Toes and Dragonflies

We had some friends call this morning saying they were going to be in our area and did we have time to get together?  We haven't seen them in several months, so it was nice to hang out.  They have a 2 1/2 year old foster son who is adorable and full of energy.  He liked playing with the dogs and watching the dragons.  So, counting today that's 3 weekends in a month that I've actually been social.  Pretty sure that's some kind of a record for me of late.  At any rate, it was nice to see them and hang out for a few hours.  Plus, they're the first people to come visit our new house since we moved in.

In other news, today is Wiggle Your Toes Day.  Since sandals tend to show off toes I decided to do that, and then ended up looking for dragonfly sandals.  

Blue, dragonfly, diamonds are my birthstone, damn thing between the toes.  3 out of 4 isn't bad, I guess?

 

This is really cute.  You know my beef with it.

How cute are these?  I should have had these for the wedding!

I see variations on this type of jewelry all the time when I'm searching, and there were a whole bunch of dragonfly examples tonight.  Would this be more or less annoying than the flip flop strap between the toes?  Also, are they adjustable, because it would be really uncomfortable if the top part wasn't long enough and kept pulling up on the toe.

 

Also cute.

I love the colors on these.

Regardless of what you're wearing on your feet go wiggle your toes in celebration of the day!

Happy Birthday, Mom!

Today is my mom's birthday!  I was thinking a lot about her today, of course, and even got to Skype with her for a few minutes, which was awesome and much needed.  She was 28 when I was born, which means by the time she was my age she was dealing with 13 year old me (and brother and sister were 17 and 20).  I can't really imagine have a 13 year old, let along a 17 and 20 year olds.  I was also thinking about all of the stress I must have put her through even before I got to be a moody, angsty, annoying 13 year old.  For instance, before I was 5 or 6 I had: a giant sliver in my foot that had to be removed by a doctor. A pencil lead in my knee that had to be removed by a doctor and required stitches. I split my chin open on the side of the pool and had to get stitches. Then when that was barely heeled I jumped up at the pharmacy counter to try and see and split my chin open again (no stitches that time!).  I laid my arm on the wood stove (still have the scar). Fell on the sidewalk at school and tore a giant chunk out of my knee (same knee as the pencil lead!). My forehead had an encounter with a nail and I freaked her out completely when I came in with my hand over my eye and blood everywhere and she thought I'd poked my eye out. I somehow got my ankle bone caught in the spokes of my brother's bike while we were riding it (there was much blood and a very nice lady who came out to sit with me). I cracked my collar bone somersaulting over someone's foot  (I went through a phase where I preferred to somersault rather than walk).  I got glasses around 2nd grade, which is fairly normal, but then started needing a new prescription every 6 months, so ended up on daily atropine drops and had to have bifocals in 5th grade. My freshman year I broke my wrist during volleyball practice.  My Junior year I ended up in the ER with a bruised sternum.  My senior year I somehow managed to dump boiling water on my wrist (same one I broke [still have that scar, too]). I was an expensive and stressful kid and my mom was my primary care giver.  Can I just take the opportunity to say I'm terribly sorry?  It's not nearly enough, not even a tiny percentage of a fraction of enough, but here are some shoes to say thank you (they all have hearts on them for love):

Look at these fun colors!  I wouldn't generally wear heart-themed shoes, but these are cute.  And Zazzle, not surprisingly.

I just now noticed the broken hearts on this.  Probably appropriate as I'm sure I broke my mom's heart on more than one occasion.

I love baby shoes.  And conversation hearts.  True story.

Yay for some green, which is Mom's favorite color!

Adorable.  The PB needs a pair.  AND my mom can knit, unlike me, so she could totally make these.  Not that I will ask her because it's her birthday and she's done enough for me already.

Love you, Mom!

This post brought to you by parentheses.

Memory Lane: 2013. 2014. 2015.

