Friday, February 19, 2010

The Shoe Story-- long but worth it!

Actually, it should be entitled "How Shoe Denial Caught up wtih me"... Lee &I enjoyed watching (and voting) for America's Got Talent contestants all season long. So, when I heard they were gonna have the top ten finalists (NOT ten ACTS, mind you) at the MGM Grand (at Foxwoods Casino), I decided to get two tickets for hubby and I. Now, I don't dress up often... and I hate to buy clothes or shoes, etc, so I deal with whatever is in the closet. I had a nice pair of black slacks and a deep green sweater on, and figured I'd wear my clogs. Okay,...I know, ... they're brown, not black, but no one will notice, right? I put the left one on, and then the right one, and realized the right one felt funny. Oh, darn! The outer edge where the suede met the sole had blown out!! At least two inches. I think I remember it was just slightly blown, but not THAT much. Okay, these need to get thrown out. What else do I have....?
Looking through the boxes in my closet... sandals, nope,... more sandals, nope,... REAL dressy shoes, not tonight; etc....
AHH... I found a pair of black (this is good), rather worn Hush-puppy kind of shoes. That could work. No one will ever notice them anyway. It's a casino. Everyone is paying attention to the slots or the gaming tables, right?
I get to the casino and we walk into to the hotel lobby to ask directions to the theater. It's only down a short corridor. We get almost to the end of the corridor and I feel something give on my left foot and a rather loud 'Fwhaap! Fwhaap!...'Fwhaap! Fwhaap!...! Oh no! I look down and realize the sole of my shoe is ALMOST OFF. It's only attached by the toes and the ball of my foot. The arch and the heel have left the rest of the shoe!! Crap! What AM I gonna do? I know that if I walk as normal as possible, my 'Fwhaap! Fwhaap! will cause a lot of attention even above the whistles and dinging of the casino noise. I start to barely lift my foot as I walk, but now it looks as though I'm the hunchback of Notre Dame (minus the hunching part- just the dragging of the foot part). Once we get to the box office for our tickets and food vouchers, we slowly head to the food court and find a secluded table to sit at.
Once I'm seated, I decided that the 'shoe' part still has something there, not just my bare sock (which is red, BTW), so I peel off my sole completely!
It doesn't look too bad. After asking a waitress if she had some black tape (I explained my problem), she went off to find me some tape (holding her sides from laughing so hard, I might add!)... no luck (giggle). Off she went. After we finished eating, we had time to spare before the show, so we started walking to the slot areas and as I took a step, I 'CLACKED!!"'...
I looked down and saw that the bottom of a shoe has a metal rod running along the arch! and I'm on a tile floor!!... So now the only way to get to the gaming area is to walk on my toe/ball of my foot (THIS looks great....!) As I get to the end of the food court, the waitress comes over and says she found some 3M adhesive (spray in a can). Would I like some? Well, it was a brief thought, but if it DIDN"T work, I'd now be sticking to the floor with the leftover residue!! "No thanks, " I said to her."We'll manage."
All is fine through the rest of the evening, until we get home.
Since it was only close to 10 pm I thought my daughter would be up and I went to her bed to tell her the 'shoe story'. Since her laughter (and MINE) kept the little one (my grandson, Kai) from sleeping, HE now wanted me to 'lay wizz him, granmaw...". I did a quick lay down, sing a song, do the Lord's prayer (our ritual- just done double time), then slowly slid myself off the bottom end of the bed  to stand up (I still had my shoes on). As I stepped back with the left foot, and reached over the end of the bed to put my right foot on the floor and stand upright, I heard the right shoe GIVE OUT!!! Almost completely!!!!
THAT brought forth another round of 'quiet' hysteria from my daughter and myself, which got worse once I pulled my shoe off my foot and realized that I was so lucky THAT it didn't give out while we were in the casino! Poor Malakai couldn't get to sleep for love nor money, since our laughter continued until I tried to crawl up the stairs, dragging my shoes with me, laughing hysterically (can laughter whisper?) OMG! What a night.

I had plans the next day with my mom, so I haven't thrown out the shoes yet, but I will by the end of the weekend. (Or maybe I'll take them to work to entertain my co-workers.... This one is too priceless!

ps. I left the shoes at my daughter's in MA, and asked her to send them to me since I hadn't taken photos of them except for my camera.... asn I needed the photos for this post.