You Know You Have too Many Shoes When… (a Sunday Shoe Story)

…you’re trying to upload all the photos (112, if you’re wondering) to your brand new Shoe Gallery section, and it takes forever.Then again, I haven’t run out of storage space yet, so HAH!

But yes, the Shoe Gallery has gone live, and it’s taking up (a lot of) space in the panel/bar/menu/thingy right there at the top of this page - all for your amusement, dear readers, so go check it out! 

It used to live exclusively on Facebook (as a chronologically ordered photo album) and my hard drive, but since some of you don’t have access to either of those sources I figured that I should share my shoes with the world. That’s why you all read my blog anyways, isn’t it? Wait, you’re not here for the shoes? Well, too bad, shoes is what you’re getting. 

If you want, I can give you Dead Shoes (as in shoes that I used to own, but wore out/gave away/ruined/etc) too, but I haven’t decided whether to upload those. What do you lot think: are we into Dead Shoes, or do we only want Live Shoes? 

The Importance of Being Accurate

A few weeks ago we got a crop of new employees at work. I’m always sceptical of new people (clearly I have trust issues), but I figured that it’s also about time our office stopped feeling half empty. Even if they weren’t that great as employees or friends they would at least bring food to the regular lunchtime potlucks - and I’m always in favour of more food. So I decided to play nice. Make sure to remember their names, include them in conversations, and with-hold my bitchy-ness. And that worked out just fine - I was actually starting to think that they were nice - until one of them made a confession. 

He asked me one day whether I stood at a bus-stop on Albert Street every morning at around 8:15am. I confessed that indeed, I did. And then he told me that he and his girlfriend had been seeing me standing there every morning at the same time for long enough to give me a nickname: Aviators, because I wear big sunglasses. 

Now, I don’t like nicknames at the best of times. There are only two people in this world who are allowed to give me unwarranted nicknames without complaint - my mother (because I can’t stop her) and my BFF (also because I can’t stop her). Some of you may even remember what happened the last time that someone gave me an unapproved nickname; I didn’t speak to her for three days, until she apologized and promised to stop. 

But this nickname has to be the worst nickname ever. Besides the fact that I wear sunglasses for two very specific reasons (avoiding eye contact with the weirdo who tries to chat me up most days, and avoiding going sun blind thank-you-very-much), the sunglasses in question are #FashionNerdAlert NOT AVIATORS. They are in fact, just regular, big lensed, sunglasses of the non-aviator persuasion. Great for keeping the sun out of my eyes, but not great for impersonating Tom Cruise in Top Gun. In fact, a little internet research has deduced that this type of sunglasses is simply called “over-size,” because the lenses are much bigger than the eye to the point of providing excess coverage. 

And really, isn’t it the point of a nickname to accentuate something that is obvious? I would have tolerated being called “Sunglasses,” because I do wear them almost every day, but continuing to call me “Aviators” really just accentuates the fact that the nickname-r can’t get his (and her) facts right. 

After all: “Fast is fine, but accuracy is everything.”

Urban Nomad

A month ago my boss and his wife went on a sojourn to Europe, and asked me to look after their house. I’ve stayed at their place before to dog sit - their adorable dogs Oscar & Felix are routinely referred to as my boyfriends - but never for more than a weekend. Now, you all know how much I love my own apartment, but I decided that this would be a fun experiment to see if I could handle living out of a suitcase (and away from my computer, books, regular food, and bed) for a month. After all, everyone else seems to be going on vacation, and this is the closest I was going to get for the near future. 

So I packed my Louis Vuitton mini-backpack and hopped a bus from Cathedral to Lake View. (Okay, so I took a suitcase full of carefully coordinated outfits as well. What, did you really think that I wake up looking this fabulous and coordinated?)

The first night was fabulous. Cable tv, coordinated sheets, amazing shower pressure, a stash of Northlanders graphic novels on the table (the boss is a comic book junkie too), and a case of Coke Classic in the fridge. As a treat I also ordered pizza - which is a rarity for me, since I normally make it from scratch. 

Day two was equally as wonderful. Walks in the neighbourhood park, reading in the yard, and seemingly endless episodes of Island Hunters, House Hunters International, and Property Virgins. Clearly I was developing an addiction to HGTV and being talked into the idea of buying a house (or an island). 

And let me tell, you I absolutely loved it. 

Until I hit day three. The pizza had run out and I was starting to feel an acute case of ennui. Apparently there is such a thing as too much of the same thing - even when it’s a new thing. 

So I went home (it was a long weekend). I spent the day catching up on my RSS-reading list, watching episodes of Orange is the New Black, and planning more outfits. And when I was done all that I packed up a bunch of my regular food and hopped on the Southbound bus feeling energized and ready for another volume of Northlanders. 

As I fell asleep that night on borrowed sheets I came to a stunning realization. You can be bored anywhere if you don’t have the drive or motivation to do anything else. So with that in mind, I spent the merry month of May taking many many buses between two houses, grocery shopping every few days instead of once a week, and making an effort to try new things. 

Some of these things (like experimental pasta recipes) were not a success, but I proved to myself that I can live a slightly nomadic life. I don’t think that I could pack up my life into a suitcase (girl’s got too many shoes for that, right), but I can throw a little chaos into my life without feeling too thunderstruck. 

tank top by Seductions, sunglasses by Betsey Johnson, sandals and bracelets by Aldo, mini-backpack by Louis Vuitton, earrings by Claire's, maxiskirt by Andrea Jovine Portfolio