After hitting a wall this past week — I’m afraid my iron levels didn’t improve much after the infusions and I was also in six states last week for heaven’s sake — I’m back and would like to talk about shoes.
I am hard on them.
Angel and the other cobblers at Shoe Hospital at the Monadnock Building in the Loop know me by name, that’s how often I’m in there to get repairs done. It’s not because the boys don’t do a good job fixing up my shoes: It’s that I keep on breakin’ ’em down. But why?
It’s hard for me to admit this, but I tend to drag my left heel a little. You won’t notice it unless a) you’re a hunter, tracking me through the icy tundra! or b) a cobbler, repairing my shoes. I wear down both the heels from all the city walking I do, but the left heel sole always goes first. After just a few months, the metal tip of the heel starts breaking through the rubber and I’m back at Shoe Hospital, forking over the dough and feeling a little sheepish that I’m there again so soon.
Part of this is because I’m a high-heel fan. I don’t wear stilettos for heaven’s sake (well, not in the daytime, anyway) but a bit of a heel on my shoes is de rigueur. I’m the shortest in my family, so a sensible heel helps with that. But I also just enjoy being a girly-girl. It’s fun! The problem is that when you wear pumps and…scuffle a little like I do — ugh! — the result is that you have to go see Angel for new heel nibs and a patch job on the scuffs and tears while he’s at it.
The scuffs and tears aren’t the fault of my weird, quasi-Quasimodo leg drag thing, though; such repairs are needed when you stick a high-heeled shoe through a few too many subway grates. (It occurs to me I should invoice the City of Chicago for some of these repairs. I’m sure they’d be happy to help with that.) I’m sure I wouldn’t need so many repairs if I lived upon the rolling meadows of [insert pastoral locale here] and ran errands back and forth on soft grasslands. We can never know.
It’s a good thing that I like shoes. A lot. My very favorite wardrobe item is the coat, hands down, but shoes run a close second. This means that if a pair of mine really go kaput, it’s okay. Not only do I have backup, I won’t have to drag (!) myself to go find a suitable replacement. That’s an errand I can handle for sure.
But I also really like going to the cobbler. It feels good to pay a little to get a good pair of shoes fixed up good as new instead of tossing them out and buying a new pair. (It might be the same part of my personality that doesn’t throw out food if it’s been sitting out all night — within reason!) I try to take care of the material things I am fortunate enough to enjoy. I’m lucky and I try to be responsible about that.
It’s good to see you, good to be seen. There’s so much to tell you. I started with shoes, started at the bottom.