Shoes and More Shoes

Joan and David

Beautiful Franco Sarto shoe! I almost bought this one in pewter. It was gorgeous in that color but the 8.5 (my new size after 2 kids) was too big and kept slipping off the back. I ended up buying the black one like this one in size 8.

I had to go shoe shopping again. My every-day-wear black slingbacks that I probably wore way more than my other shoes started falling apart. First the heel kept popping out then the shoe just tore on the side. SO I was forced to go buy a new pair.

The day after I tore my shoes I wore some other back-up open toed black slingbacks to work and was really dismayed to find out that that pair had seen better days. So in all fairness I had to buy TWO pairs of black shoes. What can I say? I wear black shoes more than any other color. It happens when you work in a semi-conservative environment like I do. I love Nordstrom! They are so good at shoes.

I Love This Song!

Artist/Band: Dixie Chicks
Lyrics for Song: Everybody Knows
Lyrics for Album: Taking The Long Way

Tell me now if you came sneaking up behind
Would you know me and see behind the smile
I can change like colors on a wall
Hoping no one else will find what lies beneath it all
I think I hide it all so well

Stepping out, everyone can see my face
All the things I can't erase from my life
Everybody knows
Standing out so you won't forget my name
That's the way we play this game of life
Everybody knows

Looking through the crowd
I search for something else
But every time I turn around
I run into myself
Here I stand
Consumed with my surroundings
Just another day
Of everybody looking
I swore they'd never see me cry
You'll never see me cry

Stepping out, everyone can see my face
All the things I can't erase from my life
Everybody knows
Standing out so you won't forget my name
That's the way we play this game of life
Everybody knows

You say I'll pay the price
That's the chance that I'll take
Though you may think I'm telling lies
But I just call it getting by

Stepping out, everyone can see my face
All the things I can't erase from my life
Everybody knows

Standing out so you won't forget my name
That's the way we play this game of life
Everybody knows I am just barely getting by

I Recommend

Just thought I'd share with you ladies in their 30's like me, starting to think of eye wrinkles and under-eye circles. I've been using this eye cream by Avon for a couple of months and I love it. The gel part is for the eye lid and the cream is for under the eyes. It's supposed to be an eye lift without surgery.

On another note, did you notice my new picture in my profile? I'm wearing my new dress I bought recently from Torrid. I had to wear the little sweater on top to tone it down a bit. The smile is a bit fake but it's because Rey took the picture by surprise. Yes, that's a name badge I'm wearing and I'm holding a little boy's hand.

The Master Storyteller

Preface- This was the original introduction I was going to give to my short story "The Canal" at my last reading but it got too long with this included, so I just dropped it and decided I'll use it later. Maybe as part of a preface to a collection of short stories.

I did talk about my dad a little before I read "The Canal" and I told about how he was a storyteller. The old fashioned kind, like the Indians, where his dad told him stories and his grandfather told his dad and so on. There aren't very many storytellers left. One guy, a great spoken word artist, came up to me afterwards and was in awe. He said he'd never met an actual storyteller like that. He'd only heard of them. - Shoegirl

My father is the best storyteller hands down. He'd hold me enraptured listening to the words fall from his lips. And I ate them up, like delicious chocolates I couldn't get enough of. I was only two, and at a very active age, yet I sat glued to my seat next to him on the porch of our house, listening to him tell his tales.

I have a picture to prove it. It's in one of those square box frames that were very popular in the sixties and seventies. It's basically a square cardboard box with plastic sides that interlock. It used to swivel at some point it time but now it balances on a broken stand and doesn't turn. It has five sides and on each one fit five perfectly squared snapshots of me as a baby. In one of the pictures I'm peeking out, my tiny face a little circle. I'm sitting in a chair next to him, but I'm so small you can hardly see me. My father's hair is black, he wears black thick rimmed glasses, and his starched white barber shirt. His hand holds a coffee cup from the ear and it's dangling precariously on his index finger as if it will crash to the floor at any moment.

My sisters took this picture to record this familiar scene of me sitting next to him on the porch. This is where you could often find me when my father didn't have customers next door at his barbershop.

