The Right to Shoes

 "You should sell your shoes on eBay," Andy said the other day.

 Pardonnez moi?!?

"Yeah," he said, assuming my look of shocked confusion must mean I'd misunderstood. "You should sell them. Make a little cash."

 Um, no.

First off, let me state that things are not so dire around here that we are auctioning off our belongings to make ends meet. I'm not sure what motivated Andy to suggest such a ludicrous notion such as me getting rid of my 20+ pairs of shoes. Although, it is true, I'm not a girl who likes excess. If something doesn't have a specific purpose in my life, I get rid of it. I try to live by the William Morris quote: "Have nothing in your house which you do not consider either beautiful or useful." 

As much as it pains me, the majority of my shoes never see the light of day anymore. During any given week, my footwear is limited to my monster snow boots and a pair of sensible Dansko sport clogs. If I'm feeling dressy, I'm more apt to grab my green Dansko clogs than a pair of heels or snappy flats.

But I'm certainly not ready to post my shoes on eBay just because they've become little more than dust magnets. There's really no reason to. After all, these are not nice shoes.

I mean, I think they're lovely . . . but it's not like I have a collection of Jimmy Choos and Manolo Blahniks hanging out in my closet. The majority of my shoes are Target's finest, which is to say, I didn't pay more than $20 for them. That means I've invested just $400 in my collection of mostly useless (and worthless) shoes; not nearly as shocking as Carrie Bradshaw's realization in Sex and the City that she's spent $40,000 on her rather valuable shoe collection.

 

I mean, it would be great to have an extra $400 floating around right about now.  But it's not such a big amount that I'm going to berate myself over not investing those funds in, say, my retirement account. A girl has a right to shoes, doesn't she?

I hate that I fall into the cliches of "all women love shoes", but I do love them, so why fight it. The question is, why? Why have I been drawn to shoes during my early adult years like a moth to the flame?

There's definitely a certain amount of escapism associated with a pair of shoes.  Just think of where Dorothy got by clicking her heels together in her ruby slippers. Think of what befell Cinderella when she was hobnobbing around in her glass slippers. Since we were little girls, we were taught that a pair of shoes has the ability to not only protect our feet from a bumpy, rocky road, but to literally transport us to different worlds.

My black pumps make me feel confident and professional. My red shoes are all about sass and good times.On the flip side of the coin, my hiking boots just make my feet feel real heavy.    

The shoes hold memories too. There's the pink slingbacks I bought on Oxford Street to wear to High Tea at the Ritz. The green shoes I bought on my way home from work on day in London. The pink shoes I wore to a friend's wedding.

Then there's that never ending quest to find the pair of shoes that perfectly compliments a new dress or outfit. I've bought at least three pairs of shoes to specifically match a single sundress and still haven't quite found the right match yet. 

So get rid of my dusty pile of shoes?

Never.

I might need them someday.

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Daylights Savings Time and Wardrobe Malfunctions

When it comes to working from home, I have a couple rules. They have nothing to do with goals or time management. In fact, they’re so simple, they sound kind of silly.

Rule# 1: Get up at a decent hour every day. Preferably, the same decent hour every day. Coincidently, following this rule is dependent on me going to bed at a reasonable hour each night as well.

Rule # 2: Put some pants on.

As you might have guessed, lately I have not been following either rule with any great success. Something about our internet outage, which continues to drag on -- I’m currently using an archaic dial-up connection . . . Internet forever! -- leaves me feeling out of touch and slightly picked on. With the barrier of not having ready access to the internet making it difficult to communicate and research, I see no real need to spring out of bed each morning: might as well let the day unfold organically until we’re back at full capacity.

And then there’s the other fact: it is so very dark in the mornings. Andy leaves the house before 7 each morning and has taken to building a fire before he goes. As the fire crackles in the stove and the little house shakes off its nightly chill, it’s hard not burrow under the covers and fall into a final, especially cozy, slumber before starting the day. Perhaps when we shed daylight savings time this weekend, I’ll be able to pull myself out of bed at a decent hour (aka, anytime before 8), but during our current run of dark mornings and grey days, sleeping in seems inevitable.

Each morning, after I’ve broken rule #1, I proceed to break rule #2. While rule #1 exists because I firmly believe a good start to the day will buoy you through anything else the day throws at you, rule #2 exists because I’m also a firm believer that what you wear each day influences your reactions to the world around you. Regardless of what I accomplish while wearing a bathrobe, the fact that I was wearing a bathrobe while I did it kind of makes me feel like an under-employed ninny. I try to sit down in front of the computer every day, fully clothed in something I’d go out in public in. But lately I’ve taken to wearing my roomiest jeans and an old bleach-stained sweatshirt or ancient Polarfleece pullover. Not exactly the outfit of champions.

