From Head to Foot

SUMMARY: Glasses and insoles. And hair, mustn't forget the hair.

As I reported a couple of weeks ago, I've got this annoying pain in the metatarsal/phalangeal joint.  I hate shopping for shoes. But, in the interest of lessening the pain and helping the healing, I went shopping for stiff-soled shoes. Which of course required walking walking walking around a huge mall on my sore foot. And to no avail: found that pretty much everything that was really stiff and don't bend much came in one of two flavors: Army Boot or Nurse Ratched. I thought that my brown men's Merrell's, which I wear a lot because they're quite comfy, were pretty stiff--

--until the podiatrist showed (as I reenact here) that they were merely "OK" (his word) in the bendy department.

That's why I went shopping. BUT not only were the selections not pretty,  the prices were also downright ugly. So I returned home to check out what I already have. My black women's Merrell's--a different fit, slightly smaller and tighter--but cooler looking because they're, duh, black, which is inherently cool--turn out to have much stiffer soles. Interesting. They did not want to bend at all. Score one for cool black Merrell's. Boost likes them, too.

So, what else do I already have around? Ignoring hiking boots for now, how about my 3 pairs of New Balance "tennis shoes". Worn but not worn out; dirty from all the times I wore them for hiking and agility and yard work and EVERYTHING until about 3 years ago when I mostly started wearing Merrell-style shoes most of the time. Kept them for serious walking and athletic activities that didn't involve wet grass or mountains. So I still have them.

And, whoa, they also really do not want to bend! And a sudden brain flash--that's because, back in '97 when I had a stress fracture in one foot (same foot, turns out, different toe), the podiatrist (orthopedist?) told me to always buy stiff-soled shoes, so that's what I looked for when I shopped.

Meanwhile, my current podiatrist had suggested that I take my custom orthotics--again, dating from post-stress-fracture wayyy back then--and have them covered with a nice cross-training insole pad by an orthotics guy. So I took my familiar bluies and his prescription and dropped them off last week; have an appointment for a final fitting on Monday. Who knew it was so complicated?

So, so far, foot still hurts, trying not to do any walking or hiking, but still did agility class last night and it felt OK in my stiff-soled turf shoes, which also don't bend much at all.

MEANWHILE, nearly at the other end of my body, it came time for my biannual eye checkup and glasses replacement. So, a couple of weeks back, I went on in. Left eye, which has always been pretty good, remained pretty good. Right eye, which has been very gradually getting more nearsighted and would require a very thick lens if I were using normal plastic or glass, tricked me this time around and got slightly less nearsighted and slightly more farsighted. Which is apparently typical for, ugh, "older" people.

Then I had to shop.

I hate shopping for glasses. Normally I just try to replace the lenses in my existing frames, but this time they no longer make the same frames, so I'd have to leave my old frames with them to have the lenses made. Fergit that. So had to pick out new frames for regular glasses AND for sunglasses (have been without separate sunglasses for 2 years. That's enough of *that*.)

And it's SO. HARD. Here is one of three walls of frames. They all look almost the same but they all look terrible on me.

Come on, which pair of thick black plastic frames do you want for your sunglasses?

It's hopeless. I'm probably not really crying, but I could have been.

Fortunately, the optician assisting me managed to convince me that she knew what she was talking about in terms of things that looked good on me. She did so by agreeing with me on several pairs that I tried and hated. Then she went looking for various frames and brought them to me. I'd look in the mirror, she'd look at me in person, and we'd negotiate whether they would be going home with me or not.

I finally decided on this for the sunglasses. Not black. From a distance, might look that way, but actually just dark purple. And on the inside, they're blue! If there's anything that convinces me that something is of high quality, it's that they're blue and purple. Don't look at the price sticker. I sure didn't. Gasp.

Then we agreed on these for my regular glasses. I said, "ugh, bling." And she said, oh, really, not very much bling at all, it's very subtle. And this is also an experiment; I've never before had glasses with no frame on the lower half. Yes, from the earpiece to the nosepiece, it's just naked lens.

