The High Heeled Ruminations Of Melrose Plant

[Bubba136]

You are correct. Most pastors of the larger, highly organized churches of major conferences are routinely transferred after three or four years.  My experience over the past two decades has been with small rural churches that my son, who is a pastor of a small independent church in rural Virginia, (think John Boy and Billy Bob) refers to as “family reunion churches.” Their budgets are often smaller and leadership positions, outside of the pastors and one or two other positions,  are usually filled voluntary.

As to your shoes 👠 wear what you are comfortable wearing. But it takes real courage to wear high heels openly in church, not to mention performing on stage in full view of everyone. “ More power to ya.”  🤗

[HappyinHeels]

Mlroseplant,

Don’t second guess yourself neighbor. Your footwear choice had minimal effect on the off chance one or two people surfing the net saw you and decided not to join that church. In times like these those regular members should probably give more of their money or time. Bubba136 makes great points about church attendance being down and it’s been documented that it’s down worldwide. Some religions have been plagued with scandal or created a perception certain behaviors are tacitly condoned despite laws against them. Many remember the scores of tv evangelists who succumbed to greed and temptation. It certainly didn’t help the faith community when certain states decided to close churches while casinos and liquor stores were open. All these factors drove people away. Precisely why it’s important to keep forging ahead. Even in heels. HinH

[mlroseplant]

And now, back to our regularly scheduled program. The only thing to note this week is that I had originally planned to wear some gray suede sandals with this outfit. However, when I went outside to load up the car with our instruments, it was raining. Therefore, I decided at the last second against the suede and went for these plain black patent pumps instead. You can't really go wrong with black pumps, can you?

[Shyheels]

Yes, I love suede and gave several really nice pair of suede boots that I hardly ever dare to wear outside because of the way our fickle English weather can go from sunshine to showers in minutes with no predictability at all. My suede boots have become office wear.

[bambam]

 

love those pumps. Almost my uniform now, those things are so broadly useful.

[Mr. X]

14 hours ago, mlroseplant said:

You can't really go wrong with black pumps, can you?

You really can't 

Edited July 9 by Mr. X

[pebblesf]

On 7/8/2024 at 5:44 AM, mlroseplant said:

And now, back to our regularly scheduled program. The only thing to note this week is that I had originally planned to wear some gray suede sandals with this outfit. However, when I went outside to load up the car with our instruments, it was raining. Therefore, I decided at the last second against the suede and went for these plain black patent pumps instead. You can't really go wrong with black pumps, can you?

Great outfit, and love the Crown Vic also, wish I could find a nice one...

[mlroseplant]

20 hours ago, pebblesf said:

Great outfit, and love the Crown Vic also, wish I could find a nice one...

I always wanted a Crown Vic for some reason, so about 2 1/2 years ago, I finally bought one. It's my daily driver, and with only 118,000 on the clock at this moment, I hope she lasts until after I retire. It also allows me to stand out just a little bit in a sea of pickup trucks at the jobsite parking area, while still retaining street cred. 😆

[pebblesf]

2 hours ago, mlroseplant said:

I always wanted a Crown Vic for some reason, so about 2 1/2 years ago, I finally bought one. It's my daily driver, and with only 118,000 on the clock at this moment, I hope she lasts until after I retire. It also allows me to stand out just a little bit in a sea of pickup trucks at the jobsite parking area, while still retaining street cred. 😆

I would love to find a nice rust free one, but that is impossible up here in the northeast.  I see them online out west and south, but not going to buy online for sure.  They were really great cars that do most everything well...

[Shyheels]

Rare as hens teeth over here 

[mlroseplant]

20 hours ago, pebblesf said:

I would love to find a nice rust free one, but that is impossible up here in the northeast.  I see them online out west and south, but not going to buy online for sure.  They were really great cars that do most everything well...

