Fall is officially here. To celebrate the turning of the seasons, today I ordered two new pairs of sandals.
Sandals! Yes! In yo face, suckas! I don't ever have to wear socks! Not even in January! Woooo!
Sorry, was that rude? It was. I apologize.
You all know about me and shoes. (Quick recap: Shoes. I love them. I collect them. I shop for them online as a form of relaxation.) Our move to Florida has been both good and bad for my relationship with shoes... the good is that don't ever have to wear socks (see above), and the shoes you wear without socks (boots excepted) are almost automatically more fabulous than those that require socks. The bad thing is that my lovingly-selected shoe collection now sits forlorn in my walk-in closet. I wear the same pair of sandals every day, every stinkin' day, unless I am feeling especially fancy. Well, that's not quite true. I have my beach flip-flops (a 5+ year old pair of hemp-strap Rainbows that deal well with being held under the foot-wash spigot) and my everywhere-but-the-beach flip-flops, and once in this past month I wore my rhinestone-buckled wedge sandals out to dinner. And if I was ever to decide to do some sort of exercise other than a yoga class, I'd put on my Nike Frees, but that remains theoretical.
My everyday shoes are my Fit Flops, black WalkStars, which I bought only because I had some gift credit to blow at Lady FootLocker and I wanted to find out if the hype was true. And oh, oh, never have I been so well-led by hype. I love the Fit Flops. I truly believe that they work, that they tone the legs as they claim (my thigh measurements bear this out) and they're also insanely comfortable. They've practically ruined me for all other shoes. If I wear anything else, my feet are sad, and say, "Summer, why not you put us in Fit Flops? We likey Fit Flops. We mad you." I love them so much that I overlook the fact that they cost $50 or more (FOR FLIP FLOPS. INSANITY.) and never seem to go on sale, at least not in the nice colors. What's a girl to do? Get more, obviously. Some new styles came out this spring, and I fell in love with the looks of the black and silver Isos. Once a week or so, I'd do a search for them, to see if I could get a deal. No deals. No deals. And yet, no deals. At the beginning of September I decided to bite the bullet and order them from Amazon, since I had some referral credit to spend. (The referral credit is probably all from me ordering from Amazon after clicking through the ad on the left, but if you too ordered something after clicking through from here, thank you! Your support did result in shoes. Shoes for the boy, but still, shopping for any kind of shoes brings me joy.) And also there was only one pair in stock in my size. Shop or die, Summer, shop or die. I placed my order, but alas! Too late! The merchant had already sold out, and frantic Googling could not find me another pair in my size anywhere.
This morning, though, my Gmail yielded up a prize... an email from a webstore saying the Isos were back in stock. (Figures, it's a Florida store, so I had to pay sales tax, but where else are merchants restocking their flip-flops for winter?) They also informed me that I could get free shipping if I ordered two pairs, so I also bought some bronze WalkStars to go with my brown outfits. There was no way I was going to wait and miss out again. I don't want my feet to be angry with me!
I've also recently purchased winter footwear for my son... mesh-ventilated sneakers and new sandals. Now, I know that new sandals for your kids are probably pretty far down your prioritized shopping list right now -- though if you think you can guess the size they'll be in May, it's a good time to find a bargain -- but when you do start thinking about sandals, consider some Kamiks. This is the second pair of Kamik sandals I've bought for the boy; the first pair I bought because they were super-cheap on Sierra Trading Post, and I needed something to get me up to the price point for free shipping. I'm a bit weird about his sandals (shocking! I'm weird about shoes!) and I insist on getting closed-toe sandals for him, because they just seem safer, somehow. Closed-toe sandals, especially rugged closed-toe sandals, are not all that easy to find. Kamik is among several brands who always have a closed-toe version or two, but the reason I bought them again is that his first pair still look new. Seriously. If you flip them over and look at the tread, you can clearly see the wear, but the uppers are still pristine. And these are shoes he's worn daily through a Florida summer, to the beach and to climb boulders and to slog through puddles and mud and ooze. They've been doused in rivers and swimming pools and the ocean, and they've been machine-washed at least five times, and machine dried once. I cannot believe how good they still look. So considering he'll wear these sandals five out of seven days a week until he outgrows them... yeah, I'll drop $30 on Kamiks for him.
Shoes. Is there a sweeter word in the English language?