There are a couple reasons for my slovenly wear as of late. Since our firewood delivery last month, I spend about an hour every afternoon stacking wood, a filthy chore. I see no reason to get dressed twice in one day (let’s just be happy I managed to pull it off once, okay?) so I’ve gravitated towards my work grubs. That also might have a little something to do with the fact I can only seem to find work grubs in my wardrobe.

I’ve never been someone with an overabundance of clothes. I wear things until they’re shot. In college, my roommates used to throw my hole-y socks away because they knew I’d keep wearing the socks until they literally disintegrated. Because I’ve stayed the same size since hitting puberty (albeit, with a slight thickening in the thighs and upper arms in recent years) much of my clothing is a good decade old.

Right now all of my mildly fashionable jeans are all sporting a rip at the tippy-top of the right back pocket. (Maybe go up a size next time, eh?)

My eight-year-old belt finally frayed into uselessness a couple days back. All my socks have holes in the heels. When most people say they have nothing to wear, they’re usually being dramatic.

When I say I have nothing to wear, it’s because it’s the truth.

Who knew two little rules could be so tricky to keep? However, I’m determined to get back on track. After all, a well-rested slob is only good company for so long.

Do you have any tricks for getting going each morning? Any rules you live by?

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My sweaters miss me

If I was the kind of person who made fashion statements, sweaters would be an italicized, bolded part of whatever that statement might be.

Since before I can remember, sweaters have been a staple in my wardrobe. As a March baby in northern Minnesota, my parents had plenty of time before summer's arrival to swaddle me in sweaters during infancy. The sweater trend continued through childhood and today my hangers and drawer still overflow with a rainbow of sweaters in all sorts of fibers: wool, cashmere, angora, mohair, cotton, even some *gasp* acrylic fibers.

A few years back, I started to take my own knitting a little more seriously. Now there seems to be a trend towards my knitting a sweater each winter.

Although I love the opportunity summer provides for wearing swingy skirts and dresses and ridiculous shoes, I really feel most like myself when I'm wearing a sweater.

Each morning I open up my drawers to determine what I'll be wearing. And each morning I glimpse a stack of sweaters tucked away in the drawer's far corner. I can't help running my fingers over their familiar fuzziness. Ever so briefly, I wonder if I should pull one out to wear before I realize it's too blasted hot to even think about wearing a sweater. I can't help but miss them. I miss the snuggly way they cling to my body. I miss their breathability. I'm pretty sure they miss me too. 

Minnesotans might complain about the cold, but the truth is, I'd take the cold over tropical dew points any day. I'd rather have a sweater on then be sweltering in my swimsuit. 

It's moving into my favorite part of the year. Berries are ripe, the garden's reaching harvest point, and soon? Soon it'll be sweater season again.

What's your favorite piece of clothing? Happy Monday!

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Dressing to Impress

I believe in the power of fashion. I believe looking nice and together and wearing clothes that fit and flatter will help your case in getting ahead in life. I also believe in comfort, which is why occasionally you'll still find me dressed like a college freshman on laundry day.

Take this weekend for instance. It's been a drizzly string of days with nothing but bad internet so I saw no reason not to pull on my ratty sweatpants with the words "Alpha Chi" (the name of a dorm wing I lived in during college) emblazoned on the hiney, a loose-fitting t-shirt, and a Hard Rock Cafe Dublin sweatshirt I bought in 2005 when it started snowing on me in Ireland. (You can take the girl out of Minnesota but you can't take the snow out of . . . wait, I never did figure out how to make that saying clever and applicable for this setting.)

The sweatshirt in its infancy

But remember how it's been rainy around here? Over the weekend, I ran out of indoor tasks and without being able to work in the gardens, I felt a little lost. So I decided to pop over to work for a minute yesterday to deliver some boxes.

When I pulled up to the gate at work, I discovered I'd been locked out. (Yes, I drove all by myself!) Because the museum leases the property from a federal agency, both the feds and the museum peeps have separate locks on the gate. (The feds use a universal key system, so if they gave us the key to their gate padlock, they'd give us the key to a whole lot of other things too.) So there's one padlock for each end of the chain . . . not exactly rocket science. Except when there are new employees, or if another agency is working in collaboration with our feds, sometimes they get confused by this complex lock system and end up locking us out. Which is exactly what happened.

