mlroseplant

Even though this is supposed to be a thread about durable heels, it seems like a good place to put shoe failures as well. I just had Shoe Failure No. 4 in 2025 last night. I really thought I was going to make it with just 3 failures this year. My BCBGeneration Queenie wedges yielded up the ghost. Funny thing is, I never really wore them all that seriously. They were pretty much just house shoes. I'm sure I wore them to the grocery store or other errands quite a few times, but I do not have any record of them having been part of my walking routine. I do not know whether I will attempt to replace them, since I have other mid heeled wedges that are less clunky looking.

OK, so I felt guilty about slacking, so I pulled out my highest regular heels for church yesterday morning. I actually had the morning off from musical duties, so I could sit with my family in the congregation like a normal person. These particular pumps are some off brand called Elisabet Tang. There is another brand called GenShuo that is exactly the same. They are inexpensive shoes, but appear to be well made for what they are. They are slightly higher than the similar Steve Madden shoes of that ilk like the Daisie, but still clock in at a mere 11.3 cm when translated to size 38. I thought I did ok in them. I didn't have to walk more than 30 meters at a time, though, so I can't give a real assessment. At the time this photo was taken, the wind had picked up to about 40 km/h, and everything was starting to ice over. Therefore, I switched to boots to after that to run errands.

I understand that foot size often changes during or after pregnancy. My mom said she used to wear size 5 back in the 60s and before. By the time I came along, all I can remember in her closet is 6 1/2 or better. And yes, I did try on her shoes when she wasn't around. My ex-wife's feet swelled up something terrible when she was pregnant with my older son. Luckily, it was summer, and she bought a pair of single band leather slides, and that's all she could wear for a couple of months. Amazingly, only a few short hours after giving birth, her feet shrank back down to normal size, and that's where they've stayed ever since, as far as I know. My current wife's feet increased a whole size after giving birth to my younger son. This was kind of disappointing to me, because we had gone to the great trouble of bringing about 50 pairs of shoes from Vietnam, most of them heels, and none of which fit her within months of coming to the U.S.

It has still not been a great month for practicing in super tall heels. Part of the reason is the weather, but part of it is that I'm taking a bit of a break from walking in heels just for the sake of walking in them. I've had the last four days off due to the Christmas holiday, and I've actually gone out walking on three out of the four. I purposefully wore mid heels for two of those days, because I figured I would be a little out of condition, and didn't want to overdo it. Nothing bad happened, so I switched to actual high heels yesterday. I did my 2.1 mile (3.4 km) route in the equivalent adjusted steepness of 10.5 cm, and wow, the difference between 9 cm and 10 1/2 is remarkable, or so my calves thought! And it's not like I gave up wearing heels altogether, I just haven't been pounding the pavement like I usually do.

This might explain in part why my feet have actually gotten smaller over the last 10 years. Not a lot, but certainly noticeable with picky fitting women's shoes. I am now solidly a size 9/size 40. Used to be more like a 9 1/2. 9 1/2 these days is always too big, even in boots. Not only do I wear heels, but I do arch strengthening exercises every day, twice a day. I just had a go-round with safety last week. A junior safety guy finally noticed after 9 months that I wasn't wearing steel toes. He wouldn't let it go. I threatened to drag. The head safety guy came to visit me about an hour later, and said basically, "Well, if nobody has noticed in 9 months, I'd just let it ride. Just pretend that never happened." At least I don't have to worry about it until the next project now.

