Caution

Jack had his end of the year parent teacher meeting a few weeks ago. The kid's doing just fine in case you were worried. His teacher says he's often passive in conflict situations, and we should allow him to solve more of his own problems. You know, to build confidence in this arena. I know she means, let him punch a kid in the face once of twice for taking his toy, just to see what happens. But I figure it's good for him to be more autonomous in other areas too. So I've been trying to get him to get himself dressed, pick his own clothes, blah, blah, blah. He's a boy, so 90% of the time he doesn't care what he wears. My friends with girls say outfit changing happens 3-100 times a day. Around here, we're lucky if we can get him out of his jammies. "Why would I take off these super comfortable clothes to put on other clothes just to play?" He's right too, but SOMEONE around here is a stickler for the rules and not walking around looking like a hobo. Hint: it's not me. 


To that end, I took him with me to get some things he needed for school. This is what happens when you let a four year old pick out his own water shoes: 

This makes me question if he's actually my child. My eyes are burning from their hideousness. And of course he wants to wear them every day now. ALL THE TIME. FML. (that was for you Nipper Knapp). He might as well have just punched me in the face. 

I've got my wax wings and I'm ready to fly!

Ok, I admit I'm not always the most practical when it comes to fashion, and that's particularly true when it comes to shoes. For most of my life I've been willing to suffer for the right pair. When I was in college in San Francisco, I would walk the mile uphill to school in my high heel tennis shoes that I thought made me look just like a fly girl (not with all the hot pants and eyelashes in the world have I ever looked like a fly girl). In fact, I didn't own a pair of flats other than flip flops until I got pregnant with Jack. I wore heels everyday. 


My back started hurting just typing that sentence. I'm not sure how or why I was able to go through an entire decade teetering on stilts. I don't remember anything hurting, but I'm sure it did. Now if I wear heels for work or even an audition, my back hurts, my feet hurts, and I feel CRANKY! 


This brings me to the embarrassing truth about my health habits. When I lived in San Francisco, I was actually pretty fit. This was due in part to not having a car and walking everywhere, and in part to the masochistic relationship I had with an adrenalin junkie we'll call Space Cadet 1. We ran, we rollerbladed, we snowboarded, we did bikram yoga three hours a day. There was rock climbing, and day hikes, and all kinds of microfleece and gore tex in my life back then. Mercifully we broke up and I moved to LA, land of sundresses and flip flops, where I promptly stopped working out all together. It was like I flipped a switch. No yoga, no bike rides. One time I tried to walk home from the Beverly Center, and felt like I was on the Bhutan death march. 

So over the years when I visited a gym, or say went on a trip to Europe where I needed comfortable walking shoes, I wore chucks, or these really cute puma maryjanes. Most of the time, I wore boots, which I saw as a safe flat alternative to heels that didn't make me look frumpy. I suffered. 


A few weeks before Christmas Nipper's cousin's wife Keri started a biggest loser challenge on her blog "my year started tuesday night". I said "I'm in" and then didn't give it another thought as I ate my weight in dark chocolate pecan meltaways over Christmas. Then came the first weigh in day. Uhm, holy shit. I laced up my chucks and headed for the gym. I got on the treadmill and started running. My completely out of shape body fueled by vanity, and competition, and chocolate pecan meltaways, rebelled with every step. It's not wind, I felt like my lungs could do it. Trouble was, I was running in what is basically cardboard flaps with a little cotton duck sewn on. Every step was torture, and when I got home, my calfs were on fire. 


The next day Nipper and I went to a schmancy running store in Brentwood, where I'm sorry, but everyone is SO white. I pushed past all the ladies in their white terry cloth track suits and fake birkin bags, and the 50 year old men dressed in their $200 jeans that their 2nd wives bought them and their baseball caps to cover reality, to find my perfect shoe. After the kid measured my foot and watched me walk to see what my foot does, I told him to show me all the shoes that would be good for my feet, but only those that come in pink. He looked up at me and then I said "Yeah, I'm totally not kidding, sorry, I'm that idiot". 


He obliged, bringing me 4 different pink pair for my particular kind of foot. There was a hot pink pair on the wall with orange trim that apparently wasn't right for my gate. I thought about asking him if I could try it, but I didn't want to press my luck. The first pair was too soft, the second pair was too stiff, the third pair was just right. I didn't try on the fourth pair, because it was uglier than Diego Rivera in the morning, and I'd rather run cripple foot in my maryjanes than wear anything that ugly...

So here they are. Shiny! Pink! COMFORTABLE! I had no idea my feet could not hurt this much. What a dope.