Toes Deep in Time Machines of Joy.

This is going to be sooooo boring, my apologies. God help me....but there are some things that just freaking need to be said...

I have lived the difference, believe me, in strangers' perceptions, and in my own, about myself. (massive weight loss in my 20s.) What I am experiencing now is something similar, maybe. Or maybe it is all in my freaking head... just sun induced hallucinations.

All I am certain of is that I have finally found the right pair of platform heels and something has changed. Then again, it could just be Spring. What other explanation fits for the way preteen boys were flirting with me in the line at the grocery store yesterday!? Or for that random middle youngish African guy leaning out of his car window asking me where I am going when it is obvious that I am just walking my dog and totally not keen on a chat up?! What is the deal??! Did I make the sweet hotel receptionist blush?? What on Earth is going on??

I have been needing this like intravenous shot of youth-juice. It was an Ebay gamble that they would even fit, bargain or no. But when I saw them I had a flash back.....

...... to that first pair of double-buckle-wide t-stap three and a half inch block stack heels I shelled out for in the boutique on the Drag sometime in the mid nineties, and I really splurged for me and I justified it because I wore them Every Single Day, for work and play, and ended up wearing them to learn to live and go out on my own, and buy my own wine and show me a fun time, and to stomp all over London on my solo birthday vacation, and to end and begin one or two affairs, to dance all over my apartment..... only to witness in horror one day, almost two years later, through the window at dusk, my Mom's big blond boxer puppy tossing one of them, half chewed to bits, in a glorious arch far above her gleeful slobbery head, into the air like a killer whale with a baby seal. I had taken them off in the backyard on the flagstones, at the end of that hot Indian summer day while house-sitting for my parents, to play with her and feel the soft green grass, and then had left them out there!?, to unfortunately be subject to her curious investigation. I could not really blame her. They were brown oily leather and I had relentlessly worn them without socks or hose in the Texas heat and in spite of all remedies attempted they stunk to high heaven, except, of course, when they were on my feet. Still, it was quite a blow. I forgave the pup but I really never fully recovered. They were so much more than shoes.

I am starting to sense a sort of healing. A return of my swagger? A rediscovery of the subtle figure eight in the hips of my stride? A smoking teenage boy hanging out on the sidewalk looked at me AND SMILED before stepping aside for me to pass and even alerting his cronies to do the same, without irony! Okay, sure, teenage boys give way like that all the time around here, but in a way that makes one feel that you are both just two pieces of furniture passing in the afternoon. I am maybe enjoying this too much. I love feeling taller. For that and whatever other reason, I am feeling at least one third less invisible....

The years are flying baby. Look: My temples (why are they called that?) and my part are going grey. Things are sagging and sometimes it seems to make the most sense to just to curate a collection of sweatpants and to succumb and to stop daring at all ever....

But these shoes....I am starting to think I might have a few more turns to go yet!