The small white building stood lonely sometimes with the big red letters, "Nick's Barbershop" facing Jensen Drive during an era of long hair and little business. My mother meanwhile struggled trying to make ends meet selling Avon and Tupperware. That's how I would end up with my father watching me occasionally.

If he did have customers I could be found hanging around inside the barbershop either playing with his typewriter, riding my tricycle, or waiting impatiently with a piece of paper and a pen in hand for him to finish cutting some poor man's hair, so he could draw a picture for me. He would then translate the picture into a story as he drew each character.

"Here's Bobby and Sandra eating at a table and here's a dog under the table waiting for them to drop some crumbs for him to eat."

That was my daddy. That is how I heard all his stories, both bible stories and stories about himself when he was a little boy in the early thirties in the Rio Grande Valley.

"Tell me that story again."
"Which one?"
"You now, the one when you were a little boy."
"Which one? The one about the cat?"
"No! The one about you and Tio Rudy and the canal. When everyone thought you drowned!"
"Oh that one! Okay, I'll tell you again."

Back to the Gym

You all haven't heard me talking about the gym in a while because I haven't been there in a while. I was doing so good for a while there. I was on a roll and then BAM! just like that I fell off the wagon. It's sad really. Especially considering how important this weight loss thing is, like life and death important. I keep telling myself, "Tomorrow I'm going to the gym," and then I don't. What got really sad was when the kids started asking me, "When are we going back to the gym?"

Why does it have to be so hard? It really shouldn't be. Simply put it should just be something we do naturally. I tell myself, "You know what you have to do. You just need to do everything you know you should." That includes preparing for my meetings (JW), exercising, reading to the children, and writing.

I said I was going to write about the balance between spirituality and life and I probably still will, but this has to do with it too. I really believe my life depends on my spirituality. They are intertwined and a part of each other. I should feel the same way about my health and that includes exercising on a regular basis.

As I was on the torture device, otherwise known as the elliptical machine, today I had an epiphany of sorts. First let me tell y'all. I finally bought that book I mentioned a while back. "Like Mother, Like Daughter: How Women Are Influenced by Their Mother's Relationship With Food-And How to Break the Pattern" by Debra Waterhouse. It's out of print so I found it on Powell Books and ordered it. When I got to the gym today the kids were asleep so I waited a few minutes and I started reading the introduction to the book.

Later when I was on the elliptical machine I started thinking about something that I think about often and what prompted me to buy that book. I started thinking about my kids and how Rey and I are their role models. I'm always thinking about that. When Miranda tells me she wants to be skinny I worry that I'm screwing her up already! I quickly tell her she wants to be "healthy." I don't want for her to struggle with her weight but I sure don't want for her to be anorexic or bulimic either.

So as I'm thinking about all this I think of yet another reason why I should be motivated to continue on my "get healthy" quest. (notice I didn't say diet or lose weight) It hit me that while she was inside of me I worked so hard to keep her healthy, eating all the right things and taking my pre-natal vitamins. I was gestational diabetic with both pregnancies but I worked so hard eating right and exercising.

The thing is when you have diabetes running in your family, like we do, and even when you don't, the best protection we can continue to offer our children after they are born is a healthy lifestyle. This includes being an example to them from infancy, continuing to eat right and to exercise. If I start to take care of myself again and I'm a good example to her of good health then I'm continuing to give her the same protection I did when she was inside me. If I don't do that, then what was the use in me taking such good care when I was pregnant? Interesting questions to ponder.

I know I should take care of myself for myself because I want to live a long life, but I also want for my children to be healthy. I always remember what one endocrinologist said when I was pregnant with Miranda and how mad it made me, but now in retrospect I realize what he said was true. He had an intern with him and he/she (I can’t remember if it was a man or woman) was watching the doctor check my sugar counts, my legs, etc..

The doctor turns to the intern and says to him as if I’m not even there, “You’ll notice that the ones who take the best care of themselves are the pregnant women because of the baby.”

I got so mad because I wanted to think that even if I wasn’t pregnant and if I was a diabetic I would still take care of myself. He knew what he was talking about after all. Diabetic or not, it is hard to keep up that kind of discipline that I had when I was pregnant.

"Life is fine balancing act," as Dr. Seuss says. There we go. It's all a balance. Just do what you know you have to do. Easier said then done but that's what I have to do.