zapatos nuevos

i don't know where my poor shoe-buying luck comes from.

i'm the type of person that makes a conscious effort to buy comfortable shoes. i like to walk a lot. i'd much rather walk 20 blocks than take a subway. even when its 10 degrees outside. though when i walked from wall to 14th street on the coldest day of the year i did start to regret it about midway through soho. but i pressed on.

and so, i like shoes that both look pretty and i can walk in. this means flat. i do own 3 pairs of shoes that are heeled. i have worn them an average of 2 times each. so, last year, when it became apparent that i would need a new pair of fancy shoes for a friend's wedding, it did the only logical thing a girl can do. i observed that the new "fad" was these ballerina flat things, and bought the cheapest pair i could find (strangely the cheapest pair was ordered online from urban outfitters). I wore them to the wedding, which i arrived at by car. they were lovely (though i did get a fair amount of criticism from my truck-fixing, creme brule-making roommate for wearing shoes with less than a 2" heel), and fine for the occasion. then the reception began and my feet cramped up!

that hadn't happened since high school, when i would come home after a long saturday spent at speech tournaments, where i was forced to wear heels....maybe it was all the dancing....
a few days later i wore them to work, and took a short walk on my lunch break (in an attempt to find lisa loeb's apartment--an entirely other story), and it happened again. perhaps i wasn't getting enough potassium.

well, the wave of foot cramping continued, and i eventually retired the shoes.
last weekend, i found myself, again, looking for shoes to wear to a wedding-related event (this time an engagement party). i found a lovely pair of $20 flat sandal-ish shoes with a peep toe at target, and grabbed them up. the party was fine. my feet hurt by the end of it, but i had been standing for 3 hours. and, just like last time, i gave the shoes a go at work today. and again, bad news.

by the time i got to work, my right heel had bled through my gray pants. i was the first one to the office, so i stuck my leg in the sink and rinsed the pants out, which worked pretty well.
i spent the morning walking around barefoot, but when i had to make a trip to the bathroom around noon, i put the shoes back on. now the walk to the bathroom from my desk is about 10 feet each way. by the time i came back to my desk, i felt something wet under my left toes. i removed the shoe, once again to discover that a newly formed blister on my big toe was oozing clear puss. i got most of the liquid out of the blister with my handy box of kleenex (or kleenexes--what is the plural of kleenex anyway?).

now i'm just biding my time before i have to walk to the path and then home. i have a bandaid on the back of my heel, but the box only had one in it, and it might not be enough. maybe i'll tape some kleenex behind my ankle too. the oozing toe will just have to ooze away i suppose. at least for today.

tomorrow i'm wearing my starburys to work.