I have not been forced to stand still for hours since my wife quit doing the "big" farmer's market a couple of years ago, I might have lost some conditioning by now, but I know that at church, I never think about how much I have to stand vs. how much I have to sit. In other news, I had Christmas dinner over at my parents' house, as we do every year, their health permitting. One of the perennial guests is my ex-wife. To explain, the now adult son we had together is always there too. Anyway, my ex-wife was always a heel wearer. Not a high heel wearer, but a regular heel wearer, sporting 2-3" heels several days a week. Not that I would expect her to wear heels to come visit my parents, because she was never really that kind of heely girl, but I had noticed that her shoes have been completely flat for a couple of years. There's a reason for that. I do not know how the subject came up, probably under the general category of "getting old," but she evidently had to have surgery on her left foot because of arthritis in the toe joint. She said before the surgery, it hurt to wear any sort of shoe, heel or not. She showed me how she can't bend her toes anymore into "high heel" position. Oddly enough, my sister has the exact same problem. My sister actually wore 3" block heeled oxfords for Christmas Eve service, but told me she had to get out of them as soon as possible because of the pain in her toe joint. I am writing this because it really hit home. I also have a bit of arthritis in my toe joint, especially my right. Thus far, I have kept it at bay by doing ballet type stretching exercises every morning. But it does make me think that I cannot absolutely count on being able to wear heels forever. Hopefully it will be a couple of decades before I have to give them up, but there is no guarantee.

Or you could throw caution to the wind and join @Shyheels, @higherheels, me, et al. in our quest to manage steeper heels in everyday life. I'm sure you've seen the thread "Aiming High" in the Everybody section. We are certainly not up for injuring ourselves, but each of us thinks we can do incrementally better than what we already do. It's a lot of fun!

I've had shoes that gave me blisters, but that is not what sticks out in my mind as a beginning heeler. Mind you, I was a beginning heeler at age 45, not age 14. I wish I could have worn heels at age 14, but that's another subject for another time. My first journey in heels definitely resulted in muscular fatigue that I had not anticipated, but it was relatively mild, like having overdone it at the gym or something. It is this trip to the shopping mall that keeps coming back in my stories. I doubt I had blisters, because I was wearing boots with actual socks. I do not remember muscular fatigue in the calves or ankles. What I do remember is having to unexpectedly stand in line for about an hour at a mobile phone store. That damn near killed me. The pain in the balls of my feet was close to more than I could bear, and I tend to tolerate pain pretty well. I cannot explain how a person sort of gets used to standing in 10 cm heels, but that is what has always killed me. Walking 3 km in 10 cm heels? No problem! Standing still in 10 cm heels for an hour? Impossible! Well, it isn't today, but I've no idea how I got here. It must have been all of those farmer's markets I did with my wife over the years. I suppose that was my training ground for standing in heels. As an aside, Merry Christmas to those who celebrate! And for those who don't celebrate, I don't have to go back to work until Monday! Naturally, it's unpaid, but it's a much needed several days off from a place where I don't get to wear heels.

I'm not saying that high heels are supposed to hurt (although you'd have a hard time convincing 95% of the population of that), I'm just saying that suddenly you're exercising muscle groups that you haven't before, and that results in, at the very least, soreness. In my case 13 years ago, it was fairly intense pain until I figured out that I can't go from 0 to 10 cm instantly. Thinking about this further, I suppose I could have gone the other way--stuck with the 10 cm, but for only short periods at first, gradually increasing the wearing time over weeks or months. The route I ended up choosing was to wear 5-7 cm pretty much every moment that I could, take long walks and so forth, then gradually increase the height over a period of time. Which do you think is the more effective method? On edit: I've heard many people say that a bit of a heel helps with back pain, but for me personally, I have not been able to tell any difference either way. The condition of my back has a lot more to do with my work than it does with my choice of footwear.

Sorry to hear about your news. But at least the band is back together!

I figure that either we're freaks, or everybody else is just substandard. 😆 I can't really tell you why it doesn't hurt anymore. In fact, I prefer the high heeled position of the foot for most things. I wouldn't want to be stuck in that position permanently or anything, but I do like the way it feels. I suppose it is something that is developed through repetition over time, and I suppose that like any other athletic endeavor, there are some people who are just not very good at it, or have a physical impediment. That would explain why some people claim that even 6 cm is too high for more than a few minutes.

