mlroseplant

I have an update about the banking gal. It would appear that she's for real. I went in there with my son to deposit money he'd earned from mowing grass. This was on a Friday afternoon, and I'd just gotten home from work, and was not dressed up at all. I think I had on a t-shirt and jeans with my sort of house slipper style thong wedges, about 3". While we were waiting, the High Heeled One appeared again. This time, she was wearing single sole D'Orsay pumps that slightly exceeded 4 inches in height. They were not stilettos, but they were slim (not block) heels. She had on dress pants and a nice blouse, no jacket. Again, even though I was technically wearing "heels," I did not feel I was up to snuff enough to make any sort of comment. Next time I go to the bank, I shall have to make sure I'm better dressed. This gets me all nostalgic for the days when we used to get paper checks and had to go to the bank at least every Friday. No, not really.

Interesting talk about red shoes. I only own black boots, but I just counted, and I have 5 pairs of red shoes. They don't get a ton of wear, but as you can see from last week's photos, they do get some. The two pair that get the least wear are the most casual shoes of the bunch. Go figure. I am in the process of doing a semi-scientific durability test on my heels, but I can tell you already that stiletto tips just don't last very long, even with my careful stepping and light weight. A heel with twice the diameter of a stiletto will last at least 5x as long, all other things being equal. In my personal experience. Your mileage may vary.

Crocs actually do make some regular looking shoes (not many). I've never considered them special enough to warrant much of my attention. I have never seen an oxford style from them, I am curious.

The public health issue that made us all stay home for a long while and quit caring much about fashion. It is my habit to name it somewhat cryptically in order to avoid stupid political exchanges. I won't even call them arguments. I was referring to dysentery, of course. 😛

Ok, fair enough. 1) The driveway has become a thing now, I guess. It has largely replaced the drainpipe that @Puffer has admired for so many years. I suppose I could turn 90º and have the background be the deck and the back yard, but that is often littered with cast-off motorcycle parts and other junk like used oil bottles. I probably wouldn't take any pictures at all, except for this group. The driveway is a compromise between decent photo quality and spending lots of time to grab a few snapshots. My wife used to make me go to the park almost every Sunday after church and take photos of her there, which she would then post on social media. For a number of reasons, this stopped after our public health issue reared its ugly head. But I still haven't answered your question. Our neighborhood is fairly static. Typically, houses only come up for sale after a death. Therefore, my neighbors are long familiar with me, and don't question why I have a tripod set up in the driveway. They probably know. Frankly, it's still a little embarrassing to think about a 56 year old man taking selfies, but ah well. 2) As I alluded to earlier, my wife is a bit of a fashionista, or used to be. For reasons I won't get into, that is largely no longer the case. Sometime around 2018 or 2019, I got to a point I wanted to get to, as far as pushing my fashion limits, and have pretty much stayed there. Of course, the public health issue changed everything, and it seems since then, my fashion choices are not a subject of discussion anymore. I naturally know which situations require me to be invisible, and in which situations I can do what I want. The subject has not really come up for a long time. She doesn't even get mad when I occasionally get a new pair of shoes in the mail. The skirt, on the other hand, that's a one-off. I'm not really being serious. It was truly an experiment, and my wife certainly doesn't need to know about it. It would be foolish to upset an equilibrium that largely works for us. She rightfully has other, more important things to criticize me about. And now, a question for you. As I recall, one of the stipulations between you and your wife was that the kids never know about your fashion proclivities. How did you manage to wear heels at all during that couple of decades of child rearing?

I guess I didn't realize that toes had a box.

I don't believe this should be phrased in the future tense. Haven't I done enough time already? 😆 I think I told the story about when the 40-ish woman wanted to compare heel heights at church, and as it turns out, she severely underestimated the general height of my heels. As an aside, her kid is graduating high school this year, my kid is a freshman. It just tells you how old I am compared to most parents. It is really unlikely that I will wear that skirt beyond the confines of my driveway. The main limiting factor is not the church, but rather the fact that my wife would probably kill me. I know at least one neighbor saw me out there with the tripod capturing the above images, but the wife was working. She has no idea. As far as the length, we are several inches from that being a concern. As a normal congregant, I could get by with wearing much shorter to church. Not that I would, but I could. As the public face of the church via livestream, however, I don't know what the limits would be, and I don't intend to find out.

