We found an apartment. Sort of. Nothing is definite yet, but we’re hoping for this one. It’s about three times as big as our current apartment, costs three times as much, and has an extra bedroom that we can make into an office. It is, however, the best deal we could find in New Jersey near the train line. The others were smaller for about the same price, and this one includes utilities in the rent.

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This weekend has been awesome. Harding has something called “Spring Sing” every Easter, and it’s this big musical event where over half of the students of Harding put on a song-and-dance show. Parents and grandparents come from all over to pay exhorbitant prices to see their kids dressed up in cheap costumes and glitter, waving jazz hands in the back of a large crowd on a brightly-painted stage. And, afterwards, they can buy videos of it.

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I have exceptionally nice feet. I mean, they won’t be in magazines or shoe commercials anytime soon, but among all the feet I’ve seen in my life, mine are really nice.

So my left shoe was rubbing my heel bloody, and I went into the campus bookstore and was like, “Hey, Becky, would it kill me to walk home barefoot?”

And most people would tell you about all the diseases you could get and all the sharp puncturing objects on the ground and what about that bee you stepped on because you were barefoot when you were seven?

But no: lovable, trustworthy Becky said, “It won’t hurt — and it’s a really nice day for it!” (Because it is. It’s a beautiful day.)

So I did. It’s a 7-minute walk from anywhere useful on campus to my apartment, and I had to watch where I stepped, but I felt so . . . alive. So in touch with everything around me. So (and I’m using this word as it means “in tune with the senses”) sensual. It’s really a rush to walk barefoot in smooth, soft grass and along cracked sidewalks, dancing around pebbles and hopping rough patches.

Then I got home, washed my feet because you really can’t ignore that nagging voice that says “What if you got diseased?!” and put a bandaid on the bloody spot where my shoe rubbed.

All in all, it’s been an excellent day.

When I went to Paris . . . no, let me start again. I was on my way home from Paris. I had the worst day of my life — I was trying to catch a plane home to the States and I was late for it. I cried a lot, had much stress, and waged eternal war against my luggage.

On that day, I lost a few posters I was carrying. I found one of them online — it’s only sold in the Louvre, which is where I bought it. And the airport is where I left it, probably on top of the pay phone where I called my dad collect to say I’d be late getting home and, “Good Lord, do I hate Paris.”

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