The Wounds Tell the Tale

Scars have always been reminders of incidents and evidences of my general personality and approach to life. I think they mostly say that I took unnecessary risks as a child, was physically active, was often involved in rough-housing, and might not have listened to directions.

The faint line on my right wrist is a reminder of the time I seared my skin on the oven rack removing a pizza, an almost invisible line on (what used to be; I might not be as physically active these days as I would like...the only muscles that are getting a frequent workout are in my butt) my tricep was created by a necklace in an aggressive hug that went wrong, I might have a bracket (from a set of braces) mark on my right-hand index-finger knuckle that might be from a bracket that was in my brother's mouth, and my knees are just a collection of "I was going to fast; yes, I tried to run through that wall; and floor burns add up" carnage.

That doesn't even address the crescent moon on my shin from walking directly into a trailer hitch when I wasn't paying attention to where I was going, and countless others...

And as much as these scars serve as a virtual life-story, my feet are telling the tale of the last couple of weeks. Apparently, I have been walking around in socks on streets of cotton candy in Oxford because I am finding that my feet are unconditioned for ANY kind of footwear (which means I get new blisters every day). I am probably carrying about 6-8 blisters per foot right now. Yes, that IS impressive. And no, there are not many un-blistered spots left at this point.

It all started in London a few weeks ago. Brown sling-back heals. My toes crammed into the front. I ended up walking bare-foot in Westminster because my feet felt like they were bleeding. Correction. Closer examination confirmed that my feet were bleeding. Even more impressive, my toes made one another bleed from being pressed so closely together.

So, I switched to purple peep-toes (yes, guys, you might have to google some of these terms...) for the next formal(ish) event. They targeted a new area. I left the night with new cuts on my neighboring toes. Peep-toes may be cute in theory, but apparently you need to ease into wearing them.

I bought a new pair of flats in KC to attempt to address these issues. They were a bit stiff. Welcome, heel blisters.

In my infinite wisdom, I decided to wear 3 inch heels for my first day of work. (You may recall that I had a nice, long, walk to work on that first day). These produced a new set of heel cuts, a slice on the top of my foot from the strap, and a re-aggravation of the toe blisters.

So, I finally learned my lesson. On day 2, I wore soft flats. My feet still hurt from all the sensitive areas that had already been created, but no NEW blisters formed. After a pathetic but blister free attempt at a run in the (relatively) mountainous and desert-like conditions that were at least successful in their blister-free-ness, I threw on some flip-flops to let my tootsies breathe and heal. After about a mile of walking, I realized that in Oxford, I never wore flip flops because I had slip on sandals instead. You know what that means? That's right. Large, skin peeling blisters between my toes. And running for four blocks in an (unsuccessful) attempt to catch my bus certainly didn't help.

The good news is that in about a week, my feet will be conditioned for all of this, and in 3 months I will finally be used to it. And then....I will put on my socks and return to the land of cotton candy streets.