I Make Bad Shoe Decisions

Hi. My name is Cyndi. And I make bad shoe decisions. Allow me to illustrate how a bad shoe decision happens, for those of you who are more practical than I.

The morning begins. Cyndi drags herself out of bed at 4:45 am to get ready for the carpool she must meet at 6:10am. Yes you heard me right. After a quick glance in the bathroom mirror, Cyndi decides her hair can surely go one more day without being washed and blow dried. Cyndi crawls back into bed.

Fast forward an hour and fifteen minutes. (I'm sleeping and then putting on make-up during this bit. Bo-ring). Cyndi stands before her closet, peering at her shoes, wondering which ones she should wear today. Thence commences the battle between Practical Cyndi and Shallow Cyndi.

SC: Hmm, I just got a pedicure and my toes are looking pretty cute. Probably I should wear some open toed shoes today.
PC: You only have one pair of open toed shoes. Last time you wore them you ended up with four bloody gaping holes in your foot.
SC: I don't seem to remember that. I'll bet they won't hurt this time.
PC: Look down, genius. See those purpley lumpy scars? That would be from the open toed shoes in question.
SC: *Looks down. Ooh! Those little flowers they painted on my toes are so cute! I really should wear those open toed shoes.
PC: Heeello? Did you not hear what I just said? Those shoes are thinly veiled foot torture devices created by a misogynistic designer who has never had to fit his foot into a female shoe! DO NOT WEAR THEM!
SC: Hey look! They have ankle strappies! I forgot about the strappies! I love ankle strappies! *Reaches for the shoes.
PC: You're gonna be soooorrry. Crap. WE'RE going to be sorry. I hate you.
SC: *Humming to herself.* Yay! Cute shoes, cute shoes!
PC: *Sighs in disgust.

Fast forward another hour and a half. Cyndi is walking past the duck pond on her way into the building where she works.

PC: Ow. ow. ow. ow. OW!
SC: Must walk cute. Must not show excruciating pain. Must radiate confidence. Repeat -I'm on the catwalk. I'm on the catwalk.
PC: Catwalk my hiney! Sawing our feet off would less painful! Holy hannah! YOUCH!
SC: Must smile. Must not grimace. Must...Sweet googley moogley these freaking things hurt! Why in the heck did I wear these stupid things?
PC: Because you are a shallow moron who is willing to sacrifice pain for fashion. Ow. ow. ow.
SC: Must get to desk. Must sit. Must not limp in pain. *Grins maniacally to disguise the excruciating pain in her feet while greeting a co-worker in the elevator. "Good Morning! How are you!"
Coworker: *Eyes Cyndi dubiously.* Good morning. Are you okay?
PS: No you dipstick! I'm considering cutting my feet off with an index card! You wanna help?
SC: Oh yes! Just great thanks. Well, have a great day!*Cyndi lurches out of the elevator and limps to her chair and collapses.
PS: Well better assess the damage. *Moves aside ankle strappy.* Nice. A bloody blister. And before 8am. You just had to have the ankle strappies. Great job, Foofy. Great job.
SC: Oh shut up and give me a bandaid.

So now I have on two bandaids. And I'm taking the elevator up and down from the 4th floor. And still considering cutting my feet of with an index card. Or perhaps my desk scissors. But the strappies are really cute.

Cyndi

Getting to know me...

Stand by for more useless information about Moi...

