And I’m wearing my kick ass boots for it, with my kick ass purple tights

And I’m taking jparks to eat at ‘wichcraft before the show, which is the best sandwich place in SF (It’s the only sandwich place I’ve been to in SF, but whatever, it’s really good).

So the other day I was cleaning the house before the cleaning crew came and I realized that I have a lot of shoes. Like A LOT. I know, it was a total shock to me too.

This is what my guest bedroom wall looks like:

The rest of this room has been in such disarray that I never realized that something useful could be in that spot, like a bookshelf or a mini fridge so I don’t have to walk all the way downstairs for a cold beverage. But now that room is clean and actually room-like and I’m fairly certain I want my mini fridge there. Oh, or a reach in freezer for ice cream!

The first step to having ice cream is to get rid of some shoes. And, believe it or not, that picture was taken after a fairly large shoe purge, so obviously one purge wasn’t enough. My next step is to stop buying shoes. Heh, seeing both of those steps written makes me realize just how much I have to change for that freezer. Man, ice cream in bed better be worth it.

As far as getting rid of what I have, I think I need to come up with a system to track the shoes I’m wearing. I mean, that’s a lot of shoes and I know I don’t wear all of them, but some of the lesser worn ones are cute. And how can you get rid of cute shoes? You can’t. Unless you can have ice cream in bed after getting rid of the cute shoes.

I want to whittle that tower down enough that my shoes fit in a closet. Actually let me qualify that a bit: I want them to fit in a closet with room for other things like clothes and vacuums. Can you imagine?!? It’s blowing my mind. Are you doubting I can do that? I bet you aren’t the only one. But I’ll prove you guys wrong, you have no idea how much I want ice cream in bed.

Today California forced me to do something I didn’t want to do. Something I didn’t think I would ever do. Something that makes me hang my head in shame. Today, I bought a pair of Uggs because it is ungodly cold here. And rainy! And running around in peep toes heels in the cold rain sucks. S-U-C-K-S!

I know, I know, they are ugly. [insert Uggly joke here] But I’m cold and they’re WARM. And being warm makes my toes happy. And having happy toes makes me a tiny bit less cranky and me being less cranky is always good for jparks.

In my defense I didn’t buy the traditional Ugg boots, I bought what I like to call Ass Kickin’ Ugg Boots. I also got them on sale because I couldn’t stand to spend that much money on Uggs, even the Ass Kickin’ kind.

And now that I own Uggs, I want to make a few promises to you, just so you can rest assured that I haven’t lost my freaking mind.

I wore 30 different pairs of shoes this month.

As we all know I’ve been taking pictures of my shoes every day this month and posting them on flickr. And up until today I’ve only had nice people comment about my various pairs. Nice people without foot fetishes. Nice people that don’t make me hate the internets.

Okay, let’s back up. I posted this picture today:

I posted it in the NoBloPoMo group, which is not a fetish group. I did not give it any tags that would indicate I want fetish people to look at it. This was supposed to be a totally innocent picture. And yet I got a comment on it that was not innocent.

I’ve since blocked that particular flickr user and, by doing that, all of their comments have been deleted. But I know what the comments were and I’m still totally creeped out. I have nothing against people with foot/shoe fetishes but ugh, leave me alone!

Okay, in truth it’s only some of the shoes.

This weekend I had the brilliant idea of lining all my shoes up on the steps and taking a picture. But the fatal flaw was that I have more shoes than steps (even if I put three pairs per step). Plus you couldn’t really see the shoes at the top of the steps.

After some carefully scouting places in the house I decided I should lay them all out in the living room. But they wouldn’t all fit. I was going to break them into two pictures, flats and heels, but I ran out of time before I got to the heels.

So stay tuned, heels coming soon. And, if I can figure out how to move the coffee table, maybe you’ll get a shot of all the pairs together.

If you click the picture, it’ll take you to flickr where you can see all the notes I added.

I’m definitely feeling like a home owner as jparks and I spent a large chunk of our long weekend working on various home projects. I painted and he elfa-tized our bedroom closet.

