mlroseplant

It's interesting how everybody has a different experience doing more or less the same thing. I really don't ever remember having trouble with my calves over the years. I can feel it even today if I take a rather long walk in 100 mm or better, but it is not really something I would call pain. They just feel tired, same as you would after doing anything physical. What still gets me if I overdo it, such as wearing 110+ mm for 6 hours, is arch cramping. It doesn't necessarily happen when I am wearing the shoes, but rather an hour or two after I take them off.

I've had just a very few similar experiences over the years. None of the shoes were very expensive, and I just let it go. I'm not going to start a feedback war or anything like that over 25 bucks.

One of these days I'm going to drag out the story (again) for those who haven't heard about the time I wore way too high of a heel too early in my high heel journey. I'm not surprised you faded pretty early if 12 cm was your first pair. People point to the 1980s as being a good time for heels, but looking back through my old photos and watching old music videos, it was and it wasn't. Yeah, elevated heels were much more common back then, but I don't think I actually saw in person anybody wearing what I would call actual high heels. Taller mid heels, for sure, but 4 inch + was just not a thing in real life around here. Not even in college. The heels I thought were so tall at the time just weren't all that high compared to what I wear every day. I actually went shoe shopping with this girl one time, and she bought some black patent leather pumps which were about the highest heels I'd ever seen somebody actually wear. I never got the chance to actually measure them, but I'd estimate them to be right at 4"/10 cm. She wore them somewhat regularly, but then the next year she chose to study in Europe and I never saw her again after that. That is not 100% true, but close enough for this story. Here is something similar in style and height to what the girl bought when I was with her. As I said, hers were black patent rather than suede.

Even though our town streets and sidewalks are in more of a state of disrepair than in years past, they are still quite acceptable. However, it's much better if one sticks to routes one knows well when the days grow short and it's dark during the walk. As far as rain, here are my favorite rain shoes. They keep my feet out of the puddles. Not much good for mud, though.

I'm going to put my vote in the 4 inch/10 cm camp, if you want to make the story believable. In my area, Latina real estate agents wear heels. Others do not.

Even though it was a pretty thin month on walking (I managed only 25 miles in July), I realized that pretty much all of my walking shoes needed reheeling. I took half a dozen pairs up to the cobbler all at once. For the next week, I will have to make more careful choices about what to wear on walks. I have definitely changed my tune about wearing and keeping heels in the last 12 years. Before, I always said that if I can't walk two miles in reasonable comfort, I won't keep the shoes. Now, although I will not accept uncomfortable heels, I do not put every pair I own through that particular rigor, particularly if they are really meant for dressier occasions. What I did not take into account at first is the fact that although I may be able to walk in stilettos for two miles at a clip, the shoes might not be up to the challenge for too many cycles of that. Even if they are, it is so easy to put your heel down a crack in the sidewalk, thereby pretty much ruining them. Replacing heel tips every 10 miles or so is irritating as well.

My very first pair of heels was pretty similar to those. It was 1984, after all. Even back then, I never thought of them as high. I have no nostalgia for them at all.

I did a little image search, and found these pumps from the 1980s. So many women/girls used to wear these, and now they seem very unimpressive. Not quite kitten heels, but too close to it. To be sure, they are far better than Adidas rubber slides worn with socks.

Over the years I have done an about-face on my opinion of many things, but my hatred of kitten heels is not one of them!

I never though they were all that great in the first place. It's not that they are chunky looking, per se, but to me it looks like somebody took a normal stiletto heel, chopped it off, and then pressed this bent metal piece in behind where the regular heel was supposed to be. Having said that, I much prefer Blades to anything I've seen for sale in 2025.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, 8 cm stilettos, which used to be the gold standard when I was a kid, now look weirdly stumpy to me. I think if I could go back in time I would probably be rather disappointed by the shoes I remember so fondly. This probably has nothing to do with the shoes themselves, but rather my constant exposure to 11-12 cm shoes that makes 8 cm shoes look funny to me. I suppose this effect happens in other ways also. As an electrician, if I run large conduit for a few days or a few weeks, e.g., 3 inch, "normal" size conduit like 3/4 or 1 inch looks absolutely tiny and ridiculous.