Inner Child

I'm taking a quick bread from podcast prep (I am soooo very behind) to write a quick post.  The world continues to be a $h!+ storm of depressing news and violence, and I am so tired of the people who polarize around these issues instead of mourning the loss of life and looking for ways to be voices of love and light in the world.  Thank goodness I also have friends who are eloquent and willing to speak their truths in ways that are loving and respectful because I spend a lot of time on Social Media these days for the office and it's all overwhelming.  So.  Today is Be a Kid Again Day, which I think sounds fabulous.  We should all try to find out inner child because children aren't born racist or hateful or wanting to polarize every issue, we have to teach them how to do those things.  Sigh.  So maybe we all need to access our inner children and get back to that place where people are people and we find them fascinating and wonderful instead of different and scary.  Or maybe we should just give ourselves a  time out and look at kid shoes:

Look at how cute these are!  I love that pink is represented, but so are lots of other colors.  My inner girl child likes more options than just pink.

 

Like red and white and polka dots!  Not that you'd see the polka dots once you put your feet in.

See?  Pink is OK, but I love the sparkly stripey rainbowy parts best.

 Yellow is always a good choice for Easter.  Or tiara tea parties.  Or Tuesday.

Plus you need tennies for climbing trees and stuff.

Adorbs.

Both this and the last one are perfect for if you want to be girly AND climb trees and stuff.

For my green peeps.  Your inner children need shoes too.  Alright, back to work and then off to bed.

Memory Lane: 2013. 2015.

Chocolate Day

I haven't posted in a few days.  I actually had a post for the 4th of July, found pictures and everything, and then I just forgot to actually write the silly thing.  The last 2 days I just haven't been feeling like writing anything.  I'm tired and the world is making me sad, y'all.  It's just depressing.  Thankfully today is Chocolate Day!  So basically I decided to screw the calories and eat my feelings.  (Holy buckets, though, click on that link and see their suggested menu...even I'm not that crazy!).  I am also posting (more) chocolate shoes.  Because people keep making them.

These are so pretty and it would be a shame to eat such works of art. Except I would totally eat them.  I wouldn't be able to help it.

Memory Lane: 2013. 2015.

Niiiieeeeces!

A couple of days ago The Bean and Double simultaneously sent me pictures on Facebook messenger:

This was The Bean's choice.  I love that it's a cow patterned cowboy boot.

The rest are from Double A.  I love the colors.

This is really cute.  You know I love the blue flowers.

I like how details almost blend in somehow.  Notice the butterflies?  Double A loves butterflies!

I could do without that crazy, curved toe, but the colors and details are fun.

Perfect for the weekend!  I told her she should wear these to our family reunion on the island on the 4th.  With her swimming suit.  Yeah, I know I'm a mean auntie

Thank you, awesome nieces, for thinking of your auntie and sending me shoes!  You are the bestest and I love you to the pond and back!

Memory Lane: 2013. 2014. 2015.

Zzzz

Is it wrong to go to bed at 8:30?  Because I'm seriously considering it.  But hey!  It means we're home in order for me to even be able to consider it!  So that's nice, but whyohwhy am I sooooo tired?  I'll blame the book podcast that I did today.  Too much adrenaline from nerves.  It went OK.  I'm not sure I'm exactly good at this podcast thing, but I'm not horrible, either.  Maybe?  I think I'll just look at sleepy shoes and try not to figure out whether or not I'm good at podcasting.

I wonder who has a strong desire to buy sleepy flip flops?  The straps make these look like angry shoes, but the  zzs make them sleepy.  Or maybe they're having angry dreams?

I think I've posted these before, but sleepy sheepy slippers make me smile.

Heehee...these all seem like kind of stinky places to fall asleep!  As much as I love shoes, I think I'll stick with my bed and pillow for sleeping.

Memory Lane: 2013. 2014.

I Have the Bestest Father!

Happy Father's Day to all of you dads out there!  Whether you are a father, step-father, father figure, related by blood, or not today we celebrate you!  I hope everyone has someone in their life who is like a father to them, whether literally or figuratively.  My dad is awesome, and I love him to the moon and back.  Thanks for being my daddy, Dad!

Did you see the Google doodle today?  It's like it knew I'd be writing this post:

Shoes!  And actually, rather than knowing I'd be writing this post, it gave me the idea for the theme, which is father-daughter shoes:

Awww...so sweet.

