I guess the guys told us so!

Menstrual psychosis. 

There you have it, men.  Enjoy this freebie while you can, because soon, you'll just have more reason to either fetch us ice cream, or run for your easily-stabbable little lives.

^________^ 

Irrelevance

I was gonna post something about my recent birthday, feeling old, creeping into cougarland, how I hate holiday music solely because of Yoko Ono, feeling fat, and how a certain co-worker keeps using me a her tickle me-lesbo.....

....but this is better.

Heelfail

It was an ill-conceived notion from the beginning.

A tiny deviation ultimately doomed to the gravest of failures.

A farce, really.

And yet… as I descended the stairs that morning in my half-conscious stupor, I could not help but glance at them ever-so innocently.

I dismissed the idea immediately.  Even severely caffeine-impaired judgment knew better than to take THAT whim seriously. 

I rushed past them, mentally scolding myself for even having granted them even a furtive peek, those treacherous little monsters.  I needed coffee, fast, before other lapses in reasoning could occur.

And yet, as fate would have it… it seemed that I had no other manner of footwear to don for work, other than my runners.  Completely unacceptable for the snobbish appearances of office life, of course, though I’d have given my left er… foot, to be allowed to wear them.

I was left with no other option.

The pair of 2 inch-high, needle-heeled, cankle-eliminating boots almost smiled in triumph at me, as I hesitantly put them on my feet.  My balance, on any given morning, is already precarious at 6:30 am.

This, friends, was suicide.

But oh… how those terrible things give me a thrill, affirming their high fashion appeal with every unapologetic click of their heels.  Oh, how my hard-earned feminist ideals were shattered with every step, but OH how they shattered glamourously, the pieces of my ideaological resolve positively brimming with sex-appeal!!! (sex appeal hereby defined as perilously unstable sauntering the likes of which even my heavily-medicated mental-patient friends would be proud of)

Despite the painstaking, muscle-tensing vigilance required in every precarious step, the sensation of indubitable AWESOMENESS pervaded my walk all of a sudden, even as I felt the damned things sink into the mushy, November soil, threatening to throw me backwards into some grand, cirque-esque defiance (and subsequent reaffirmation, via my ass,) of gravity.  But by GOD, it would be an AWESOME defiance, full of "mode" and other such stylishly-relevant French terminology!

Yes, those high-heeled, impulse-buy boots are damned sexy, but unlike that curiously misinformed ditty, they are most definitely NOT made for walking.  Though walk I did, as I eventually stabilized enough, through sheer force of will, to sashay into the office far less subtly than usual.

…Then came the next hurdle.

“HEY LIZ.  YOU LOOK TALLER,” came the teasing tone of my boss as I attempted (and failed) at dodging his perma-mockery (permockery, to some!).  I desperately tried to escape him with a placating half-chuckle teeming with scorn, but for some reason, could just not pick up speed before he caught me again, his sinisterly delighted grin causing me to cringe.  And of course it followed that:

“HAVE YOU BEEN DOING DRUGS, LIZ?  IS IT BECAUSE YOU NEED EXTRA MONEY FOR YOUR HABIT THAT YOU’RE WEARING THOSE, EH??”

… I let that one slide in favor of my pristine criminal record and pressed on, infuriatingly slowly of course, and with all the grace of a spastic salmon during spawning season.  Upstream.

Luckily, the Discovery Channel moment seemed to deter him, and I lost him to his hydroencephalous musings.

“Wow, Elizabeth, you seem sexier today!” chimed the spacey, 60-something nurse on our team out of nowhere, who I’m sure enjoys plenty of her own “special additives” in that patchouli incense in her office.

The internal collapse of my dignity was almost audible… and, before I could flee the scene (as though ANYONE within a one mile radius could POSSIBLY doubt my location with these unabashed clunkers afoot) I was again barraged.

“It’s so rare that we see you in heels, Liz,” said one secretary, then another.

THANK YOU, Captain Obvious and Boy DOY, for that scintillating addition to my already glorious morning.  Truly, it was valid and existential point, up there with the meaning of life, nature vs nurture, relativity and the origins of the universe.   I was humbled before their awe-inspiring intellect, but refrained, you understand, from kneeling just then. (I actually care for the floor tiles. That, and I just got my teeth repaired.)

No fewer than three parroted the phrase in the span of 5 minutes, and I felt my head vibrate with wonder at their chorus in Retard minor.  Had they practiced?  WAS THIS ALL SOME GIANT CELESTIAL JOKE?   WAS IT BECAUSE THEY FINALLY REALIZED I AM A WOMAN DESPITE MY EVER-CONFOUNDING WEARING OF FLAT-SHOES IN A HIGHLY STEREOTYPED AND GENDERED OFFICE SETTING?

I finally got to my off-

“WELL WELL!!! Take a look at this!  Heels, eh?”

I swore on the lofty heads of Versace, Spring, Jimmy Chu and whoever the hell else is responsible for these infernal contraptions, that I would never do it again!  OH WHY had I forgotten my precious flats?  WHY hadn’t I just worn the running shoes? WHY GOD, MUST YOU PUNISH ME SO??!!  ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAIIINNNNEEDDD??!

And… finally, sometime after my internal outcry about Spartaaaa, the culmination of my 6 am mishap was: WHY WAS *THIS* THE DAY I HAD TO GO TO THE HARDWARE STORE TO CUT LUMBER FOR SOME ART PROJECT OF MINE AFTER THE TORTURE THAT WAS WORK!!!??

….because let me tell you, 2 inch heels DO NOT HELP as you are fumbling behind vaguely-handsome-wood-worker-guy while he expertly tosses you the splinter-happy 2 by 4's, DESPERATELY trying not to gloriously faceplant into the concrete at his steel-toed feet.  

WHY INDEED.