The High Heeled Ruminations Of Melrose Plant

[mlroseplant]

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.

[Shyheels]

Time and age has its way with us all. I’ve no foot, knee or ankle issues, thankfully, but an old hip injury that flares up periodically. It doesn’t affect my heel wearing - I’d limp no matter what I was wearing, even if I was barefoot, but it’s certainly no fun and I regard it with a sort of disbelief - recalling how not so very long ago I used to routinely cycle 100 mile days (often much more) and before that I used to run marathons in reasonably competing times.

I know we all age but somehow I always thoughts they’d make an exception for me …

[Cali]

I can tell you that toe surgery is not for the faint of heart. I jammed my baby toe and it got stuck in the upright position. They went in and fixed that toe and the toe next to it had a 'hammer toe', so they removed the joint and put wire through both toes. At a farmer's market a woman backed into the wire and I let out a scream everybody at the market hear. But when they pulled the wires out I found a much high octave to scream at.  Don't mess with toes.