1. What is your occupation right now? International spy (who happens to moonlight as an assistant to the CIO)
2. What color are your socks right now? I own two pairs of socks (I used to own more but the boys co-opt them when they tire of rotating through the pile they keep under their bed). My socks are worn for running purposes only. I'm not running right now, obviously, because I am typing. But I am pretty sure they are white right now.
3. What are you listening to right now? The buzz of the label maker from my co-worker's cube.
4. What was the last thing that you ate? A vanilla cone from McDonald's. The dollar menu rocks!
5 . Can you drive a stick shift? I can drive an AWESOME stick shift. I can double clutch and only flash my break lights to warn the people behind me I'm turning. I can rev the engine and glide seamlessly into 1st, 2nd, and 3rd without so much of as a hiccup. Wait. Do I have to do these things outside my head for this to count?
6. Last person you spoke to on the phone? Andy, my Lurve.
7. Do you like the person who sent this to you? I adore her. Even if she did delight in making me wear clothes that didn't fit for her own amusement.
8. How old are you today? About 12. I'm hoping to age 4 years mentally before I have to drive home. Wouldn't want to get arrested or anything.
9. What is your favorite sport to watch on TV? Soccer. I have recently discovered the men's Euro Cup in HD. Me likey.
10. What is your favorite drink? Milk
11. Have you ever dyed your hair? *Whistles loudly and looks around.* Why no. But it has changed colors about 78 times over the last 16 years. Damndest thing really.
12. Favorite food? The kind I can eat.
13. What is the last movie you watched? You Don't Mess with the Zohan. Deesco deesco!
14. Favorite day of the year? Summer solstice.
15. How do you vent anger? I bitch. Loudly. To myself.
16. What was your favorite toy as a child? My Easy Bake Oven
17. What is your favorite season? Fall
19. Do you want your friends to e-mail you back? NA
20. Who is the most likely to respond? NA
21. Who is least likely to respond? Everyone I am not emailing.
22. Living Arrangements? Townhouse in happy valley.
23. When was the last time you cried? *Cyndi shouts: "Wolf! Wolf!" Co workers eye her strangely.* Just now.
24. What is on the floor of your closet? Shoes and laundry waiting to be washed.
25. Who is the friend you have had the longest that you are sending to? Not really sending it anywhere but to cyberspace. Cyberspace, how long have we been friends? We're not? Oh. Well then.
26. What did you do last night? Stuffed myself with Peruvian food. Whined about being too stuffed with Peruvian food to run. Ate a McDonald's ice cream cone. Whined about being to stuffed with Peruvian food and an ice cream code to run.
27. What are you most afraid of? Death. Or hair. Soooo gross when it's wet and gets tangled in your fingers. *Shudders.
28. Plain, cheese, or spicy hamburgers? Yes.
29. Favorite dog breed? NOT the chihuahua. One attempted hot carl is enough for me, thank you.
30. Favorite day of the week? Thursday
31. How many states have you lived in? 6ish
32. Favorite music? Loves me a bit of everything. Cept Country. Blerg.

Cyndi vs.The Gray Pants

*Note: This is a semi-dramatic recounting of actual events that occurred approximately 8 years ago. As my memory has faded over the years, some of this has been filled in by the best reality-based supplementation my little brain can offer.*

