Life's too short to wear uncomfortable shoes

I am in pain. My calves are killing me and I feel like beating my head against a wall. I am a woman and I love shoes. I love the way they look, the feel of them when I first put them on, the way they can complete your style, but damn they hurt. I have this really fantastic Bass ankle boots with a 3 1/2 inch heel. They look fantastic with jeans and I feel powerful when I'm walking around in them, but after twenty minutes they are the most uncomfortable things in the entire world. Why does this have to be? I beg to the goddess of shoes to give me the ability to wear shoes that look great without the pain that comes from wearing them.
I have funky toes. They are hideous. Not as bad as some of the toes I've seen sticking out of blue plastic 7-Eleven sandals here in Taiwan, but bad enough. First they are large. My big toes aren't cute. They have hair on them and have a dryness to them that no amount of lotion, butter, balm or spit will get rid of. Then there's this toe that my husband likes to call my hammer toe. It is my middle toe on my third foot. It is longer than the others and I think that it must be a throwback to some prehistoric ancestor. It's nasty and I've tried everything possible to make it lay flat. Right now, I can see a little bubble of it sticking up in my shoe. Yes, I'm grateful that I have feet, but oh I do wish they were beautiful.
So, I've made up my mind to never, ever where uncomfortable shoes as long as I live. Oh, that was a lie. I saw a pair of snakeskin (fake) boots that are just calling my name.

It's in the Jeans

It is Saturday night and I have things that I should be doing, but I need to get my mind and fingers flowing, so I'll start here. The house is a mess, Catherine has told me a little story of how she had a bad dream and is now in my bed, and Gordon is reading the paper. Life is pretty uneventful right now. My mother was in the hospital for two weeks and I didn't call her. A part of me feels really bad about this, but then the other part of me just doesn't really care. I don't know if this makes me cold, but I just don't feel genuine if I call her up and chat with her. It would just feel so fake. I mean just really, really fake. I don't know what to say to her. I honestly would love to shake her long distance, but that won't be possible. My sister summed it up perfectly the other day when she said that she loves her but she doesn't like her. Our mother goes to Club Med at least once a year. I'm not talking about the resort island thing, but to the hospital. She has been in there so many times that it isn't even funny. I'd say at least four years of her life have been spent in the hospital. Now, if I were to add doctor appointments to this, oh Lord! The number would be frickin incredible.
My sister Leslie told me that my dad is totally gone and that during her last visit to see him, he just said the same name over for thirty minutes. I still pray that something happens and that he'll snap out of it. I just read a really good article in Time magazine about dementia and what can be done to prevent it. Exercise is supposed to be the key and I'm certainly going to the gym on Monday. I do think I'll see my dad in the future and I'll get to tell him everything that has happened in my life.
I'm watching pictures of this beached whale in the UK and I want to scream!!! OK, children are going blind in Pakistan because they can't get medicine, but all this f#E%#@ money is being spent on something that could be sushi! Shit! I'm sick and disgusted!
I'm going to go and do what I have to do. I think I need a Diet Coke to get me started.
Whew.