And now, it is time to reveal the week's truly interesting event--my "new" motorbike, which broke down after only having owned it for one week, is now back in service. Actually, that's not the news. I'll just let the pictures speak for themselves. I just wanted to see what it would look like. I don't hate it.

Gentlemen, if I have a problem with straps, it is usually the opposite problem--I run out of holes before the strap is tight. I suppose this, among other things, is why I favor mules.

I find myself very short on time this week, but I'll make a quick post about last Sunday's outfit, with a teaser/promise of more to come. Shoes are Via Spiga, and I got along with them a lot better than I did the last time I wore them, comfort-wise. Pants are Loft, and shirt and tie are no-name Vietnamese. They are not actually unbranded, but they have some silly, so-very-Asian name like "Caring Known" or something like that.

I am not sure how I missed this post for nearly a week, but evidently I did. Thanks for sharing your story.

It seems unlikely that I will make such a purchase. For one thing, I rarely wear "nice" sneakers, so I could hardly be a trendsetter. For another, I'm sure the asking price is way more than I would want to pay. As an aside, though I didn't really know him at all, I went to school with Ms. Clark's father. Somebody asked me recently ago if I knew him, and I sort of vaguely remembered him. "Why?" I asked. I didn't even know who Caitlin Clark was a couple of weeks ago. Unless you really, really like that style, you ain't missin' much. I bought a pair several years ago, 8 years ago to be exact, thinking that I was going to be getting away with something forbidden, and I did. Nobody ever said anything or gave me the stink-eye. That's because they're not really high enough to be considered heels in my mind. What you get is less than 2 inches of steepness* between forefoot and heel. They are clunky, don't work well with skinny jeans/pants, and in my estimation, not particularly comfortable. They're a bitch to get on and off, which is kind of a big concern when you're in Vietnam, as you have to remove your shoes quite often, maybe even to go to a restaurant or coffee house. Because your foot only goes about halfway down into the shoe (because of the wedge), they have all the disadvantages of a low-top sneaker, along with all the disadvantages of a high-top sneaker. I've worn them maybe three or four times since 2016, just to remind myself why I never wear them. Either go with flats, or wear real heels. * I believe they are advertised as being 2 1/2 or 2 3/4" or something like that. Technically, that's true, and they would give you 90% of that in extra standing height, but you have to figure in the fact that the toe area is nearly 1" of that. Hence, my "less that 2 inch" figure. That's a flat, really.

I can't say that I've never had a bad pair of Nine West shoes, because I have, but overall it's a fairly solid brand, and I can pretty much count on a size 9 being a size 9. It's also the one brand from which I have bought several pairs new. One pair lasted me 11 years and 200 documented miles before it failed catastrophically. I still have several pair in my collection, though they don't dominate like they used to. Of course, I don't buy new anymore, both because of cost and because of style.

Yeah, squidgy carpet can be precarious! Our church used to have such carpet, and I have always thought it was very unfriendly to high heels. Not a big problem now, but it certainly must have been when the carpet was installed originally. By that I mean back in the day when women actually wore high heels. In fact, I once wrote a standup comedy routine which contained reference to the squidgy carpet. I never got to try it out because of our international health issue. The carpet is now gone, replaced with some sort of industrial grade carpet that seems to be installed with little or no padding. This benefits everyone in three ways: 1) Steadier footing, especially in heels. 2) The pipe organ now sounds noticeably more brilliant, due to more effective reverb. 3) No one will ever have to listen to my comedy routine. It was terrible!

The 20,000 steps wouldn't bother me too much, as long as it was on pavement of some sort. I have proven that a number of times in the past few years, exploring the limits of my stamina in heels. However, I still don't like to walk more than a few steps on anything soft like dirt or grass. Not that it has anything to do with anything, but my son and I noted last weekend that our two "big" lawns, and by "big" I mean about half an acre, require substantially more steps to mow than do our four "small" lawns combined.