I spent the first half hour minutes of the three hours I'd planned to spend at the museum, on the phone, trying to get someone over to unlock the gate.While I cradled the phone between my shoulder and chin, I looked around to see what creature was making such a ruckus in the other room. Which is when I spied a squirrel dancing across the rafters.

After forty minutes the gate was open and the squirrel had gone on his merry little way. With the gate open, I hauled my load into the museum and started working away. Which is when all the people started showing up.

First a family with artifacts they wanted to donated. Then some volunteers dropping off more boxes. And another volunteer who wanted to test the alarm system and troubleshoot some electrical problems.

"Man, I better get out of here before anyone else shows up," I thought to myself. But I really wanted to finish the project I was working on. Which is when two separate groups of community members showed up to wander the grounds. Since one of the said individuals helped get the museum a large grant without which the museum would not exist, I was in no position to kick them out. And besides, remember the gate? I can't leave and lock up until everyone's cleared out of the parking lot anyway.

Once everyone had cleared out, the agency who'd locked us out and who had been using our parking lot, pulled up to the dock in their boats. For the next half hour, they worked to load their boats on trailers, effectively blocking the driveway and cutting off my escape route!

5 and a half hours later, it was after 4 p.m. and I'd only had a granola bar for lunch. Could it get any worse?

I looked down.

I'd been wearing my ratty sweats the entire time.

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Word(less?) Wednesday: What I Wore

I'm always stumbling upon fun, cute "what I wore" posts on the blogsphere.Unless we're considering L.L. Bean wool pants fashionable, my lifestyle doesn't really lend itself to "fun and cute" what I wore posts, but when I was looking over pictures from the past week, I realized last Thursday I'd actually done a pretty good job of capturing what I'd wore. 

It started out pretty well. It was so warm and sunny in the house on Thursday, I actually had to put on a lightweight summery top I pulled off the Kohl's clearance rack last summer.

The delightful weather inspired Andy and I to have the season's first cookout. Of course, as soon as we got over to the campground, the sun went behind the cloud. Enter the ancient polarfleece Old Navy pullover and my North Face down vest. Although it's hard to tell, yes, I am totally rocking a brown top and a black vest in this picture.

The only issue with the polarfleece/vest combo is that they're both made out of rather "melt-worthy" materials. Since I didn't fancy melting while I tended the campfire beans, I pulled on one of Andy's wool shirts (probably Woolrich). For a further fashion statement, I made sure my handknit hat (circa X-mas 2009) masked my eyes. And let's not forget my mud-stained Canyon River jeans and those graceful waterproof hiking boots (L.L. Bean)! Cute eh? ;D

Happy Wednesday!

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Boots: a mail-order bride sort of love affair

This is my foot:

Nothing too exciting. Wears between a size 7.5 and 8, depending on the brand. Often found clad in wool socks.

I enjoy sticking shoes on that not-so-exciting foot. I mean really enjoy sticking shoes on it. As cliche as it is, as much as it seems like "this is my brain on Sex and the City", I really, really like shoes. Sometimes I have to strategically plan my trips to Target to avoid passing the shoe aisles to guarantee I won't walk out of the store with a $20.00 pair of questionable quality shoes under my arm. You know, like this:

Practicality is not to be reckoned with when it comes to the shoe fetish. It is a sick, sick love affair. On more than one occasion, I've been caught wearing shoes which I know hurt me. Hello knee pain:

In my office working days, I consistently crammed my feet into shoes which are just a teensy, weensy bit too small.

I put up with an awful for the sake of footwear, that is, until it comes to actual down-to-earth, "you need this so your feet don't freeze and fall off" footwear. Anyone who's read this blog for a while knows that I have yet to come to terms with the less than cute reality of good outdoors apparel. Give me $100 to spend on shoes and I'll come back with some sort of configuration of heels, flats, and sandals.

Which explains why I've been tromping around for the last seven or eight winters in these:

These boots are the result of a rather flabbergasting shoe trip. They are fine boots, but they are two sizes too big. Still, I couldn't be persuaded to replace them. Who wants to spend a $100 on shoes and just come back with some clunky ol' winter boots?!

Knowing this, Andy decided to take matters into his own hands. On Saturday, he brought home these:

They're the right size for my foot, much warmer than my old boots, yet, I hemmed and hawed over the new boots. I wondered if they might just be a little too snug. (Keep in mind that I have often worn shoes that make my feet bleed during the "break-in" process with little to no complaining.) Were they a little too clunky? Did I care for the way they looked? Did they make me walk funny? Gosh, I just didn't know if they would work. Maybe they would . . .