I will admit to having a couple of pairs of extreme-type shoes, which I bought because I wanted to see if I could actually walk in them. The answer is no, and the problem is two-fold: 1) They are made so cheaply that they're not even nice to put on, much less walk in, and 2) I do not enjoy the experience like I thought I would. Even though no one has ever seen me in these shoes, I walk so badly and awkwardly that I feel silly. If I make myself practice, I do get a little bit better after a short time of warmup, but on the whole I do not like wearing them. And yet still I aspire to wear them. I cannot explain this paradox. I will say one thing for practicing in 13+ cm heels. After wearing them for 15 minutes, your 11-12 cm heels feel like butter! I wish I had some evidence to actually prove it, but I feel like I walk so much better in normal height high heels after spending a quarter of an hour in extreme heels.

I've got about half a dozen pairs that I wear regularly for each season, so there's about a dozen, or roughly 10%. Of these, there are some that I don't really wear out in public because they're a little beat up looking. It's not that I never wear the others, but the occasions are relatively rare. For example, I have a bunch of Steve Madden pumps that have gotten a lot of picture time here, but very little wear time in the real world. Speaking of wear time, I have been very lazy this month about keeping up on my walking. It's been an incredible year so far up until this month. Hopefully I'll get my act together again next month.

I have thought about this for a couple of days, and I still don't know what I would wear for a race. Actually, I absolutely know what I would wear, but they don't meet the 10 cm required steepness. I don't feel like any of my boots which do meet the requirement have sturdy enough construction for a race. I suppose I would wear one of the pairs shown below. Even though they are mules, they fit quite snugly and are sturdy. In fact, the black pair has over 275 miles on it (them?), and counting!

I think my feet look ok, but I consider my hands to be unattractive. There is no way I would want to draw attention to them. I keep four right hand nails on the longer side (when I can) for the purpose of playing fingerstyle guitar.

Also, there are few enough people who can walk well in 12 cm, much less 15. I have never seen anybody in real life walk well in 12 cm. There are a few on the internet who do a amazing job.

As far as I can tell, even the second and third tier manufacturers keep their heel heights at least somewhat proportional to the shoe size. I should have made it more clear--my personal collection of pumps, which are mostly Steve Madden, all measure between 11 and 12 cm. But this is on size 9, so I can't really say I've reached 12 cm in steepness on whatever they use as the standard measurement. I think it's size 7/38. This is a problem I've run into fairly consistently. Nobody much makes anything 13-14 cm (single sole). It's either 12 cm or below, or 15 cm or above, nothing in between. It's like there's a fetish line, and evidently that line is right at 12 cm. It's even hard to get a full 12 cm outside of the designer brands. I guess some designer brands, such and Christian Louboutin and Brian Atwood do make a number of specialty 13 cm, but nothing for us plebs.

I also really like the aesthetics of 12 cm, but there are certain shoes I like that are higher than that, particularly some of the 14 cm from Maison Ernest, which I can't afford. Or these days I should say I WON'T afford. I can do 10 cm all day, 11 cm for a good chunk of time, still workin' on 12 cm. Keep in mind that this measurement is on size 9 USW/ 40 EU, so my 12 cm is maybe the equivalent of 11.5 cm on size 7/38. Attached is a picture of my favorite 14 cm Maison Ernest mules which I will never own because of their ridiculous price, and I doubt I could ever walk in them anyhow. Look at that ankle flexibility!

I still don't understand how a person can just "step into" pumps and then walk normally. Getting my pumps on is kind of a production. I certainly would not pick them for a high heel race. Believe it or don't, I have certain mules that would be suitable for a high heel race. They are the kind that come a ways up your foot, not the flappy kind. The flappy kind would not be suitable for a race.

I personally find pumps to be much more difficult than sandals. It's probably due to the shape of my feet, and I am a little bit embarrassed to admit that as much time and effort as I have spent measuring and analysing my shoes, I really have no idea how my feet stack up against an average woman's foot, even there is even such a thing. I know I'm a size 9 U.S. women's, and that I'm halfway between a B and a C width, so most women's shoes work just fine for me. What seems to be the case for me is that my heels must be kind of narrow left to right because a lot of the time I walk right out of pumps without even trying. I have found that Steve Madden pumps tend to work for me, but I have to wear them pretty tight, and some might say uncomfortably tight. Sandals do not have this problem, as they are held on by straps which are usually adjustable. Or there is no back at all (my preference), and you don't care how the heel fits because it doesn't exist. You and my both my sons have something in common. None of y'all ever wear anything but boots. Of course, theirs do not have anything higher than a normal work boot heel. Although I my older son (26) has got a pair of loggers that have pretty decent heels on them. 2 inch, probably.

