I Found My Shoes!

When you move, you pack a box of hairbrushes and makeup and bathroom things (which was missing for the first few weeks we were here.  No hairbrush.  Fortunately, I did have a toothbrush.).  Then you pack a box of bedding. Then you pack a box of clothes. Then, as you look around at the nearly-empty room, you open another box and put in it... Your alarm clock, three tubes of travel sized toothpaste, the stack of men's adventure magazines which you never ordered but started showing up in your mailbox and you haven't gotten around to canceling yet, seven books you've been wanting to read, a decorative lantern that must be an antique because it is so rusty, two pumpkin scented candles your husband loves even though you never light candles, all the riff raff that was on your nightstand, and a pile of other random things that didn't go in any other boxes because it doesn't have a home. And then you get to your new place... and it still doesn't have a home so you just let it kick around. And I've been drowning in all the flotsam and jetsam.  

At the same time, there are a few things I would very much like to have, but remain mysteriously missing.  I went back to the storage garage to find things, but only managed to come out with a renewed disgust at how much stuff we have accumulated.  

And so I still only had two pair of shoes.  Reading letters from my missionary sons in poorer places, I worry that having two pair of shoes is actually a luxury instead of a hardship.  Most American women I know would have high-tailed it over to the shoe store long ago.  But my frugal side wants to wait and keep looking before I buy something new.  Three weeks, four weeks... my everyday shoes are all torn up inside.  Five weeks and my nicer silver flats are starting show signs of having been purchased at El-Cheapo-Mart (they were).  At six weeks of fruitless searching, I'm just about to go shopping.

But today, I found it.  The big box from my closet with hats and boots and jewelry and my shoes.  Oh, how excited I was to find this box!  It has been hiding in a corner in the living room behind the sofa this whole time!  I ripped the tape off the top of the box and started pulling out my treasures.  

I was disappointed.  My anticipation put an unearned sparkle on my old things.  I took out a stack of lovely hats which have never fit me and my big hair.  I found a small box full of necklaces and other jewelry parts, all broken from curious baby hands.  There was a pile of old, raggedy bandanas which had seen lots of use from flag football and "duck, duck, goose."  The seams in my nice black boots were sprouting a fine crop of white threads.  I didn't even look in the small box holding my lingerie - I haven't been that honeymoon size for years.  But my shoes!  My shoes.  Old worn leather and holey canvas, broken straps and balding toes.  The shoes that looked nice were the ones that didn't fit well enough to get worn.  What a disappointment.

Well.  Maybe I'll fill up a box for the dump and another for the thrift shop.  And then I think I'll go shopping after all.