It struck me that if I love frivolous shoes in a head over heels, love at first sort of way, my feelings towards practical footwear are more akin to a "mail-order bride" kind of affection:
You think you can just stick it out the way it is. It's really not that bad, after all. No matter how frequently you tell yourself and others that "you're fine," there's always that niggling knowledge in the back of your mind that things could be better. When you finally muster up the near to make a change, there's apprehension and some angst. And you're not so sure about things when the new person (boots) show up on scene, Yet, slowly you warm to each other and over time you form a partnership where you wonder what you ever did without the other.

Sometimes you need things thrust upon you to really get what you need.

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Happily Ever After? What's Wrong With Fairy-Tale Weddings

Marriage may be at an all time low in the United States, but it doesn't seem the twenty-somethings of the country have gotten that message. I'm not be getting married, which pretty much means I'm standing still while a stampede of brides-to-be course around me. Starting to feel like a tinny, broken record of "Congratulations!" here.

I'm not opposed to marriage in the least. But over the years, I've grown increasingly apprehensive of the notion that we need just wrap ourselves in a "let's get married and have babies" bandage to reach "happily ever after." For half of us, our marriages won't last a lifetime. Contrary to popular belief, problems to any potential union aren't vanquished with the magic words "I do." So I tread carefully with the whole marriage issue.

Still, I'm a girl. I get the excitement that goes into planning a wedding with all the decisions about cake, dresses, and colors. If we can keep our inner-Bridezillas at bay, I think planning a wedding sounds like a pretty good time.

But I guess I'd forgotten that the stampede of brides-to be rushing past me spent as much, if not more time, watching Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid, and Aladdin, as me. And that means that this whole generation of girls grew up with Disney's female leads, Belle, Ariel, and Jasmine, as their style inspirations. I never realized the biggest first name in the wedding dress industry isn't "Vera" or Vivienne," but "Walt."

This past week, Disney announced its "Fairy Tale Wedding" dress line which offer seven dresses all inspired from dresses worn by animated characters from Disney films. And the dresses aren't bad. Some of them are really quite pretty. But I find something discomfiting in the amount of suspended reality that's involved with slipping into one of these dresses.

Can I say something? It does not bode well if you are getting married solely so you can be princess for the day. A wedding's meant to be a celebration of two people committing to a life together. It's not supposed to be your last shot at the great Halloween costume you never had. This latest dress collection just seems mildly unhealthy for the concept of marriage.

But I could be wrong. . . . Maybe it really is true love if you can get your fiance to stand at the alter looking like this: 

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Free Falling Fashion

I’ve always had a fleeting interest in fashion. This is not to say that I’m fashion forward. I’m anything but.

But in my elementary school days, I always had a soft spot for fashionista Stacy from the Babysitter Club book series. This can perhaps explain why I’d occasionally run around in a swimsuit and a mini-skirt or a belted over-sized, hand-painted t-shirt with tights, when I was in the 8-11 age range. After suffering a plaid flannel epidemic in my early teen years, my fashion sense calmed down into unadventurous sweaters and jeans trend which continues to this day. Still, I remain drawn to t.v. shows like Project Runway and What Not to Wear like a crow is to shiny objects.

In high school, I did a major project on the evolution of British clothing from 1066-1952. The project forced me to really look at clothing and determine why we wear what we wear (socioeconomic circumstances, style, perceived status, etc.), which, admittedly, is easier to do in the context of historical clothing than it is in this era of readily available fabric and discount fashion. It was a fun project and one that still effects my outlook on life, especially when a wonderful mess of beautiful dresses are being paraded in front of me like at Tuesday’s performance of Wicked.

To me, fashion is a fun, puzzling supplement to life. I have no time (or money) for designer labels, but I still like to ponder whether I’m more of a Dior or a Prada sort of girl. I have to admit that I don’t really understand fashion shoots. Or why models always look angry. When all is said and done, I’m kind of flunking at fashion.

For one thing, buying any sort of clothing tends to be like pulling teeth for me. I’d happily wear my current (teeny) wardrobe until starts to self-destruct before buying a new bit of clothing. When I do finally buy a new shirt, it usually comes off the clearance rack. Oh, how Meryl Strep’s character in The Devil Wears Prada would shutter!

But there’s been one fashion item I’ve never had a problem purchasing: shoes. I have more shoes than I have outfits to go with them.

So what does it mean when my main shoe purchase this autumn will probably look like this? What does it say about me, my environment, my livelihood?

Perhaps these boots are whispering: "High heels look ridiculous where you live. You wear a t-shirt to work every day. Give it up."

It’s either time to get out of the woods, or finally admit that fashion for me will forever stay in my collection of lovely coffee table fashion books.

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