I'm trying to think if I've ever seen somebody around here wearing leather pants who wasn't riding a motorcycle. Skirts, yes, but I can't recall having seen somebody in pants outside of PPE. I'll be on the lookout. Speaking of looking out, I was at the grocery store yesterday (in heels, of course), and I spied a woman at some distance walking away from me. Soon I noticed heels sticking out of the hem of her pants. She had long hair, and was wearing a camel colored wool coat. At that moment, one of the clerks stepped out of the checkstand area and said, "I can help you over here, sir." I couldn't really say to hold on for a minute, I need to check out this woman's shoes first, could I? So I will never have any context for the heels. Ten years ago, I wouldn't have cared, but now I kind of want to know why someone besides me would wear heels to the grocery store.

That's what everybody says, and I suppose as a musculo-skeletal kind of guy, he felt obligated to bring it up in an admittedly awkward way. I speculate that much like I've done to my wife, I've just worn him down over the years, and he doesn't want to waste his breath. I can see where it is super easy to get sucked into that kind of thinking. After all, when used as intended, they hurt, right? I have never met a single person, including myself, who didn't experience some kind of pain during a heeling experience at some point. It's just that my defining pain experience happened nearly 13 years ago, and I would like to think I learned from it. Hey, weightlifting hurts, and I'm supposed to be doing that as I get older to minimize muscle loss.

In my county town, which we call a county seat here in the U.S., it seems like there are more heels in the winter than in the summer, which seems bass ackward to me. As noted above, it's all the block heeled boots that account for a lot of it. I never see Gen Z wearing heels of any note casually, but as least in our local, quite a few will wear them for dressy occasions.

It's happened before when I've worn some pretty tame heels to appointments: "Ya know that those kinds of shoes are really bad for you, right?" We have never had a real conversation about it, so I decided to pull out all the stops and wear pointy stiletto pumps to my appointment, as the opportunity presented itself. Not a word, and he even has to pull on my ankles as part of the normal adjustment. I wonder if he has any other patients who wear any sort of substantial heels?

I went to the chiropractor earlier this week wearing 4 1/2" stiletto heels, and he didn't say anything. I was kind of prepared for a discussion, but none ensued. It's not happened a lot, because I usually stop in on my way home from work, so it's a non-issue, but on several occasions when I've been in "civilian" clothing, I've changed my shoes to go up there because I didn't feel like talking about it. Maybe that has become unnecessary.

I always said I would never ride a bike in heels, simply because it was a bridge too far--you have to go to Asia to see that, or possibly Europe. Now, everything is a bridge too far, as I'm pretty much the only one who wears heels casually and regularly anymore, so I think I probably would now if given the chance. Unfortunately, my good bicycle was stolen a few years back (from in front of our church, if you can believe that), and my other two bicycles are currently quite inaccessible due to our overly full garage. Nowadays, it's which motorized two wheeled vehicle will I ride in heels?

As you all know, I am not opposed to sending in pictures, but I am certainly not interested in any kind of "contest." It seems likely to me that the lady who came up with the idea years ago was kind of mocking us anyway, and she is no longer active. I like to think of it as more of a fashion show, rather than a beauty pageant. To be fair, my contributions are probably more like a JCPenney catalog than they are a fashion show.

I had never really considered buying investment houses and actually living in them. That would certainly be a good way for us to get rid of a lot of junk (all three of us tend toward being hoarders). But that's not how I roll. I'm going to die in this house. I like it here. Speaking of free lunches, I'm scheduled to get one tomorrow at work. With any luck, I'll get laid off the next day. With less luck, I won't get laid off the next day. Either way is fine.