A little older, but still sweet.  And I like the blue shoes (duh).

I think that one shoe says "little man" so not exactly father-daughter shoes, but they'd still work for girls if they said something different.

 

I love these.  I wonder if my dad wants to get coordinating shoes with me?  Of course, I no longer have teeny tiny feet, so a picture wouldn't be nearly this cute.

Happy Father's Day to my dad and all of the dads out there!

Father's Day Memory Lane:  2014. 2015.

June 19th Memory Lane: 2013. 2014. 2015.

Podcasts

I had really good intentions to post this weekend, but life had other plans.  Sunday's plans involved seeing a friend from seminary who I hadn't seen for a couple of years so thahappy t was awesome.  Sadly she is here because her mom is having health issues, so while I was very to see her, I'm not happy as to why she was available to visit.  Also, what is up with the last 2 Sundays involving visits with friends whose moms (in law) are so sick?  Again, prayers and good thoughts are appreciated.  At any rate, I was very happy to see my friend.  And then I went to the office.  To be fair, I dropped the hubby at the office at 8 am, came home to get ready, drove to Turlock to hang out, then drove back to the office, where I worked for 4 hours, so while I did work on Sunday, the hubby worked for 13 hours.  Because he is crazy.  But then I was too tired to post when we got home.

I was also too tired to post on Saturday after 11 hours at the office, but this time it was my own fault.  Why you ask?  Well, thank you for asking, I will tell you:  The business has developed a national podcast network.  We currently have 19 shows with almost 100 episodes published.  It's really cool.  The hubby does the MMA and Fantasy Football podcasts and he asked me to do a Book Review and Bible Study podcast.  So Saturday I did my first episodes of each and learned how to edit them.  It took me 8 hours to produce 1 1/2 hours of podcasts.  I'm really hoping I get better at editing so it doesn't take so dang long.  It was actually fun to do, as well as being slightly terrifying.  It's more terrifying now as they went live today so now people can listen to them.  I half want lots of people to listen and half want no one to listen.

At any rate, since both podcasts involve books, I clearly need shoes.  I've done book shoes before, and these shoes specifically:

These are by Charlotte Olympia, and I still think they are really cool.  But it turns out they come in multiple colors! 

 

Clearly I need as many colors as possible so I can wear them while I podcast about books!  AND there also...

 

Purses!  Book shoes and book clutches.  I'm in love.  I wonder if the hubby would let me buy these out of the office budget?

So, if you want to listen to either of the podcasts you can use the following links: Book Review, or  Bible Study.  Or, you can go here and check out all of our podcasts!

Memory Lane: 2013. 2014.

PS -  if you read this whole post thinking, "what the heck is a podcast?!"  I shall attempt to explain:  Podcasts are like radio shows.  In fact, many radio shows are also podcasts, like ESPN's Mike & Mike or NPR's Wait Wait Don't Tell Me.  Unlike radio shows, though, which air at a specific time, podcasts can be downloaded on a variety of devices and you can listen to them whenever you want and however many times you want.  I hope that helps.  The end.

Momager

I've mentioned before that I often feel more like the Office Mom more than the Office Manager.  Today 2 of my interns decided that makes me the Office Momager.  I'm not sure how I feel about that.  Usually I like word mashups, but Momager has negative connotations in pop culture.  They meant it in a nice way at least (I think).  At any rate, I typed in "mom shoes," which is kind of subjective, but here are some of the results:

A floofy skirt and tiny toes peeking through the peep toes in Mom's shoes? Adorable.

I don't know what makes these mom shoes per se, but I like the stripes.

Also adorable!

Awww...I love these.  And they're blue!

Mom and baby shoes that don't match in any way, but I like them both.

I guess I'll live with being the Office Momager.  There are worse titles, I'm sure.  I'm at least feeling a little better today after napping last night, going back to sleep, and sleeping in until 6:30 this morning.  We'll see what time we actually make it home tonight, but at least I got some rest.

Memory Lane: 2013. 2014.