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What I should have said in my Adventures in Podiatry post is that I'm jealous that my 60+ year old friend whose shoes I photographed is in The Ramones and I'm not.
By which I mean that about four years ago mrguy south said something that has become a catch phrase in our home. We were walking a trail that starts about six houses down from our house. I was wearing Converse and slipping around on the hill and mrguy and mrguy south were wearing sensible walking shoes and having no problem with their stability. mrguy south turned to me and said "mrsguy, we're not in The Ramones any more." Like "get some sensible shoes!" I can't tell you how many times we reference this when talking about various aspects of getting older. But here we were, middle aged rockers at a show, and guys older than me were wearing their fashionable shoes, and I was eating fenugreek tablets, wearing WIDE SKETCHERS and orthotics and a silicone toe separator. I've got a whole rig going in my shoe just to walk these days.
But I heard that "Dad Shoes" are in right now, so maybe I'll ride that fashion wave. Thank you, Balenciaga!
So me and my dad shoes have been to several shows in the last few weeks, all featuring mrguy:
First the show at the club with the sparkly ceiling, where mrguy played bass with a friend from college.
and then last Saturday our band played at a neighborhood chili cookoff. Near this adorable sign.
It was a first time for me with my new amp. So cool. I'm now self-contained. I drilled my Kanilea, and have separate controls for both mic and uke, and it is HEAVEN. The gig itself was a bit of a s**** show, with hordes of shrieking children riding scooters all around us. But then you never know where the bits of magic will happen. Of course it's a treat to play music with the 'ohana. And then... a guy came up to us in between songs and thanked us for our playing, telling us that he was a descendant of João Fernandes, one of the three men from Madeira who brought the ukulele to Hawaii. He disappeared into the crowd, and we didn't see him after that. Also magical: afterparty with pizza and beers. Later in the week we had our traditional post-gig pub trivia, where we came in first by one point. We're pretty sure that the one point came from the time that the ladies wanted him to write Rashida Jones, but mrguy heard us say Mindy Kaling and wrote that down instead.
Back to shows. After chili cookoff night was another mrguy show with his regular band. The show was fantastic. Everybody was there. Even some former friends. During the course of the evening, we achieved new milestones in the sport of ex-friendship, including proximity without speaking, full frontal proximity without acknowledging and spouse engagement. By the time the last thing happened and they came to pay respects to mrguy I a) went to use the restroom and b) had a long conversation with someone about his cancer battle. Super fascinating. Do you know that if there is a donor liver that is sort-of itself expiring they'll still put it in you? They start dialing around to see who is able to receive an organ when it is fresh, but if enough time passes and nobody at the top of the list is able to get to it in time (or it to them) they will give the liver, in somewhat of a compromised state, to someone local and farther down the list. He has to do some pretty awful stuff every month in order to be walking among us, but he's hanging in there with his funky liver.
And so ends the week and a half of shows. By this time next month, mrguy will have played shows with four different bands.
With the National Anthem behind me, I feel a little more able to plan for our trip to Scandinavia, which is in two weeks [edit: two days, since it took me so long to post this]
The idea of traveling started with me reaching out to a guy on Linkedin. I thought he might be the son of my cousin in Norway. He responded immediately, and now I'm in touch with the lovely cousin that I last saw in 1974. I had no immediate thoughts of going to Norway, but the same week, though, I got an invitation to speak in Stockholm. So suddenly I'm going to do three things I really love to do:
1. Communicate about the work I love by means of my boyfriend, Keynote
2. Travel with mrguy
3. See family
I learned about all of this earlier in the year, but aside from keeping in touch with family and occasionally working on the presentation, I hadn't been able to plan much until last week.
And now I'm so doing it. I kept looking for a hook to take us in any direction. This is what makes me happy. Research, finding things we could do, and then doing them or not. I found out that a band called Virkelig is playing at The Garage on the 8th (if their landlord doesn't shut them down). Then something led me to a story about an emperor penguin named Nils Olav III, which led me to a restaurant in Bergen called Pingvinen. They serve whale, which I will try not to order by mistake.
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And now, closer to the day, it's turned into old home week of sorts. The Nordic offices of the forklift company have invited me to come visit in Stockholm. And my cousin in Bergen reached out to our (80-year-old) cousin in Edinburgh, and that cousin is coming over to meet us (and to see her older sister, who is ill). The ill-sister-cousin's-son wants to meet us, and I think there is something else going on. All fabulous. I am blessed beyond belief. I feel like I've inadvertently kicked off a family reunion of sorts.
Second one within a year.
I feel like this week I've been making up for months of being homebound or mama tasking. The estate sale, the game, the rock show, and then I did this with the neph. We do a monthly confab, which is one of the high points of the month:
On this outing's menu was strawberry cider and a vichyssoise (using coconut instead of dairy) and some onion rings and some brussels sprouts that I should have read the fine print on (shaved, not whole). Not the best choice. I hope that his innards were not as discombobulated as mine the next day. Maybe my podiatrist was right!
This week I went to see mrguy play a few songs with his college friend. The club was filled with people my age and older. I took this photo out of jealousy because the guy on the right, who is over 60, is still wearing his Chucks. Not fair. I gave mine up this year and have moved to a post-Chucks world because my toes are killing me.
After I got fitted for my orthotics last year I tried to wear them on our trip to Germany. Not successful. Worked around my foot problems by changing up my choices frequently. Until a month ago when I couldn't ignore the foot thing. So I went to our podiatrist.
She x-rayed my left foot (because between making the appointment and having the appointment I had fallen off my new platform clogs and hurt that foot). When she came to the exam room she asked me if I had irritable bowel syndrome, which is about the last thing you expect your foot doctor to ask. I told her I was good in that regard.
And that's when she sent me to the herbalist. So now I am on a dietary restriction: no corn, dairy or soy, and I'm not allowed to have my laptop on my lap. Between that, fenugreek, calcium, seaweed a an anti-radiation potion, new shoes with stiff forefronts, these weird jelly toe separators and my insoles, I can walk again. Not sure what I do about the bone loss in my toes, but let's get the pain reduction thing going and then we'll deal with the rest.
By the way, I'm going to a wedding today and if there is the right kind of dairy at the reception I am definitely going off the wagon. There will not be soy.
