Tuesday, September 16, 2003

my elf name is blisters

This is why I only wear clogs anymore.

This morning, I decided that I was going to stop being such a slob and dress up nicely for work. I mean, usually I dress up my body for work (when I'm not in scrubs), but also usually, anything below the ankles is purely comfort-driven. Clogs, Merrells, sneaks, what have you. But for today, I wanted to wear my nice shoes. And for some reason, the nice shoes that I wanted to wear were the Kenneth Cole Reaction shoes that I got one half-size too small at the overstock shoe outlet near my apartment. (I wear a size 6. They only had 6.5 and 5.5 in stock. What in the world possessed me to get the 5.5 I have no clue. Maybe it was misguided small-foot vanity. In fact, it was almost certainly vanity. Sad, really.)

I thought I was doing OK for the first part of the day, but then the blisters started popping up on the backs of my heels. You know how new shoes can have these very stiff heel backs? You know how shoes that are half a size too small can compound the problem? So by the time I got to the hospital, I had folded down the backs of the shoes and was wearing them as slides. But then the toe blisters started. There's just not as much real estate in a nice shoe as there is in a clog. I was used to loft space and now was getting an 8-foot ceiling. My toes were getting smushed from all directions.

One of the nicer nurses offered me some solutions, going as far as to actually apply ointment to my foot blisters (I told her that Band-Aids would suffice, but she gave me a Fashion Police frown and told me that it would be tacky). Still, this was a painful day. I came home and kicked off the damn shoes, swearing to go back to clogs again tomorrow. The great thing about clogs is that you never think about the fact that you're wearing clogs. In fact, you never think about your shoes or feet at all.

As if to add insult to injury, the soles of my pain-shoes were of the black rubber variety, which (I noticed when I came home) left scuff marks all over the hard wood floor, tracing my path between bedroom, bathroom and out the door as I was getting ready for work this morning. This is why they insist you wear sneakers in gym class. The scuff marks rubbed off easily enough, but damn, shoes. Haven't you given me enough problems for one day?