Company Trip Blues

After a day and a half away from home, I felt like the Pope when I returned to the outskirts of Taipei. I actually wanted to kiss the ground. Maybe it's age. I have no idea, but traveling just totally sucks. Traveling with a group of Taiwanese coworkers - while I love them as friends and coworkers - is a nightmare. The trip was to a hot spring resort in Miaoli. Gordon couldn't come so Catherine and I went together. The first ten minutes were fantastic until the Kareoke book was passed about and two girls decided that now was the time (9:30 in the morning) to take up singing awful songs to a video of lovers running around Taipei. OK, the video playing on the TV sets on the bus were pretty funny. I kept thinking what a cool job it would be to be a girl or guy in these videos to the KTV songs. Most of them were shot in the 80s and are just tacky as hell, but it would be nice to put on my resume. So, they were singing for about an hour at a volume that couldn't go any lower. It was physically painful to listen to them sing.
First stop. Toilets. Second spot a really nice nursery that had a restaurant were our group had booked a reservation for the afternoon. I was going to eat there, but there was nothing that I could eat being served. Everything was either covered in a sweet sauce or not something that I eat. I had my food, so I just tucked into it. Catherine ate a bit, but this proved to be a bad thing but I'm getting ahead of myself.
Back on the bus we headed toward our next stop. A strawberry tourists trap. Around a large strawberry laughing teenagers took pictures of one another, people pretended that they were eating it, and I looked on with this totally jaded "What's the big deal?" look. Catherine had a good time. She ran around with my boss' granddaughter and played with gravel. I bought some strawberry filled eggroll cookies for my neighbors and Catherine's school. My coworkers ate deep-fried strawberries, chocolate covered ones and other things that actually made me physically sick to watch them eat. I'm not trying to act as if I'm superior just because I don't eat that stuff, but it is amazing how much people can put away in such a short period of time. I should know about this, but after almost four years of not being severely obese, it's hard to watch. They're normies around the food and can eat these things, but I still see it as being poison. This is a good thing on my part.
Back on the bus the world of strawberries didn't end at the big strawberry at the side of the road. Next stop: the strawberry field. This was my first time picking strawberries and it was pretty nice. A bunch of annoying teenagers gathered around Catherine and a part of me want to tell them to go play in traffic, but I can't seem to be rude. Catherine is cute (I'm her mother so I will always say this.) but these kids annoy the crap out of me. They act as if they've never seen a non-Chinese kid before. I think the next time this happens and they start saying how cute and wanting to take pictures with her, I'm going to run up to them and act as if it is so cool to see a Chinese person and that I want my picture taken with them. Maybe I'll even start touching their hair and slanting my eyes. I'm not a racist, but it is starting to really piss me off how some people just have no barriers.
Well, we picked strawberries and then got back on the bus. The hotel was about an hour away and was pretty nice. Catherine and I took a shower and just relaxed for a bit before heading down to dinner. Within minutes of getting down there, Catherine was so tired that she didn't eat a bite and wanted to go back up to the room. I attempted to get food that I could eat, but getting food that is abstinent isn't the easiest thing when no one really listens to what you're saying. So, we went upstairs, I ate my cheese, wheat germ, and salad and we went to bed. At ten o'clock Catherine started throwing up. All night long it didn't stop. I slept about three hours, got covered in puke and just wanted to cry because I hate seeing her in pain, but we made it through. The next morning she was a bit better, but by the afternoon she was week and started throwing up again on the way back. Yesterday was also Catherine's 5th birthday. I don't know if it was something she ate, but I'm presuming it was. During one of the stops when Catherine was sleeping in the bus, I went inside to heat up my food in the microwave of one of the restaurants. I got a firsthand look into the kitchen and was so totally disgusted that I don't think I'll ever eat out again. It wasn't just nasty, it was by far the most disgusting place I've ever seen. I almost sent a text message to my friend who was actually eating the food there to not even touch it. Next trip. I'm packing food for Catherine as well as myself.
OK, it's lunchtime and I'm starting to get a little hongry (yes, that's the spelling for how I'm feeling). After having a few days of meals that weren't that great, I'm having some of my favorites today.
Off me go.

Things I should do

I keep thinking about all of the things that I should do and my brain can't seem to settle on any one thing. It's that old ADD brain of mine. I say ADD, but I don't want to be one of those people that default to something outside of their own power that makes them do what they do. I'm a wee bit scatterbrained, but that's me. Back to the things that I have to do:
1. Finish out the day without getting caught writing this.
2. Get home and see if there's anything edible for my daughter to eat that requires little preparation. Should become a bit more local in
my ability to pick up something on the street for her to eat, but I can't.
3. Go to the gym and exercise the sides of my stomach because I hate the way the fat pops out of my jeans if I don't hike them up.
4. Clean out my fridge.
5. Learn to eat broccoli and cauliflower that used to have worms on it.
6. Stop surfing the net looking for things to do.
7. Wear these really cool boots even though they are too high and pose a risk to small children and the elderly. Finding my center of gravity is difficult, but my legs look a bit longer when I have them on.
8. Crochet more. I tried meditating, but I don't have the patience for this.
9. Stop fantasizing about a new PDA and just love the one I have.
10. Write back the people who email me.
11. Finish the work that I've started.
12. Organize my family photo albums. Do you combine families if you're married or do you keep them separate? I haven't the slightest idea.
13. Invest money in the stock market.
14. Stop buying stupid things I don't need.
15. Save money.
16. Teach Catherine to read.
I'll stop here. I have to finish my work before I leave. Long day. Little progress.
JCG