I totally overslept for my Saturday knitting group. I was busy having a freaky dream about my car breaking down and being stuck on an old family compound which was inhabited by ten really hot Italian brothers (as in related to each other, not of the cloth) who were all vying for my hand and heart with their studly bodies and smoky eyes. I thought one of them was secretly in love with my sister because I saw her photo on the wall. She’d had her wedding there or something. But I kept thinking one of them harbored a crush on her. I was in love with the strange little artistic brother they kept hidden away in one of the remote houses where he stayed and made his beautiful little miniature art projects. Ya know, this wasn’t even one of the strangest dreams I’ve had this week. But it was certainly the most fun. Reminded me of the one I had about shopping for leather pants with Edward Norton. Let me tell you, that guy looks good in leather pants. Or at least he did in my dream. These are the rare times when my brain is a fun place to be.

My dreams are more vivid than they’ve been in years. Which I’m not sure is a good thing considering vivid dreams were a part of my recent diagnosis. Which I’m still supposed to write about. The good part is I don’t get “stuck” in the dreams in the same way I used to since I’ve been on the Trileptal.

So the first item on our big list for the day was missed. Part two was shoe shopping. We both need shoes. Mr. Man needed a new pair of black business casual shoes for work. He’s been wearing the same pair since early 2001. They were such good shoes that no others can live up to their standard. We’ve considered just getting these resoled and after today’s progress we still might. Not sure what he’ll wear in the meantime though. We came *this close* to buying some black Dr Martens for him but in the end he thought they pinched in at his toes too much. It’s better he decided that before we bought them. We did get some good brown hiking type shoes for him, which was the other kind he needed.

For me it took trips to both the Shoes on a Shoestring stores and some other place I can’t remember where he got his brown shoes and I still haven’t found a pair that I a) like and b) think are cheap enough for me to feel comfortable buying. Although I did see some kickass black biker boots in the men’s section but they didn’t have my size.

Somewhere somehow I have gotten to a place where spending over forty dollars on shoes has become too much. I’d love to tell the person I was ten years about this because she would laugh and laugh. The problem is I’m after something somewhat specific: mary jane type shoes - could be a clog or have an open back but the toe must be closed. My toes are yucky. I’m not a pedicure kind of girl. I’m wanting a much less bulbous toe than I usually get - very slighly pointier but still not like put your eye out pointy I hate those. See it’s all in my head! Gah! And I need brown. Brown shoes. Because I’ve been buying a lot of brown things lately. Chocolate brown and pink. And the only brown shoes I have are these fabulous ankle boots which look great with pants but soon it will not be boot weather and I want little mary jane clog thingies. But closer to the ground than clogs. Baby clogs. Clogs light.

So I found these great shoes. They are pretty much exactly what I want. Brown with little subtle pink flowery accents and everything. Not. On. Sale. Like 109 dollars. For cute little brownish pinky clogy shoes? At a discount shoe store? Nuh uh. If I’m spending that much on shoes I’ll be buying that in a really good brand from a store where I have to ask the guy to go get them. If I have to find the size myself I’m not spending over forty bucks. Fifty at the absolute most. Ok, sixty but that’s the absolute top. One hundred and nine is completely unacceptable.

I know a lot of you Manolo people are like “Man that’s chump change” but I’m not a Manolo girl. I don’t like dainty shoes, I like to feel the earth beneath me and not worry that a strap is suddenly going to break and I will come crashing to the earth. I have to concentrate enough on walking with plain old normal shoes. The best shoes I’ve ever worn in my entire life are my Doc Martens (any of them) and my black Chuck low tops. And this resurgence of kitten and wedge heels (not to mention the old school wooden hooker Candies shoes) make my ankles hurt and my stomach bile slowly rise in anticipation of the horrors that would happen if I tried walking more than twenty paces in them.

So I’m very happy for the Manolo fans out there who love their expensive strappy shoes. More power to ya (and definitely your arches and ankles) but I’m just not in your shoe strata. As one of the highly coiffed and be-makeuped ladies kept saying as she was trying on some (apparently wide) sky high strappy shoes at the Shoes on a Shoestring store: “these are for flintstones feet!” I have flintstones feet. I actually murmured that after the fourth time she squawked what she seemed to think was a really witty thing to say. Then the gaggle of these OC housewife wannabes stumbled and tripped in their scary tall shoes over to a different part of the store.

So, three shoe stores and we have one pair of shoes to show for it. And they’re not even for ME!

After shoestore number one we needed coffee. My sunglasses had broken and I wanted to stop by the Avenue next to the Starbucks (yeah we’re big westside chain whores blah blah) and get some. The Avenue also has shoes so I thought that would be convenient. We also wanted to see if there were any more corduroy pants like the ones I’d gotten over Christmas because I love these pants and they seem to have gotten stained or something in the wash, or the texture dried strangely in the dryer. Hopefully that was just a weird detergent or dryer thing and I can fix it. So there was lots of clearance rack scouting. As usual I accumulated a huge pile of clothes to try on. In the end I came out with two cotton fishnet sweater thingies off the clearance rack. And sunglasses. Not having a lot of luck today.

Then we were supposed to FINALLY get to the new Trader Joe’s. And I was going to call Scout and meet her so we could do odd organic TJ shopping together while Cody hid in a corner. He’s scared of hippies ya know. Ok not really. We made it to the parking lot at 8:45. Guess when they close? Yep. 9. I know Ms. Scout goes to bed pretty early anyway so we decided to just go eat dinner. We went to TGiFridays because I like their Jack sauce stuff. Yes it was another chain on the Westside why do you ask?

A lot of driving. A lot of stores. Oh, we went to the pet store (yeah, the Petsmart chain) for a new retractable leash as well. So that’s two sweaters, a pair of men’s shoes, a leash, and a pair of sunglasses. That’s all we have to show for it.

Tomorrow? We’ll be hitting Torrid and Trader Joe’s. Dammit.