Cyndi glances up from her French book. Madame Martine and her en francais pupils fail to distract her from the rift in the cosmic vibrations of the small apartment bedroom. The bitter February Idaho wind howls outside the window punctuated by the stacatto shouts of inane co-eds engaging in yet another uber-flirty snow ball fight.
Across the room Heather sighs heavily from her cinder-block raised bed, her normally animated face as lifeless as TV static at 2am. It's the same expression she's worn all evening.
"Okay Heph, what's wrong?" Cyndi asks. Heph is short for heipher, a pet name they use to address eachother often.
"Nothing." Heather replies, glazed eyes passing over the same page for the twentieth time.
"Nothing, right. You've been looking at the same page for an hour."
"Oh?" She replies.
"Um, yeah. Now are you going to tell me what's up?"
"It's nothing."
"Awww, come on. You know I'm going to nag you till you tell me."
"I got a 90 on that stupid poli-sci paper I've been working on forever."
For Heather, overachiever extraordinaire, a 90 on a paper was somewhere near to skipping through the quad naked during a class break on a list of desirable occurrences. In fact, public nudity might have been vastly preferable to a sub standard grade.
"A 90. Wow. That's horrible." Cyndi replies.
Registering the note of sarcasm in her friend's voice, Heather testily sets her book down on the mattress. Her husky voice raises an octave, expressing her exasperation.
"That's an A minus. I've never had below an A in that class."
"How much is the paper worth?"
"A third of our grade. I'll never pull a straight 4.0 now."
Cyndi winces. "Sorry honey."
Heather drops back on the mattress, folding her perfectly shaped bronze legs at an unnatural angle, staring listlessly at the wall.
"Hmm," Cyndi muses. "What can we do to cheer you up?"
"It's no big deal," Heather replies.
"I could make you a taco salad."
"Nah, I already had a turkey sandwich."
"We could go up to campus and watch people fall." Cyndi says, snickering as she remembers the beefy jock they'd seen biff it on a patch of ice earlier that day. He'd risen quickly and done the standard frantic glance about to see if anyone had witnessed his spill. Someone had.
"Too cold."
"Well crap. That's about all I had. Isn't there anything I can do?" Heather shakes her head no but pauses abruptly, a crooked smile quirking the corner of her mouth into smile.
Cyndi swallows hard. She's seen this look before; it has never ended well for her.
Heather slides a sideways glance to her, only meeting her eyes at the last second.
"Well, you could try on my gray pants. That might help." They often traded shirts, but at 4 inches taller and 3 sizes larger, Cyndi had flatly refused to try on any of Heather's pants despite her eager insisting. Even a simpleton could do that math.
"No. Absolutely not. No m'am."
Heather's lower lip juts out in a mock pout. "Aww pleeeease? I thought you said you wanted to cheer me up."
"I do, but not by attempting to squeeze my fat ass into your pants."
Heather heaves a heart-breakingly heavy sigh and leans back dramatically. "Oh well. I guess I'll just have to be depressed then." She stares up at the ceiling. The game is far from over, and Heather is more than a worthy opponent. They know each other well. Cyndi desperately thinks of something, anything to offer as a last bid.
"Really baby, I'll do anything else. Just not the pants. How about a foot rub?" Heather ups the ante once more, judging by the last offer she's already won.
"You know I'd try on your pants if you asked me to," Heather replies slyly. True, yes. She would. Given, everything of Cyndi's she tried on always fit her better, grateful for Heathers's perfect curves instead of Cyndi's categorically flat butt and too long legs. But this fact did not matter. Reciprocity is key to the exchange and Heather's lawyer mind has the logic well in hand.
Cyndi sighs in defeat.
"Alright, where are they?"
"Yay!" Heather shouts exultingly, springing from the end of the bed with more energy than she's demonstrated all night, possibly all semester. She locates them quickly, her closet being color coded and sorted by item type, a stark contrast to Cyndi's mish mash of overlapping hangers and general closet entropy next door."Here they are!" she sings tossing the hanger onto Cyndi's bed.
Cyndi eyes the pants dubiously. They are shorter and smaller than she remembers. Might as well get it over with.
"Turn around," she instructs Heather, removing her jeans.
"As if," Heather replies.
Bending over, Cyndi removes the pants from the hanger and slips them over her feet. By the time the hips of the pants reach her thighs, the cuffs are already 3 inches above ankle level. A throaty guffaw shakes the air as the pants cease their ascent, refusing to clear Cyndi's hips.
"Well, that's as far as they go." Cyndi says, arms akimbo.
"Come on! You haven't even tried to get them on yet." Heather manages, catching her breath.
'For piss sakes," Cyndi sighs, eager for the humiliation to be over, even if she is glad to see her friend laughing again. She grabs the waistband and yanks it upward. The pants raise a further few inches above her ankle and manage to clear her hips. They are now firmly wedged everywhere they were not meant to go and will go no further. Cyndi notes that she could sooner morph into a giraffe upon command than be able to zip them.
Heather screams with laughter, tears streaming down her face. She is unable to catch her breath. Cyndi shifts on her feet, delicately trying to extract the fabric from it's uncomfortable lodgings, waiting for the laughter to subside.
"Are we done here?" she asks.
Heather gasps for air and coughs wiping tears away. "Oh fine, go ahead. You can take them off."
"Thank the gods." Cyndi mutters, pulling the pants downward. They refuse to move. Cyndi hops up and down and manages to get one leg out before promptly falling over sideways, narrowly missing the corner of the pressed wood dresser provided by the apartments. Someone thumps the ceiling below, incensed their Jance Kapp Perry song has been interrrupted by such an unceremonious crash.
The room has gone silent. Looking up from the floor, Cyndi sees her friend convulsing with laughter, silent now as her body shakes with uncontrolled mirth.
"Always glad to help," Cyndi says, extracting her other leg from the pants. "Are we feeling better now?"
Several moments pass before Heather is able to answer. "Yes," she finally manages, "much."
"So glad." Says Cyndi flopping on her bed and resuming her French studies.
"Are you sure you don't want to try on the black ones?" Heather suggests innocently, "I'm sure they'd fit better."
"I'm sooo not falling for that one." Cyndi replies tersely.
"Oh well" Heather replies. "It worth a shot."


There you go. Thanks again to Heather for the suggestion. Love you baby!

Cyndi

PS. And no, Heather, I will not try on any of your pants for old time's sake. : )