Crappiest day of the month so far- so much so that I have cried no less than 3 or 4 times today.  You would think me a mental patient.  The first time I cried was about lunch time and I got on the treadmill to have that cry.  I figured the walking/running/exercise thing might be helpful.  I can’t even remember what I was crying about.  Honestly.  So, I looked back to last month when I was writing about my crappiest day, and it was on the 22nd of July.   Today is the end of the 19th day of August, so it has been– get this:  shocker- about 28 days since my last crappiest day of the month.  Notice a trend here?   I don’t have a period anymore, but apparently I still have a fucking cycle-  I just don’t get relief at the end of it.

I feel like a balloon that needs to pop– figuratively and literally.  Literally, because I have the beastly menopause symptom known as bloating.  If you think you’ve been bloated before, and you’ve not made it to perimenopause– you have not experienced the mother of all bloating.  Even your underpants feel tight.  It feels like you gained 5 pounds and it’s all in your middle.  Muffin top? No, this is more like a giant souffle that overran your waistband.  And trying to suck it in like you used to be able to pretend you could do– don’t even think about it.  You can suck something in, but don’t make the mistake of turning sideways and looking into a mirror.

Yesterday was almost as bad.  I was driving Al to REI to get his hiking gear.  This is my twenty year old who does not have a job or go to school or do anything really productive right now.  I am more than willing to buy him hiking and survival gear from REI because I am trying to encourage him to walk away from me… and yes– survive.  Symbolic?   I think, yes.  But no, really, he does sort of plan to do a thru hike of some sort, or become an au pair in Holland, or backpack across Europe sometime in the fuzzy future.  But, I digress.  So, on the way, he asks me if I ever have a day when I feel uncomfortable in my own skin and of course I think he is reading my mind, but I say, “yes, I feel that way right now.”  I was having one of those bad hair, don’t look in the mirror days, feeling awfully bloated yesterday, too, and longing for a waistline again and some of those new platform stilettos.  I wonder if there is some sort of inverse relationship going on there.

So, I suggested we go by DSW, which is a giant shoe store.  I am not sure what DSW stands for, but I think the S & the W stand for shoe warehouse.  It should be called GSW-MWS [Giant Store Warehouse of Mostly Women’s Shoes] since Al noted that only about 1/5 or less of the floor space is devoted to men’s and children’s shoes.  All the rest of that acreage is women’s shoes. He was looking for a certain kind of toe shoes for running on rocks and I was in search of some stacked stilettos that might make me feel sexy again.

First of all, you must know that I have a wide foot.  It’s rather pretty, but sort of platypus-like in its shape, and so shoes that fit in the width don’t always fit in the length or have heels that my foot slips up and out of.  I found a number of suitable pairs, though, because this shoe store has all sizes and widths.  I found this really sharp pair of two-tone heels by, who of all people, but Jessica Simpson.  Let me see if I can find a picture of them:  Okay, well that was an ordeal.  Who knew there were millions of shoe images available for any description of shoe?  So, here is the closest I could come to the shoes I had to have, except mine seemed prettier with a black back and heel and higher, if that is possible.  Seriously, I know they don’t look that intimidating, but they seemed much higher than this, even though they probably weren’t.

I put them on and they looked divine, I mean absolutely lovely, except that my heel did slip a bit, but who’s heel wouldn’t when standing on tippy toes and then trying to walk.  So, I decided to leave my flip-flops in the box and walk in these shoes across the acres of store to a spot all the way on the other side where there is a rack of inserts and gel things to make your shoes fit better and where I last saw Alex, to get his opinion.  If you can, picture me teetering very gingerly across the carpet, trying not to break my ankle or pitch completely forward onto my face.  The sales woman was looking at me with a look of bemusement, so I asked if they also had classes to teach people how to walk in these things.  She just smiled this sort of lackadaisical smile.  By the time I found Alex, I felt as if I had had quite a lower body workout already and my toes were almost completely numb.  I found a pair of gel heel inserts and stuck them in there, only to find they don’t help at all.  Alex thought they looked really nice on my feet [for stripper shoes], but he did note that if I had trouble walking less than four feet in them and for less than 3 minutes in the store, they probably weren’t very practical.  Don’t you hate when your twenty year old blinds you with common sense logic?  I was looking at these works of art on my feet, but also realistically picturing myself trying to walk down the church aisle in my vestments and in these shoes, holding a hymnal, singing, and trying to remain upright or walking on a wood or tile floor without feeling as if I were ice skating.  These shoes with the 4 inch plus heels are so high, it is literally like existing on pointe in toe shoes all day.  I have to hand it to the women who do it.  I am not sure that I could be one of those women for more than an hour or two at a time.  My usual dress up shoes are Clarks, Tevas, and Danskos, and living on the edge for me is a pair of Cole Haans or Donald Pliners.

You might ask, what.. besides menopause, is bringing on this need for heels at this late date?  My sister did when I told her this story on the phone on the way home from our shopping trip.  She said, “Kim, you’re too old to start wearing ‘ho heels now.”  So, I thought about this today, and was surprised at what I came up with.  Only, I can’t tell you because it might embarrass my boyfriend, and no it is not what you are thinking.

Needless to say, though, I now am the proud owner of these cute Tom’s wedges that he admired on my feet last week.  That is as far as I am taking that.