Last February, Lawgirl had cold feet and went out in search of warm boots. I wrote a glorious post on the entire happening, which sadly was deleted when my old blog here went *poof* ...let me see if I can give you a bit of history here. In the wintertime, the office where Lawgirl works gets so cold, the feet don't have a chance to get warm until the weekend, when she could cuddle up under a blanket at home. Someone told her about UGG boots, warm and toasty and trendy at places like the big city where Lawgirl dreamed of living one day again... She searched far and wide across the small town that was home to Lawgirl and her family. One store after another (all of 7!) told her, sadly, there were no more boots to be found, they all sold out at Christmas and there would be no more... but one day, finally, Lawgirl tried the very last store in the whole darn town and alas! There was one pair of boots sitting on the shelf, the very last one in the whole darn town in fact. In her size. The only problem was, the boots were PINK! Lawgirl did not own one pink item in the whole world... so she looked at the boots. Tried them on. Put them back on the shelf and paced the store, looking... hoping... there might be one hidden there in some other color. Sadly, the sales clerk shook her head, "Last pair..." she said. Lawgirl snatched up the box, paid for them and ran out the door before she changed her mind. She wore the pink boots, all winter. Feet were warm, problem solved. Well, that's part one in a nutshell, I guess.
About that time, Lawgirl looked at her wardrobe and realized, hmmm, not only did she not own anything pink, she, in fact, did not own anything much with color in it at all. Black. Black. Black. Black pants and black shoes and black blazers and black dresses. When the end of winter sales hit, Lawgirl bought four business suits for the next upcoming winter. Black, of course, with teal. Black, of course, with mauve. She also got very brave and bought one blue and one burgandy. HAH! Nothing, though, that would match the pink warm boots which were sitting on the floor of the closet just waiting for that first cold day to appear. Summer came and went and towards the end of it, Lawgirl went into a boot frenzy! Boots were everywhere, in all the stores and she started stocking up. She bought dressy boots, high boots and low boots and boots with heels and of course, three more pairs of fake uggs. She stacked them up in the closet and in the kitchen, still in the boxes. Black ones. Brown ones. Tan ones. (Eleven pairs in all so far...) To compliment the pink ones, on other days of the week, of course. There would be no cold feet this winter... and Lawgirl had officially turned into a fashion disaster.
With the boots waiting at home (it was still too warm in the south for boots! In the 40s when you leave for work in the morning and darn near 90 by 3 in the afternoon... the boots would have to wait for cooler days!) Lawgirl set off to the mall in search of some more outfits for when the cooler days set in. She shopped for a whole hour, there were sales you see. All three stores in the mall had 40% off or better, and she was just a shopping. She bought a cute pair of pants, black. She bought a sassy pair of cords. Again, black. She picked up a pair of coulots (sp?) "Hmmm... these are back in style? I remember them from the early 80s!" But as she headed for the register, she realized that alas, these too were, black. Lawgirl sadly put them back on the rack and headed back into one of the other two stores. Forcing herself to purchase color, she found a sweater, PINK! To go just right with the pink boots! Dreading each step she went back to a display of fall colored chords. Low rise with a slight flare to the leg... could she? Should she? Timidly she picked up a cream colored pair. Nope. She put them back. Cream was too plain. She wanted to be bold. Brave. She picked up a rust colored pair and a pine green colored pair, knowing she did not have a blouse or sweater to match either one, and marched up to the register... and paid for the damn things.
Now Lawgirl is set for fall and winter with warm shoes and colors! There is no dress code at her work and she could probably show up in her bathrobe with hair in curlers and no one would mind. But she is going to be sassy this time around. Bright. (yeah right, guarandamntee you it will be color once a month and black the rest of the time...!) Lawgirl hates to go shopping. She still needs something to match the uh, fall colored pants, but that will come in time. When the days get cold she will be warm. And colorful!
SCORECARD UPDATE Things happened this morning when I was working on this post, and y'all aren't going to believe this one! When I got here at 7:45 there were already people standing outside the office waiting on the sec to sign some stuff she didn't get around to doing yesterday. I waited until 8 a.m. and called her. No answer. Five minutes later the phone rang and it was her. She told me she didn't have her car, she went out all night last night and got drunk and was still drunk and needed somebody to come and get her. Knowing her as I do, this wasn't really a surprise to me. When the attys showed up, I told her story to the first one who arrived. He didn't answer me, and in fact, took the garbage out. About ten minutes later, after having had ample time to think it over, he walked in to my desk and said, "She's really starting to put us out" ...to which I promptly replied, "You are just now realizing this?" He then asked me, "will you go get her?" (HUH?) I looked him square in the eye (which, if you hadn't picked up on it, is something I've worked very hard to learn how to do since I started working here) and said, "No! Why should I spend MY gas to go get her?? You go pick her up." He shook his head in disbelief! and said. "No, I'm not going to go get her. You go. I'll answer the phones..." So I went.
So, DH and I have been praying for almost a year that something will soon come up so we can get out of here. There are some things we really love and others that outweigh them. It's time to go. When God opens that door for us, we're going to be ready. I have the feeling though, it will be another move to some small town, because the boot lady isn't gonna fit in with the big city lawgirls.