In order to add the new shelving he had to remove all of my shoes from the closet. He stacked the ones in boxes in another closet and dumped all of the ones not in boxes into a big pile. Normally I would have yelled at him for this, but I was too busy to care. I was also too busy to count my shoes and take a nice picture of them. Instead I present you with this:

I’m not certain how many pairs of shoes are in this pile and tower configuration, but I do know that this is not all of the shoes in the house. I swear, I’m going to count them this week. Scout’s honor!

Did I sufficiently depress everyone? Probably not, I probably just depressed myself. Aw well, time for the cheering up!

I bet your wondering when I’m going to admit how many pairs of shoes I own. I’m wondering that myself. This weekend is the planned official shoe count and photo op. It’s number one two three on my list of things to do. Along with painting, finishing the unpacking, adding more storage unit pieces to my closet, cleaning out my closet, figuring out why I’m having trouble uploading pictures, trapeze, and dinner with friends. hmm, that’s a lot of stuff. But I promise to get those dang shoes counted.

I really wanted to wait until my shoes for the stripper class came in to do the count, but I think they might be awhile still. I won’t link to them because they are really awesome and I want to post pictures of them myself. All I’ll say is that they are red. Red stripper shoes make me happier than they should. Of course, I thought about getting these but realized I better wait until I turn pro. You’ve got to save something exciting for later.

Moving really makes you see exactly how much crap you own. Like jparks’ crepe spreaders. Imported (by us) from Paris. That have never been used. Why do we own these? I don’t know. But can you say you have authentic crepe spreaders from Paris? Of course not, and that’s why we rule!

In jparks defense, the crepe spreaders are small and take up only a tiny part of a drawer in the kitchen. You want to know what’s not tiny? What takes up way more than a tiny part of a kitchen drawer? My shoes. Dear god they are everywhere. For some reason they seemed less numerous in the apartment, maybe because they were partially in the closet, partially under the bed, and partially under the sofa. Here, all lined up (mostly) in boxes the number of pairs seems overwhelming.

So, in the spirit of whitneybee’s now infamous picture, let’s play a round of Guess How Many Pairs of Shoes I Own.

Here are some hints to aid you in your guesses:

Guess away!

Last night the flip flops that I ordered for jparks to wear on vacation arrived and he happily put them on and pranced around the apartment. Are you thinking “It’s just flip flops, why such excitement?” Well, I don’t let jparks own flip flops. Mean of me? Yes. Weird of me? Yes. Hypocritical of me? Yes. (I own many pairs) Do I care? Nope.

In my mind men can’t wear flip flops. In fact, men can’t wear sandals at all. Once, before we were together, jparks took me shopping with him so I could tell him what color everything was. Towards the end of the shopping expedition he mentioned that he needed to pick up some new Tevas and I begged and pleaded with him to FORGO THE TEVAS FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. No woman was ever going to date him if he wore Tevas! How would he ever find happiness?!? Didn’t he want to get laid? Tevas were not going to help him with that quest. He didn’t listen and bought a pair. He still has them and I would love to make them magically disappear one day, but I know he’ll just go buy another pair. And the more pairs of shoes he buys the less money we have for me to buy shoes. Priorities, people, priorities.

So last night, the arrival of flip flops for him was enough to cause celebration to break out. He happily wore them to take out the trash and to walk Lily. He kept mentioning them in conversation. So, being the big meanie that I am, I squashed his fantasy future that was filled with flip flop visions and told him the truth.

And, of course, the truth was not pretty or nice. The truth was that I purposely bought cheap flip flops for him so that I wouldn’t feel guilty leaving them in the hotel in Hawaii when we check out. Yeah, I hate flip flops on men so much I plan on leaving his there. Normally I’m sneaky and wouldn’t have told him I was ditching his flip flops, but I couldn’t handle a month of hearing how great they are. How simple! How easy! How his life is now complete and he has found god in the form of shoes and his soul is saved. I had to shut him up the only way I know how, by crushing his spirit.

His response to this to the truth? “How come you get to wear flip flops and I don’t?”

“Because I get pedicures. I earn the right to wear flip flops.”

“Can I get a pedicure?”

And as much as it pains me to admit it, yes, if jparks gets pedicures he can wear flip flops. I am a defeated woman.