As some of you may know, I am not good on my legs. I can’t stand or walk for more than a few minutes (3 usually.. 5 on a good day). Another thing you need to know is that I am one of the few women on this globe that hates to shop. Part of that is that things in my size are just like unicorns, be it clothing or shoes, even jewellery.
So for the last few weeks, I and the boyfriend had the plan to go shoe shopping for me. While you surely can imagine my unbridled enthusiasm (sarcasm warning) for shopping, I actually was looking forward to that for several reasons. First, I have two pairs of shoes: House shoes (well for inside the house) that are just a piece of fabric with some fake fur inside and that hurt my feet, and street shoes that are 10+ years old and are falling apart. The second reason is a bit longer.
Since I can’t do much in the area of exercise I wanted to start with something that I can do and isn’t too painful. After looking around for a while, I found a mini bike. You can put that thing under the table or on the table if you want to train your arms.
As soon as it arrived I tried it, but my house shoes were too big to fit into the straps and barefoot it hurt after just a few minutes. So I wanted to have sporty shoes for using that. Since my feet hurt with my house shoes I also wanted new ones there, and I recently got a skirt that I wanted to wear but my only shoes for outside are not suitable for that. So I wanted something for this.
We managed to actually be up early enough on Saturday to pull through with the plan. As I had thought, I needed many many breaks, some after only a few meters. As a side note: I had no idea how hard it is to find size 46 (12 1/2) shoes in a men’s section of a shoe store. Altogether the search took several shoe stores and 6 hours of searching, testing, walking and breaking, including dizzy spells and everything else that is ‘Fine’.
As is to be expected I am in a world of pain now. Every muscle, every joint, everything. But at the same time, I am proud of myself, because I didn’t choose the lazy way to stay home, for knowing that I’ll be in pain and still go and do it. For taking breaks when I needed them, for ignoring that I was way over my head. And I am proud of the man of my dreams ™ who bore with me, was patient, helpful at every corner, never lost his humour and in the end also got himself new shoes because his fell apart as well.
Despite the aftermath, I am proud and glad that we got this over with. And as soon as that pain is over, I’ll get new pain, because I really want to start using that Mini bike!