Obviously, we have the same rust problem in the Midwest, I just got very lucky with this one. A guy was selling it for his parents, who hadn't driven it much, and most importantly, hadn't driven it much in the winter. I don't know if you have to have the actual Crown Vic, or would settle for a Grand Marquis. I really didn't care which one I got, I just happened to find a Crown Vic. For some reason, FoMoCo completely quit marketing consumer Crown Vics in the last decade of their run, instead pushing the Grand Marquis. Therefore, there are 10x as many Grand Marquis out there that are not cop cars or taxis. I did not want an ex cop car for a number of reasons. Nevertheless, we still call it "The Cop Car," and kids who are young enough to have been born after the last one was ever produced can identify it (mistakenly) as a cop car. What can I say? It's an American icon! Good luck in your search for a suitable one. If I see one around here, I'll let you know.

[Cali]

Don what you need to do is book a flight to San Diego. Purchase one there and drive it back.

[Jkrenzer]

Even better North Carolina. Vehicles last forever here and are not California priced. 

My current field, 2000 Tacoma, 2011 Escape and just bought 2007 F150.

zero corrosion all 3, paid 4k for Tacoma 8 yrs ago and just paid 5500 for the f150.

[Cali]

My commute is a mountain highway. We call it a hill because its only 2300+ feet at the summit. It goes up from 50 feet to 2300 feet and then down to 30 feet with lots of twist and turns. Although my car is only 7 years old now, I thinking about buying a new 4-wheel drive SUV in the next year or two.

[Shyheels]

2 hours ago, Cali said:

My commute is a mountain highway. We call it a hill because its only 2300+ feet at the summit. It goes up from 50 feet to 2300 feet and then down to 30 feet with lots of twist and turns. Although my car is only 7 years old now, I thinking about buying a new 4-wheel drive SUV in the next year or two.

That’s quite a commute 

[pebblesf]

16 hours ago, Cali said:

Don what you need to do is book a flight to San Diego. Purchase one there and drive it back.

You are soo right.  I need to hire some service to scout out a good one for me.  

15 hours ago, Jkrenzer said:

Even better North Carolina. Vehicles last forever here and are not California priced. 

My current field, 2000 Tacoma, 2011 Escape and just bought 2007 F150.

zero corrosion all 3, paid 4k for Tacoma 8 yrs ago and just paid 5500 for the f150.

Hoping to move to NC for retirement

[mlroseplant]

In advance of today's services, I want to say that I have finally reached 2,000 documented miles in heels! It's taken me 11 years to get there, but I've finally made it. At the pace I have set these days, it should only take another 3 years to get to 3,000. I had a few bad years in there, particularly 2017, where, according to my records, I walked only 35 miles the entire year. Looking back at it, 2017 was a significant turning point for me in many ways.

[Shyheels]

That’s quite a milestone! Nearly the length of the Appalachian Trail!

[mlroseplant]

I don't know that I'd want to be out there for 11 years, though. It even seems a little bit ridiculous that under the best of circumstances, it would have taken me about 6 years to accomplish the same. Which is why when somebody says they have walked "hundreds of miles" in heels, I kind of take it with a grain of salt. I have no way to prove it, but I get the feeling I have walked many times farther in work boots over the past 11 years than I have in heels.

[Jkrenzer]

I do believe you likely have more heel miles than 99.9% of the population that actually wears heels. 

[Bubba136]

I believe that JK is right.  While I remember walking around the block in our neighborhood wearing my heels when a teenager, and those instances probably totaled 10 miles, I can’t remember any time in the last 30 years that I put on a pair just to go for a walk.  

[Cali]

I estimate that I walk between .5 and 5 miles in heels every day. Currently it's a .75 roundtrip trip just from my car to where my room is. I'm then in heels walking for 4 hours minimum. Many times I'm in heels for over 12 hours. I estimate about 150-200 miles a year.

Edited July 23 by Cali

[Jkrenzer]

That's still 12 yrs to reach Melrose's 2k. Plus he's documented those miles. Add church and farmers markets alone he's under valuing his total. In addition most people, myself included, over estimate their distances. This makes you a distant number 2 Cali. Runner up to the king.

