shoes again, drawing, burning, streaming

And this is why I don’t like buying shoes online. My orthos came yesterday and they feel great and I like the way they look but I think they are a half size too big. My feet measure 9 1/2”. My current sandals, size 8, according to the chart on their website, measure 10 1/4” toe to heel. The chart on the ortho website also said 9 1/2” feet, size 8 but the shoes measure 10 3/4” toe to heel. So now my quandary is do I send them back and reorder 7 1/2 or order 7 1/2 and compare the fit and then send one pair back for a refund? I have 60 days to return them. Here’s a comparison of the two size 8s and how they fit.

Thwarted again Friday when I tried to torch the burn pile for the third time still with no success and it’s been 3 weeks since we had any rain. The first time it had been nearly a week after rain and I used my usually successful method of twisting up newspaper, sticking it in near the bottom in three places and dousing it with trimmer fuel and lighting the paper but the debris was still too wet. Second attempt a week later same method still wouldn’t light. Yesterday I used the newspaper and charcoal lighter fluid and liberally squirted it all over including the paper. Fuel burned, paper burned, debris did not. It should have gone up like a torch. My grandson Mikey came over Saturday with some old diesel fuel and got it to burn so today I emptied the truck and then used the diesel fuel he left for me and torched it again because all signs point to a burn ban starting tomorrow.

I’ve started a new drawing, well, I transferred faint outlines to the page in my sketchbook, a buckeye butterfly. Here’s my first day of working on it, one of four wings

and today’s effort

but when I was working on the first wing Friday I was thinking I really can’t call it a drawing since I didn’t draw, only traced the main lines, more like working in a coloring book so what do I call it, a coloring? But today as I was working on the body of the moth, I did redraw the shape more accurately from the faint outline so I don’t know. Maybe the next one, I have another butterfly lined up. Or maybe something different. Once I get the buckeye finished I plan to add a little watercolor background.

Other than going to SHARE Thursday mornings, working on the butterfly, and burning tree debris I haven’t done much else. We’ve been streaming Continuum on Prime. We’re not quite to the middle of season 2 of 4. In the future of 2077, corporations have total control and with high-tech surveillance the police, called Protectors, keep the population on a very short leash and tightly controlled; no dissent allowed, books are contraband, history is treason, people are constantly in ‘citizen debt’ (think of company towns on steroids). A terrorist group trying to break the hold of the corporations is sentenced to die but instead escape via time travel and a Protector is inadvertently taken with them. But instead of the 5 years in the past they planned, something went wrong and they went back 65 years. Liber8 is still trying to prevent corporate takeover, Protector is trying to preserve her future, the genius responsible for all the tech that keeps the population under control is now just an 18 year old kid. And lots of other stuff mixed in. It’s really good if you like sci-fi.

 

shoes and shells, mostly shoes

Some women are crazy about shoes, Imelda Marcos comes to mind. I’ve never understood the fascination, preferring to go barefoot whenever possible, shoes are utilitarian to me. While I like a pair of nice flats for the few times I dress up I don’t wear heels, haven’t since my mid-30s and back then only when dressing up, and never spike heels. Despite the shoe industry’s promotion of them in advertising, four or five inch spike heels always seemed like the American form of foot binding to me. Not quite as crippling but serving the same basic purpose; small dainty wobbly steps, me at least, and no running for your life. 

The last time I bought a new pair of shoes (and by that I mean real shoes not the cheap $14 dollar sandals I have bought every year or two at Walmart that wear out quickly) was in 2017 before our trip to Hawaii that are really worn out now.

 

This year I have bought 3 pairs of shoes, all sandals. Since my open toed black flats for dressier wear had worn out I went shoe shopping last spring to replace them. I ended up with some black sandals because my ingrown toenail had flared up and all the closed toed flats hurt. I think I’ve worn them twice so far. Early summer I really needed new everyday sandals, tired of the cheap Walmart versions, and shopped online and bought some Earth Origins slip-on sandals which cost more than I have generally paid at a shoe store and have worn all summer. 

I like them well enough but they only have one strap with which to tighten the fit and have stretched out a bit and my left foot has started to skew at an angle on the foot bed so I started searching for new sandals and Sunday I bought a pair from Ortho online. This is the most expensive pair of shoes I have ever bought, over $100 and that was 20% off, but they have three straps with which to tighten the fit and I like the style better than the ones I have now. I was FaceTiming with Jade and dithering about buying the shoes and how much they cost and as we were ending the call, love you, she says, and buy the shoes. So I did. 

Now I’m waiting for them to arrive and hope they fit and live up to the claims on their website.

I wear sandals as long as weather permits. I even, gasp, will wear socks with sandals, but I do have some winter shoes. I have a pair of ankle length moccasin booties that I bought probably in my 40s and have worn a hole in the sole of one of them but I just put some thick insoles in and still wear them. I have a pair of Sketchers that I like that a friend gave me probably 5 years ago because they were too small for her and some gym shoes that I bought right before I stopped going to the gym about 12 years ago that I hardly ever wear. I have some hiking boots I bought years ago when I went to Scotland in 2016, also that I’ve worn only a handful of times. And of course a pair of black cowboy boots, I am after all a Texan. There’s a few other pairs of shoes lingering in the back of my closet that I don’t wear anymore like the blue suede Cole Haan sandals I wore to a wedding two years ago that I bought at a resale shop and are really a half size too big, some worn out huaraches that I loved even though the heel was narrow and tended to twist my foot if I wasn’t careful, some dressier not sandal brown leather slides that started to hurt my feet the last several times I wore them.

I should probably buy another pair of enclosed winter shows. I like the sketchers and I’ve bought adidas in the past but here’s my main complaint about shoes with laces…they won’t stay tied. That aggravates the shit out of me. How hard is it to sell shoes with laces that stay tied. I have to tie them normally with a bow and then take the loops of the bow and tie another knot and still they will come undone. Maybe I’ll check out the kind that have elastic laces you don’t tie.

Autumn was in town and spent the day with me working on a project. She’s making decorative belts, one for her and one for a friend, from chains and seashells. Mostly I just supplied tools and an idea or two. Yesterday she glued jump rings to some of the shells Pam had collected (they didn’t all get thrown back into the Gulf) and made some from wire that she could insert into the olive shells, a loop on the end of a straight section about 3/4” long, and arranged them how she wanted. She has to wait until the adhesive cures before she can flip them over and attach them to the chains with smaller jump rings.

Later we went out to see the partial eclipse of the full moon since we had a clear night but when I asked the All Knowing Oracle what percent would be eclipsed and how long it would be, 8% at the top edge and another hour, not worth the wait so we came in.