vanity, thine name is boots.

for over a year, i have been on the hunt for the perfect boots. i've spent at least a few nights staying up too late searching around online for the perfect boots.

one of the problems with finding the perfect boot is that i wanted a boot that was casual enough to wear with jeans but nice enough to wear with skirts for church. the "church" part of that being the hitch. there have been several pairs i've found that would look totally cute with skirts in a bohemian, hippy way, which is totally fine for me. but i try to be normal for church. the pairs that i have found that would be nice enough to wear for church are too boring for everyday jeans wear. i'd finally given up on finding the perfect hybrid boot and decided to just look for something that i liked.

and i found them! tonight, while looking on amazon for toy dealz for wee ones on my christmas giving list, i got a little distracted and stumbled over to the women's boots section. okay, i'll be honest-i got onto amazon to look at toys, but never even made it there. and there they were: all leather, motorcycle boots that weren't too motorcycle-y, perfect color, and way on sale. like regularly $199 on sale for $52.05 with free shipping. these boots. i got tim's approval. i didn't even have to get up off the couch to get the credit card thanks to amazon's oh so dangerous saved credit card info feature. but i just couldn't hit "add to cart".

although i had resolved boot finding problem #1, there's still pesky problem #2: i don't really need boots.

for practical purposes, it would be nice to have some warm, hiking boot type footwear for when it's snowy, but that's obviously not the kind i had picked out. no, the kind i picked out are completely and totally for cute purposes. which is a little silly considering the hip and happening places i go, like aldi and... my parents' house.

i know i could totally justify them, telling myself that even moms deserve to look cute sometimes. after we had our garage sale, i was going to use my allotted fun money as boots money to finally pamper myself. but i just haven't been able to pull the trigger. not even with the super on sale ones i found tonight.

when it comes down to it, it just feels too frivolous to buy shoes that i absolutely don't need, purely for the sake of cuteness, when i could do something worthwhile with that money. for $100 i could buy three piglets for a family in need through food for the poor . or, less altruistic but still not completely selfish, i could use the money to buy some yummy, healthful foods i've been wanting to incorporate that just seem a bit too pricey or some fun schoolish stuff for the boys.

but when all my analysis boils down, i think the truth of the matter is that i would feel fake wearing them. i'm not a boots-to-the-grocery store kind of gal. sure i try to look decent when i'm out and about, but boots are a statement item and i don't really feel like i need to be making that kind of statement. i'm okay with being a nondescript, non-attention getting dresser who just goes about my business. i know when i see gals wearing boots at the grocery store i take notice and start judging-do they pull off the look? look totally ridiculous? maybe if she weren't so full of herself she would be a better parent and could control those wild children? gah-how is she so put together-cute clothes, perfect kids? i know i'm neurotic that all that goes through my head just analyzing someone else's apparel, but i also know i'm probably not the only one. and i sure as heck don't need to be trying to get extra attention. ben and max are plenty helpful in the getting attention department.

i think i'll just stick to wearing my mario bros shirt that i stole from my little brother ten years ago when i'm feeling wild and crazy.


what do you think? am i being totally crazy? do you have issues as well? the more i think about it, i'm reminded of this post about my pigtail issues. hmmmm.

oh ye internets

this post was supposed to be about the things i've been doing instead of blogging. things that i've enjoyed, but that just don't allow much extra time to write. and then of course, the jessie spano, saved by the bell quote comes to mind, "no time! there's no time! there's never any time!" and then the meltdown where she sings to zach:



i think this is a pretty memorable saved by the bell moment. so memorable, in fact, that when i googled "jessie spano there's never any time" i found these blog posts.

creepy. me and jimmy think alike.

and then i also found this...

or i could just copy and paste this whole post and pretend i wrote it. she even uses the you tube video i used.

when the huffington post has a graph of jessie spano's caffeine intake i feel like my joke is sufficiently lame.

so, this post actually morphed into another post that's been in my mental drafts for over a year.

the internet is, to me, fascinating and inspiring and totally bizarre. i'll come across blog posts of complete strangers that i have never read before that are exactly what i am thinking at the time, like they are my cosmic internet brain twin. sometimes it's amusing, but usually, it weirds me out a little.

a long while ago, i was thinking about renaming my blog to something that wasn't so frivolous. i thought, "oh, 'the extraordinary ordinary' would be a brilliant, totally profound name. like how motherhood is totally ordinary and yet totally extraordinary all at the same time." so i googled it. of course, there are several other blogs with this name, several of them with the exact same tagline that i was thinking of. one of them, this one to be precise, had a picture of her feet wearing red shoes, much like the picture in one of my first blog posts. and, when i looked up her blog to link to it, she had posted about halloween, when her two boys dressed as ninjas. MY BOYS WERE NINJAS FOR HALLOWEEN. as were probably several other million little kids, but still, weird.

i've never liked to be a copy cat. in seventh grade, i wore elmo bowbiters on my bright blue adidas shoes to show the world what a bad ass nonconformist i was. if i do copy, like with projects, i try my best to give credit. but come on-people are stealing the content right out of my brain.

at least i'm not the only one who seems to have this problem, as evidenced by this article i had read awhile ago about that steve jobs/apple silhouette that was all over after jobs died.

it's hard to be an original these days.

a funny

since i don't seen to have any "time" for a real post, let me share this. i'm a little embarrassed by how much it amused me. i may have snorkeled a few times.



hope you enjoyed. and maybe snorted or snorkeled.