Creative Boot Financing...

For my birthday, I am getting a ridiculously expensive pair of boots. Lest you think I am indulging in my inner girly girl (which would be a reasonable assumption given my taste in shoes), I am not. I have realized that, now I no longer work where I need to wear suits to work, I do not need another pair of cute heels. Sigh. (SIGH!)

I am, however, getting a pair of boots that makes me want to drool for a whole different reason. I have wanted boots like these since I was at least 16 or 17. My mother, even now, will be horrified... truly horrified. I think my husband wonders what happened to the meek little geek he married (the meek is fading, the geek? Not so much.) but he seems to love me anyway - what a saint! I'm pretty sure my sister will think I've lost it totally. My friends, though, even if it's not what they'd choose for themselves, they understand. Yes, I am getting combat boots for my birthday.

Well, partially for my birthday... the things are just as expensive as my Stuart Weitzman ankle boots. My darling husband (and, in this case, I mean that absolutely sincerely) is donating $100 toward the cause, then I've traded our family checkbook all my personal Target/Best Buy/random-other-places-the-family-spends-money giftcards that I've been hoarding over the last 3 years for $150 cash (what can I say, giftcards are a great gift for me, I love them but I just don't have time to shop!). Then, I figure the remainder (which is actually just extra support insoles and boot blacking) can fit into the budget.

I feel a bit like I'm pretending. These are the boots. They're the real deal. (They were recommended to me by a couple of people, including my friend Tina who, despite being on desk duty since she had her second child, still takes the occasional overtime traffic gig.) What right does a distinctly unathletic suburban mother of 3 with no connection to (other than friends in) the police or the military to wear such boots?

But, you know, I'm doing it anyway. Even if it does mean I ate a bowl of crunchy dumbass for breakfast. I am tired of falling on my butt when my tennis shoes hit anything remotely slick. I am tired of wrenching my ankles on the potholes in our driveway and just about every other paved surface in New England. I am tired of my back killing me after standing around watching the kids outside. Thus, good workboots. Why this pair in particular? (Uh oh, the geek is escaping...) They look like the boots from Stargate. ::crams geek back into the encapsulated time/space rift:: And they'll look right with my cargos. (What?? You *knew* there had to be a girly girl reason in there somewhere, didn't you??) (Yeah, I wear cargos. I may look odd but, damn, they're comfortable and eminently practical pants.)

Well, at least I won't be going to the range this summer in heels...

Sadly, I am a Very Girly Girl

and I realized this this morning as someone asked me what eyeshadow I was wearing. Ok, yes, it was sad that at a 9:30 a.m. children's program I was, indeed, wearing eyeshadow but the truly sad part is that I could say, without prompt:

It's MAC's surreal and shimmermoss.

What's sadder yet is that I could continue (had I chosen to)... I'm also wearing MAC's fluidline eye liner in frostlight, the prolash mascara in charcoal brown, the browset in beguile, studio fix for foundation in C25, raw refined creme lipliner with goddess lipstick over top.

This is (slightly) mitigated by the fact that I don't wear makeup every day. But I do like it. I really like it. Let me loose in the MAC store and I have the best hour I've spent in a month. Send me home with a new eyeshadow or lipstick and life is just grand. (I got one of those handy palettes to put my eyeshadows in the other day - woohoo!)

Someday, I'm going to have one of those little multimirrored dressing tables with good light and lots of makeup storage space but, even now, I get a little thrill just thinking about my makeup drawer all neat and tidy now.

I was brought up to wear little or no makeup. I went to a women's college. I fully believe in fully empowering women to do whatever they so choose. I embrace nontraditional roles myself - I'm a pilot; I'm our nuclear family's fix-it person; for God's sake, I'm the dead-animal-remover at our house. But I surely do like makeup.

Almost as much as I like cute shoes.