My Kingdom for a Shoe, Continued

I need new shoes. Tap shoes, specifically.

In October I joined the advanced tap class and found myself doing single, double and triple times steps, traveling steps and improvising for anxiety-inducing ten minutes (not by myself the whole time, but still...). Now we've been working on the beginning steps of our recital piece, which will be performed in June 2010, and I've realized I've got the wrong shoes.

My lovely shoes tap shoes have a beautiful sound and continue to be one of the few pair of shoes I can wear without discomfort (my broken toe still pains me on occasion). But when it came time to do an innocuous-sounding step called a riff, I could not get my feet into the proper position. The strength of my tap shoes--the fact that they're split soled and can be folded in half--is also their downfall. I need shoes with a sole made of steel that will not flex at all.

I've been combing 'Net in search of the steel-shanked tap shoes with a growing sense of excitement. These shoes will mark a benchmark, just like the day I talked my way into the basic tap class while it was in the middle of the second session, almost four years ago. I look forward to whatever comes next...

My Kingdom for a Shoe

I broke my toe this winter and learned, first hand (or foot), the importance of shoes.

Not just any shoe would do.

The fit of the shoe was imperative, as well as the size of the toe box. In other words, the more accommodating the toe box, the better. Unfortunately, this meant that I was stuck wearing only a few pairs of shoes for quite a while, no matter the depth of the snow outside and whether or not the shoes were waterproof.

One odd discovery was that while shoes that I had considered so comfortable previous to this breakage had to be abandoned while one pair remained tolerable: my tap shoes. Perhaps this was due to the fact that I wore them without socks or the softness of the leather. Whatever the case, these shoes remained one of the few my broken toe would allow me to wear, even though the taps themselves made them impractical to wear outside the dance studio.

Thank goodness for tap shoes. Even though the broken toe (which still pains me occasionally five months later) made learning steps not only challenging but painful, I could still dance.

A Phone Message

Pearl: Hello? Mama? Hello?

[Tim in the background]: Mama's not home right now, Pearlie. You have to leave a message.

Pearl: Oh, OK. [more loudly] Mama? Hello? Mama!

Happy Birthday

It seems fitting that the first post for this blog would be on my birthday.

As I stood at our bedroom window looking out at our little plot of land, I could not help but feel content. That modest vista is ours: the grass that's slowly turning green after a long, hard winter, the crab apple tree with its small, inedible apples, the rhubarb patch that was here before we moved in and will very probably outlast us, the garden into which we'll plant this year's bounty.

Life is good. Yes, money is tight, but for the second year in a row I'll be able to put "writer" on my tax form as a profession and mean it, I'm on my third book, and I'm staying home with my wonderful children as I homeschool them.

Spring is here and I am thankful.

Happy birthday to me.