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I haven't posted here in a good while, so I figured an update was in order. I'm still getting out. I just don't feel the need to post every single outing these days. Unless something newsworthy happens, which isn't often, I just go about my day. I am still buying shoes also. So i figured it was time to do another inventory check. It would also give me a chance to go through and pair down my collection by selling shoes that no longer fit or that I'm not too fond of anymore. And donate shoes that are a little worse for wear and not worth selling. I also wanted to see how close I was on how many pairs I actually had. I was guesstimating that between shoes and boots. I probably had around 100 pairs. A bit of my collection is stored in their original boxes. But the majority of my collection is stored in cardboard boxes and tubs. I would love to have proper shelves to display them or a closet of some kind, but that is just not possible. Between boxes and tubs, I currently have about 7 of them. And now the fun begins. It was fun going through everything and trying stuff on. I even discovered stuff I never new I had. And stuff that has never seen the outside world. Because alot of my shoes are a little too fancy to wear out doing everday task and errands. They need a special occasion to wear them. When it was all said and done, I ended up with about a dozen pairs that would be sold or donated. And my guesstimate was actually pretty close. I came in just a shade under the century mark, including the get rid of pile. So here is the numbers of where my collection stands after pairing it down. Shoes 57 pairs Knee boots or higher 5 pairs ankle boots or shoes 14 pairs Wedges 4 pairs Flats 2 pairs For a total of 82 pairs

I always have color on my toes and fingers. My toes are always in red except for October when they get colored hot pink for Breast Cancer Awareness month, while my fingers are always in pink/clear gel with the little pinkies in a color or design particular to the time of the year. Right now my left pinkie is in silver sparkle and my right pinkie is in gold sparkle. Got compliments this morning on both my mani and pedi both at church and my usual Sunday morning shopping. BTW closed toe red pumps at church, open toe double band, red sandals for my shopping trip. I also was wearing white capris with a red, white and blue top for the Labor Day holiday. I got compliments on my ensemble too!!!! Happy Heeling, bluejay

Definitely doing very hard work this week. I can’t believe I still have another two days to go, and then a week later I comeback to do all this again …!

Haha, one of my favorite musings: "Ya know, it's not always just about doing it the easy way. . . [pregnant pause] Which is a good thing, because we're sure NOT doing it the easy way!" Usually said while lifting something really heavy, and probably unnecessarily.

It was a shame to pitch the sandals after but one wearing, but like I said, evidently I had not seen fit to wear them for a year and a half after I bought them. Had it been a pair of shoes that I just couldn't live without, MAYBE I would have put some effort into trying to repair them, but I've been down this road before, and I've had a 0% success rate at making this kind of repair. The good about these sandals: The shape of the slope up to the heel was one of the best fitting shoes I've ever owned. At 4 1/4", you could definitely tell you were wearing heels, but they felt so natural. I wish all of my shoes fit like that. The bad: Due to their super strappy design, getting those puppies on and feeling right was a several minute process. It did not take a great deal of contemplation to decide to bin them.

I guess we got a little bit off the subject, and I forgot to say that those sandals are adorable! There are definitely things I've done a complete 180º on, and wedges are one of them. I always hated them. Since I was a kid, I hated them. Now, I wear them myself. I wouldn't say they're my favorites, but I don't hate them anymore. I think it has to do with the hugeness factor. Many wedges look like they have an excessive amount of material stuck to the bottoms of your feet. These are neat and trim looking.

Nice sandals - a pity to ditch them. I agree with Cali about a glued repair - assuming of course that the strap has merely pulled away and not fractured. A polyurethane glue (such as Gorilla Glue) would be most suitable.

Leading tour groups is a really fraught business. You simply never know which way they’ll turn. The only safe thing is utter neutrality in just about everything. From the outside it looks like really easy money but it really isn’t.

I have had similar problems with straps pulling out. The glue that holds the strap in dries out and they just pull out. I have lifted the foot bed and re-glued the strap back in. You need a glue that holds up when it gets wet and is strong enough. The toe problem is common in strappy vamps like that , a little tape or band aid will holds that toe in place.

I can't cut my own toenails or do other similar things due to how my thumb is held in place and the removed bones in my hand. So pedicures is the way to go. After a decade + of pedicures, I now enjoy my painted toes. Decades ago, I damaged the root bed of several fingernails, some split all the way to the root bed while other delaminate, split horizontally. They require acrylic to hold them together. Acrylic then needs to be covered with gel. So why not get color. This month they have a cat's eye look.

I do not remember my ex-wife talking about any "image sessions, " and I'm 100% sure that she would have mentioned it if she'd had a bad experience like that. She used to work for an outfit called AirCal in the late 80s, which got bought out by AA, so she was usurped. I'm sure her image today would not be accepted by AA today. She is 61 years old and has decided to stop dyeing her hair, and wears minimal makeup, though she still wears low to mid heels for her job as a lawyer. Maybe AA would embrace her look, but it doesn't matter, as she left them behind some 30 years ago.

