I woke up to the neighborhood covered in a sheet of snow – the first snow of the year. As pretty as it was… I new almost immediately that I would have to do one of my most dreaded things of the year: go down to the basement and dig out the winter boots.

It’s not that the trip to the basement is that bad in and of itself (I do go down there regularly to wash and dry laundry), although I have to pass the litterboxes on the way. Nor is the digging around in the gray plastic bin that holds out of season shoes and other bits of things.

The real issue is the process I have to go through with my boots to make sure that no mice has nestled deep within the fuzzy hollows of my boots and made itself a cozy home.

So I found them… turned them over… banged the mess out of them… slowly unzipped them… timidly dug my hands in… and made sure there were no creatures lurking deep within my boots.

I do this annually.

So I am irrationally afraid of mice in the bottoms of my boots. How about you?

Topics: psychology, outdoors, insects, cold, winter, snow, scared, mice, boots, fear, routine, basement, yucky, annual jobs