, well, now you know this. Yet the funny, mad, postgraduate crazyworld thing is, I have actually taken to wearing them. A lot. Okay, almost all the time. And wonder of wonders, locust-miracle of locust-miracles, I'm getting used to them. I, who am taller than your momma. I, who tower enough without towering aids. I, who have grown weary of avoiding what is omnipresent and unending and quite probably damaging, and by that I mean heels. You try finding cute shoes that are lower-by-nature these days. You try attempting to walk for longer than a period of ten minutes in anything remotely cutesy these days. You give me heel-guff and see how long you remain in an uncrippled state these days.

La, but these days are mad all the way around. Everywhere I turn, almost nothing makes sense. Audrey Hepburn and her ballet slippers must be spinning in their toothpick grave.

Fie, fie! Enough of this!

It's time to dredge up some loyalty for the smattering of ardent fans who still remain. Yes, I still see you, all clustered about the screen in the dim, dull, deodorized hope of hearing the faintest sound of whimsy pouring through the mire. (Sound, sight. Same thing.) Yes, it's high time to climb back in the ambient saddle and find something whimsical to start scribbling over. I miss getting whimsical with my ambient self, darn it. I really do. All work and no webbing makes Christa a dull and vacuous lady, and she has had more than enough of all that. She is handing in her papers. She is taking the tough road out. She is changing her name from Kitty to Karen. The C-train has left the station of dust, so all aboard for awesome.

See what I did there? I made myself look both confident and hiptastic, when I'm really having a relatively lousy time of things lately. When I stop to think about it, that is. Only words can do that for you, my darlings. Words can lift you above the generic muck of life. That's why we need them. We also need them to yowl at lousy drivers on the road and to order our sandwiches with. And if we can also end a post-absence scribble with a preposition, so much the better.

Curses. Foiled again.