A Sad and Pathetic Tale

Today I had four meetings in three places. This involved walk to public transportation to first two meetings to public transportation to third meeting to walk to fourth meeting to walk to public transportation to walk to home. All this took place upon a landscape covered with copiousness of ice and snow. But everything went swimmingly--good meetings, effective and timely transport--with the exception of the boots.

The boots? you ask, with surprise. But aren't you the queen of boots? Why, yes, I am. There are, as you will remember, the five pairs of black boots, including the styling goretex ones, and then there are the hiking boots, the turquoise and green rainboots S gave me for my birthday, the warm and waterproof lace-up snowboots, and then there are the Timberlands. Or rather, I should say, there were the Timberlands.

I decided, upon contemplating the copiousness of ice and snow, that the styling goretex boots were too high-heeled, the warm and waterproof lace-up snowboots were too warm for a day of meetings, and the Timberlands were ideal. The Timberlands are so old I'm not even going to search for a link, but they are (were) (can you tell where this is going?) the perfect femme-butch boots: brown with solid Vibram soles but a nice point to the toes that gave them a certain je ne sais quois. And they seemed perfect for the conditions of the day.

Off I went in the Timberlands (and parka, hat, and gloves, because I have reached my mid-40s and am no longer vain) (that is, am no longer vain when it is freezing cold, which would be about 1% of the time). And then my foot started to feel funny. Both feet, actually. And I looked down and the solid Vibram soles were somewhat askew. And there was a little chunk taken out of one of them, like it had been bitten.

To make a long story short, as I walked the frozen tundra of city streets, my boots FELL APART ON MY VERY FEET. The entire front half of the left sole dissolved, and the middle of the right sole dissolved, and I left pieces of sole all over the city, and soon I was walking on thin leather, and did I mention the frozen tundra? Luckily I was wearing wool socks, and luckily I had a sense of humor, but by the end of the last piece of walk, in the dark, on the tundra, my feet were very very cold. And wet.

The delightful butch-femme Timberlands are now in the trash.

(Both S and my dad were quite indignant, but the fact is that I bought the boots round about 1992, so I really have no grounds upon which to complain, except that my feet were so incredibly cold. And wet. Which means the aftermath is simply a blog post, not a lawsuit.)