And, two weeks later, here are my old glasses:

Here are my new sunglasses--whoa, don't I look cool or what?! Just the thing to wear with black Merrell's.

And these are my new spectacles.

Lastly, a couple of weeks ago I finally got my hair fixed--something I do about every six months but it was way overdue this time. Because I hate having my hair permed. But I really like the results (as seen in the photos above) and I really like that it then becomes pretty much wash and wear. This is the really glamorous part of the process:

So now I'm all fixed up in all these various ways. Ready to face the world.

The Month of Losing Dangerously

SUMMARY: A purse, a watch, sunglasses, a flashlight, Benadryl, a man, a plan, a canoe, pasta, heros, rajahs, a coloratura...but I digress.

I am not the sort of person who loses things, normally. Really, I'm not. Now, I'm beginning to wonder--

First, the vanished purse on Saturday, Oct 16, which I didn't discover until the following Tuesday night, when I had tickets to a play.

That Wednesday was spent searching for the purse and making phone calls and such.

(It wasn't an entirely wasted effort--in the process of tearing the house AND the car apart looking for the purse, I did a lot of clean-up and putting things away, like the bottle of benadryl that had been sitting, unused, on the kitchen counter since Boost had itchies a couple of months ago but then got better.)

So perhaps it was understandable that evening when I took the dogs to class (with no drivers license, no money, no AAA card, nuthin') that I was a bit distracted. As usual, pottied the dogs when I got there, cleaned up Tika's poo in the approved manner using my new spiffy LED flashlight to see what I was doing, tossed it into the poo can, and walked away--yes, the unclear pronoun reference: I realized I still had a bag of poo in my hand.

Retrieved the flashlight from the poo can, made a mental note that it needed to be cleaned before further use, and--I haven't seen it since.

As class continued, I glanced at my wrist to check the time, but no watch. "Huh," I thought to myself, "I thought I put it on, but I was a bit distracted." Got home, tore the house apart again looking for the watch. (Which was a very nice, very expensive Seiko watch that was quite beautiful when I got it as a gift 25 years ago. It's pretty scruffy now, but I like it and would hate to lose it.)

It took me several days to realize that perhaps I HAD put the watch on before going to class, so I called Power Paws and--a miracle--someone had found that dainty tiny black watch in one of the fields.

After I got my purse back, I decided it was time to clean up assorted other business that I'd been postponing. Like, on Thursday October 28, an eye appointment to order replacement glasses. I actually had a warranty of sorts on the glasses, so I could either get an entirely new pair with my new (very slightly changed) prescription for a lot of $$, or get an exact replacement of what I had with the warranty for half the $$. One of the deciding factors was that the not-cheap clip-on sunglasses that I've had for the last 2 years and that were made explicitly for that frame would still be useful to me.

The next day, got into the car to go for my long-postponed haircut, reached for the sunglasses in their holder--and, yeah, you got it, not there. These are useful to me *only* in the car, since I have self-darkening lenses. They almost never leave the car, and almost always are replaced in their holder by sheer habit. I don't have to think at all about them at all--and apparently I didn't, because I couldn't at all remember the last time I had used them (yesterday on the way home from the eye appt? on the way there? the day before? etc.).

So, last weekend, I tore the car somewhat apart again looking for the sunglasses. Nada. Argh. I can't think where they might be, unless I did something like take them off, set them in my lap for some reason, then get out of the car and they fell out. That would be a big Crap. A week later, I still don't know where they are.

Anywayyyyyy Boost has started scratching again. Today seems particularly worse, so it's time to start the benadryl again.

So...yeah... I put it away: But where?

All I can say is, the dogs could be next at the rate I'm going, so it's a good thing they're nailed to the floor.

---

In its entirety, here's the palindrome I started on in the Summary: "A man, a plan, a canoe, pasta, heros, rajahs, a coloratura, maps, snipe, percale, macaroni, a gag, a banana bag, a tan, a tag, a banana bag again (or a camel), a crepe, pins, Spam, a rut, a Rolo, cash, a jar, sore hats, a peon, a canal – Panama!"