We've got shoes, we've got shoes on our feet...

I've been driving in a coworker this week, which is fine, it really isn't out of way, except that I'm not a morning person and she is. Mostly I've been successful in tuning her out but the discussion about shoes ("I have over 200 pairs, it used to be an addiction but I'm cured now, I've only bought 5 pairs in the past month") nearly sent me over the edge. I'm pretty sure I haven't owned 200 pairs of shoes in my entire 33 years on this planet. I haven't bought grown-up shoes in years (with the exception of flip flops, of which I purchased two pairs since they were 2/$5 at the GT) and I tend to wear my ugly, sturdy, hopelessly unfashionable shoes until they're beyond dead because I loath shoe shopping. It's such a perverse form of torture, the endless shoving of the feet into shoes who's size bears no resemblance to the number on the sole, the discussions about whether shoes should be "broken in" or fit comfortably from the moment you first put them on (which they never do), the mortgaging of my grandchildren's future that's involved in being able to afford these chunks of plastic and leather. I swear, if I could just carve my own clogs out of piece of wood I could die happy.

I signed up for life insurance yesterday too (I'm going to have that Greenwich Union commercial in my head all day now), I'm moderately young and healthy so a 10 year term is dirt cheap. The oddest thing though, they didn't want to take my blood pressure, weigh me or test my bodily fluids for mortal diseases - no, they wanted a chunk of my cheek to make sure I'm not a smoker. The insurance chick gave me a hard salt-impregnated sponge on a stick to put between my cheek and gum for 2 minutes. The salt dried out my mouth so that when I removed the sponge away with it came two sizable chunks of my gum! I hope they're not DNA profiling me - what if they discover I'm actually the Lindbergh baby? So now my darling husband has even more reasons to off me!