And now. . . for something completely different! Yesterday it snowed. Again. It's going to be one of those winters, apparently. It's not even Christmas, and I'm already wearing of removing snow. A couple of years ago, I got these vintage boots. Cobbies is the brand name. I got them because they are shearling lined, and I wanted some "heels" to wear when it was really cold. These boots feature 2 3/8" heels, which is right at about 6 cm. In other words, FLAT. Which suits me fine for the work I'm doing. I do consider them low heels in the grand scheme of thing, but they're flats. Let's be realistic. Where things get interesting is the coefficient of friction factor. The forefeet of these boots are quite grippy, while the heels, once covered in ice, are dangerously slippery. This leads to some interesting footwork, worthy of a ballerina or Latin dancer. Walking heel to toe on smooth concrete after walking in the snow can lead to catastrophe, so it's best to do the opposite--toe first. I demonstrated this to my 16 year old. He said do what you got to do. A reheeling with Vibram would probably solve this issue.

I have always worn shorts in the summer, as did my father before me. However, neither of my two sons ever wore shorts after the age of about 10, and they don't show any sign of ever changing. Oddly enough, both of them have legs that are like tree trunks, and yet they have different mothers. They certainly didn't get that from me! I also know plenty of women who never wear shorts or an above the knee skirt. I don't want to say I never do it, but it is easier to wear my beloved wooden heeled sandals with shorts rather than stilettos. Probably absolutely no one outside a certain group thinks about it this way, but to me chunky wooden heeled sandals with shorts is far less radical looking than stilettos with shorts. There is probably almost no one in the general populace who makes such a distinction. @higherheels I always thought the only proper footwear with a Dirndlkleid is none at all, meiner Meinung nach. Certainly much better than sneakers.

I do not know how we got here, but since we are here, that math really isn't mathing. Even assuming that you could actually deduct everything you put into your house, it's not like it's free money. It just means you don't have to pay income taxes on that money. I know people do it, but every time I've looked into buying a house to flip, the numbers just weren't there. It's one of those deals where if I actually lived there, yeah, it would be worth it, but as a means of making money on the side, it's a lot of work for very little gain. Plus, I don't have that kind of energy anymore. Having said that, I wish I could have predicted the insane increase in the price of houses in the last few years. I probably could have made some money off of that.

@higherheels Congratulations on another accomplishment, even if it seemed a bit anticlimactic. I am curious to know whether it's just the fatigue that limits your walking distance, or are there other factors? I am pretty much resigned to waiting until Spring for me to make much progress. We just got more snow, and we're supposed to get more on Saturday--like 15 cm more. It is somewhat unusual for us to have this much snow before the middle of December. I have a feeling it's going to be a long winter! As for the rest of the discussion, I could not possibly imagine ever wearing stilettos when I first started heeling. Too girly. I had one color for shoes: Black. And they had to be very plain. I actually used to color in shiny hardware with a black marker to make them less flashy, and then I'd wear boot cut pants hemmed as close to the floor as was practical. I suppose I must have looked very strange, trying to hide my heels like that. It took a couple of years before I warmed to the idea of wearing stilettos myself, even though that was always the gold standard for heels. Today, I basically wear stilettos (though not exclusively) for dressier occasions. My wife has long given up objecting to any of my footwear, and unfortunately is long past being able to wear any of it herself, due to severe knee issues. I still feel funny wearing stilettos in more casual situations, especially with shorts. I cannot tell you why. I need to get over it.

The last time I actually measured my feet on a Brannock device, I was a U.S. Women's size 9, and about a B 1/2 width (halfway between B and C). So most standard women's shoes fit me nicely, if slightly snugly. My work boots are technically women's (though there is no stylistic difference). For years, I thought I was 9 1/2, but that is always too big. Here's what I don't understand about pumps--how is it that some women are able to just step into them and walk normally? Getting mine on is a bit of a production, and I certainly can't flex my toes and pop my heel right out of the shoe, even wearing hosiery. If I could, they would pop right out of the shoe while I am walking, which was the whole problem in the first place.

Here is a picture of me at church, wearing 11 cm heels, playing the alto horn (or tenor horn, if you are British). On Christmas Eve, no less, in blatant violation of the rule. The other flat-heeled guy playing the trumpet is my son. It wasn't my best outfit choice ever. What's up with those pants?