4/11/14. The post where I (once again) exercise poor judgment regarding footwear.

4/11/14: slept pretty well and woke up Friday morning in the 5.5-6 range.  It was going to be a beautiful spring Friday. In addition to a relatively light work day, I had manicure and PT appointments, and we were having some friends over in the evening for a wine tasting.  I was looking forward to a pretty fun day and my foot appeared to be cooperating.

I picked out a casual spring outfit that would get me through the work day and evening activities.  Then it was time to make a decision on shoes.  Since it has gotten warmer, I've quit wearing the cowboy boots to work and gone back to the prescription shoes I bought last summer.  They are comfortable and fairly stylish, but I've already gotten tired of rotating the same two pairs of shoes all week. That won't surprise any of you who know me well.  I am a collector of shoes.  When we moved into our current home, my patient, long-suffering husband designed a wall in our closet with custom shelves for my shoe collection.  I commissioned a painting of some of my favorite pairs, which hangs proudly in our powder room.  Rotating between two pairs of work shoes for the next six months is not going to work for me.

So I scanned my collection for some alternatives and a pretty pair of platform sandals caught my eye.  In the past, they have been one of my go-to pairs for comfort.  With the platform heels, they feel like flats, and they are made of very soft leather with nubuck heels. When I slipped them on, they felt pretty good.  Just the thing for a day like I had planned.  

Or so I thought.  By mid-morning, they were really starting to irritate my foot, although I convinced myself it wasn't any worse than my prescription shoes.  Nevertheless, I resolved to go home and change shoes after my lunchtime appointments.  I had my manicure (Taupe-less Beach from the OPI Brazil collection, in honor of the warm spring weather) and went to PT, where I rode the exercise bike for a full ten minutes and upped my treadmill speed to a whopping .8 mph.  Then I went home and...did not change shoes before returning to work.

I kept the sandals on until about mid-way through the wine tasting Friday evening.  I can't explain why, I just did.  When I finally took them off, my foot was red and swollen and generally unhappy with me.  I went to bed at an 8, hoping that a night's rest would resolve it.  No such luck.  I slept poorly and woke up early this morning, still in the 7.5-8 range.  On evenings and weekends, I have a lot more options for appropriate footwear, and I'll be much more careful today.  

I'd like to say I've learned my lesson, but I probably haven't.  Within a day or two I will have convinced myself that the issue was not the shoes.  Maybe I was just on my feet for too long, or ramping up the PT irritated my foot.  In any event, this probably won't be the last post where I admit I made a poor shoe decision.  But you have to admit, they are pretty cute sandals, right?