[Cali]

@Jkrenzer, who says I don't under estimate as well? I wall over 3000 ft just from my car to my room. Walk and talk for 4 hours. Then another 3000 back to my car. Then run errands, like shoping at Costco, shoe shopping, etc.  For 8 months of the year, it's more like heels on before 6:30 am, off at 9:00 pm at least 4 days at week. How much walking, sitting during that time varies by the meetings I attend and their location. So I estimate 1-3+ miles a day for 9 years. I wear heels everday and almost everywhere, even to our farmer's market.

But it's not a cmpetition to me to rack up miles, etc. I glad @mlroseplant keeps track of all sorts of things. I gleem information from them. I see so much information every day that I don't want to generate any more data myself; I'm too old for that. What is important for me and heels is that the more I am in heels the less pain I am in throughout the day and night. Like this morning I woke up in pain, so I put on heels at 5:15 am.

[mlroseplant]

I am not the king. I'm just the most normal weird guy you'll ever meet. And yes, I do gather all sorts of useless data, like keeping track of how long my razor blades last.

One thing I have noticed since I set a goal of 300 miles a year in heels, and in the grand scheme of things that's not all that much, is that other than the occasional blister from walking three miles in a two mile shoe, there is no pain associated with heels anymore. The other thing I've noticed is that despite consuming more grain based beverages than I should, my weight has remained under a certain mark much more easily than it has in the past.

It is quite true that, unlike either @Jkrenzer or @Cali, I am not in heels really all that much, even though it might seem like it. That is because you have to subtract out at least 10 hours every weekday for work and 6-7 hours for sleep. The rest of the time is mostly domestic stuff, and I'm not really walking anywhere. I cannot think of too many times when I've spent what I would call a full day in heels. Therefore, I must purposefully walk to get the practice I desire to maintain my endurance. I just happen to keep track of that, being a completely normal yet weird guy.

[Shyheels]

I do a lot of walking - nearly always in tall boots, but not always in heels.

[Bubba136]

I believe that this is the only place that I frequent that looks at shoes 👠 as something other than a covering to protect your feet.  Wondering back, when in the course of human history did man discover that covering the foot with something not only kept them from freezing but aided in walking by protecting the bottom from injury?  Going forward, at what point did humans begin to decorate their foot cover?  Then, when did they decide to make their foot cover gender specific?  And so on and so forth.  
 

Back in the day when I was still circling the globe, I remember driving from the airport to a hotel in Zambia, where I noticed a man sitting beside the road cutting apart worn out automobile tires, putting threads through the slabs and turning them into foot covers.  How ingenious, I thought but how could he tell which pairs were made for females?

[Shyheels]

I’ve often thought that if we read about a South Seas island tribe with such strict taboos about styles of footwear we’d smile and find it quaint - how curious that in our own society we regard our taboos as though they had the force of natural law, something encoded in our chromosomes. Women wear heels, men do not.

[Bubba136]

9 hours ago, Shyheels said:

I’ve often thought that if we read about a South Seas island tribe with such strict taboos about styles of footwear we’d smile and find it quaint - how curious that in our own society we regard our taboos as though they had the force of natural law, something encoded in our chromosomes. Women wear heels, men do not.

It’s nothing but smoke and mirrors or perhaps the difference between the way men and women pee?

[mlroseplant]

Man or woman, I am noticing lately that I am the only person wearing heels, period. To be fair, I don't get out much these days. Since we lost the "big" farmer's market gig for this year, I really don't get out much. During the summer by nature, church services are even more casual than they normally are, and they're pretty casual these days. There ain't no such thing as "Sunday Best" anymore. That's pretty much gone to "Easter Best" or "Christmas Eve Best." My counterparts in the other band, who play in the service before me, could always be counted on to wear heels, even if they were only 2 1/2". No longer.

At any rate, I have been remiss. I have forgotten to post church outfits for two weeks in a row. Here they are. The pink-ish one features cheap Chinese mules by a company called Bella Marie. Maybe I'll talk in more detail about those later, because there's a story. The purple shirted one features Michael Kors Oksana sandals, which I have owned a very long time, and am barely competent at walking in them now. I wonder how awkward I looked 10 years ago wearing them.