My Church Outfit of the Week. I wanted to wear my red Via Spiga patent leather sandals, which I do not wear very often. I suppose at some point I need to either get over my reluctance to wear dressier shoes with everyday clothing, or I need to cull my shoe collection down to something more reasonable. It has remained at about 100 for several years, but the problem is, even if I wore a different pair of shoes every week, it would take me two years to run through everything once. I'm lucky that I have something to dress up for, because I really can't see wearing these shoes with shorts. The woman who sent me a picture of her feet two weeks ago was wearing flat sandals for church, disappointingly. She laughed about it and promised to do better in the future. I am trying not to overthink this, because it seems perfectly reasonable and normal to me, but it suddenly occurred to me two weeks after the fact, that most people would think it very strange that a woman who is certainly nothing more than an acquaintance would send me a picture of her feet. I did get a compliment during after church grocery shopping. A thirty-ish woman told me that she "loved my monochromatic look." Didn't say anything about the shoes specifically, though.

As it turns out, my son's motorbike started acting up the afternoon before we were to leave, and I pulled the plug on our plans. We took the car. Therefore, though I never wore my work boots, neither did I wear high heels. I wore these for the entire week, even in West Virginia. I got a few intense stares, but nothing bad happened.

Interesting that this conversation should come up once again, but in a slightly different way. Just yesterday I was setting up our tent at the farmer's market, and our neighbor vendor, a thin, fit-looking middle aged woman who sells fresh baked bread, said to me, "I just don't understand how you can do manual labor in heels. I could never do that!" By "manual labor," she meant setting up the tent and tables, &c. I told her that I'd been working at it for over 12 years, and maybe that had something to do with it. Full disclosure: What I was actually wearing was wedge sandals with a slight heel, effectively a 2 1/4". I wouldn't call them flats, but almost. As it turns out, this woman evidently used to wear heels all the time "for dress up occasions." Like all of us have heard a hundred times before. It doesn't explain everything, but it accounts for a good deal of it. Occasional wear is never going to get you the comfort and endurance you want, in the same way that picking up the guitar once a month is never going to make you a decent guitarist. In addition to this, you're tempted to buy a cheap instrument, which doesn't usually help your playing either. I never quite know how to respond to these kinds of things, because I am quite sure that I like to talk about all things high heel considerably more than most people. Since I don't want to seem like a crushing bore, I usually cut the conversation off short. In this case, I did not have to do so because at that very moment, the wind picked up suddenly, and I had to physically grab on to my tent to keep it from skating across the parking lot and blowing into the next county. This despite having double the usual amount of weight on each leg. Naturally, the conversation immediately shifted to whether this little squall was going to pass quickly, or should we just go home.

Hello from Kentucky! I finally got the chance to meet TBG in person after at least 7 years of online/phone communication. We played a lot of music together. My son proved that he can largely keep up with us, even at only 16 years old. Sorry to be a little cryptic, but I want to protect the man’s privacy. Those who know, know. I know many wonder what happened to him.

In just 24 hours, my son and I will embark on a motorbike tour, kind of like we did last year, but more ambitious this time. We will be staying in Kentucky, West Virginia, and Indiana for our overnights. I have reluctantly decided to wear work boots on this trip, and I might bring along one pair of heels, I might not. Part of this decision is a practical one--it's simply easier to do everything in work boots rather than heels. The other part is social. I asked the guy in West Virginia about wearing heels in his neck of the woods, and while he didn't have a violent negative reaction to the idea, I decided right then and there that I was going to wear my work boots and not high heels. I mean, what would really be the point? It's not like I'm going to be doing a whole lot of walking on this trip. Anyway, I probably will not post anything until I get back at the end of next week. There will be nothing to post if I'm not wearing heels, innit?