I may well have posted these before, as I have owned them for a year and a half. However, it wasn't until this week that I wore them for real. May I present my Schutz Ottavia mules, featuring a 4 1/4" wedge heel that is fairly narrow at the back, measuring a mere 7/8" wide. I chose these sandals to go along with my church outfit last week, but I vetted them the week before, to make sure I wouldn't regret my fashion decision halfway through the church service. Before I wore these very nice looking mules to a public venue, I vetted them with a 1 1/2 mile walk, which is a little longer than normal. The only problem I encountered was that my right little toe had a bad habit of sneaking outside the multiple thin straps. After several adjustments, I got that problem under control, and a few days later, I decided to make these sandals the focus for my church outfit. It turns out they were so comfortable that I kept them on for all of Sunday (was super lazy and didn't do any yardwork). Alas, I was on the phone with a old friend from university Sunday night, pacing back and forth, and I noticed something was amiss. A strap had broken. After careful examination and from past experience, there ain't no fixing that. Since it took me a year and a half from purchase date to actually wearing them, I guess I didn't love them all that much anyway. An early farewell to my new sandals.

I am late posting this, but here is last week's church outfit of the week. I wore my Schutz wedges, which is a first for me in a couple of ways. Firstly, I've never worn white sandals before in public, and secondly, although I've owned these for a couple of years, this is their maiden voyage. Unfortunately, it is also their only voyage, as a strap broke later in the day, and there ain't no repairing that. I'll post more about that misadventure elsewhere.

Fair enough assessment. I am totally biased, since I live in a small town, and people either know me personally, or know me by reputation. I am not aware of any haters. I'm sure they exist, but I don't wanna know.

I still do not understand to this day why some people think that you have to have painted toenails to wear sandals. It seems to be a common fashion "must." Like Cali says, I will never say never, but I don't really like it. I give myself a pedicure every other week, but leave my toenails (and fingernails) bare.

Never say NEVER.

Holy Cow!! I was so off the mark on my response to this or I have changed so much to render what I wrote meaningless! I wrote that: 1) I was not into open toe sandals; 2) I was not into painting my toe nails, and; 3) I was wearing pointed toe heels. So, just today, I was wearing a pair of open-toe espadrilles sandals but my toe nails were not polished (which I having been doing during the summer to wear with open-toe sandals) and I have started moving away from pointed to heels/points as they usually have a narrower toe-box. Thus, in order to compensate for such, I will usually get a 1/2 to full size large and if needed, attach heel backers. I have also started to pass on very cute pointed toe heels knowing that no matter what size I may purchase, the shoe/boot simply will not ever properly fit my foot/feet. Shoe - LC by Lauren Conrad.

I know what you mean. I could probably get away with knee boots with chunky heels - but I’ve also learned that elderly American tour group people are utterly unpredictable and can either like or hate you for the flimsiest and wackiest of reasons.

Not wholly surprising, especially for that age group (which is getting to be my own age group at an alarming clip). In my experience, which is admittedly limited, people tend to react better to the real thing than they do to the idea. When people actually meet me in person, I get the distinct impression that many of these chucklers and chortlers think to themselves, "OK, that's a little different, but we can go with that." Whereas the idea of a drag queen reading books to their grandchildren upsets them greatly. I know--apples and oranges--but you get the idea. Not that I am suggesting you do so, discretion being the greater part of valor, but if you were to show up to your tour group, dressed as you normally do for such a gig, except wearing 4 inch block heeled boots, I bet the reaction would be generally much less than their reaction to Charles II.

The company that made the REAL Uggs never trademark the name, so the Uggs sold today is from a different company that stole the name.

One of the additional strings to my bow as a freelance writer and photographer is escorting tour groups - giving lectures etc. I don't do a lot of it, three or four times a year, but the gigs are always nice ones and takes me to interesting places. I used to go all over the world, as with my other assignments, but these days, having grown weary of flying and all the attendant hassles, I stick to Britain. At any rate, I am on such a trip now. Yesterday I was taking to my group about Charles II. In addition to talking about the politics of the Restoration I talked about his coronation portrait - now hanging in the throne room in Holyrood House in Edinburgh. Aside from his holding a sceptre and orb, as symbols of newly restored royal power, he's wearing four inch heels. I mentioned this fact to see the reaction. It was dispiriting, but not surprising. My group, 24 elderly Americans, smirked, sniggered, mocked, and cooed and ran through all the trite schoolground mockery. There was something so drearily predictable, unthinking and Pavlovian about it. I explained the history of heels, how they'd been a masculine fashion and how the cultural shifts in the Age of Enlightenment, with his emphasis on science, philosophy, comics and political thought changed men's fashion forever, while women, seen as ineducable, were allowed to keep their pretty colours, laces, silks and heels. My group were quite interested, I could see that, but then, as though on replay came the same smirking, cooking and mocking yet again. It was like they were on a continuous loop, stuck in a rut. Part of me felt like telling them I had a pair of 12cm stilettos in my room I am practicing with, but I need this gig.

I agree. They were originally designed as apres surfing wear in Australia, and in my days as a student at the University of Sydney they were standard lounge-about and study wear. Everybody had them. They were inexpensive and comfortable.. The fact that they now command big prices never ceases to amaze me. Some years later when I was living in Melbourne, Uggs had slipped down the social scale a bit and were often being worn by the rough crowd in lower socio-economic neighbourhoods - the sort of rather sleazy types who wear track suits everywhere today. One such suburb was Heidelberg, in the city's inner east, where Ugg's popularity was such that they became derisively known as "Heidelberg stilettos".

i have original UGGs. There is a time and place for them. You have never been a skier or surfer.

I know of that shop, this was sky-scrapers.co.uk, and my last order was 2016.

I think they made a mistake when UGGS were made. It was supposed to say UGLY. I do hope had I been born sans pecker that would never wear anything that ugly!