Finding Footwear for the San Antonio Stroll

TRAVEL THERE: HEADED TO SAN ANTONIO TX

Finally, it was time to go!

I love the planning part of a trip, uncovering all the possibilities and making geographic sense of them.  Who’s open when, how much does it cost and how long will it take?

What to Pack?

Once I’d mapped out the days of the trip I began to wonder what the heck I was going to wear.  Everything above the ankles was easy – mostly sundresses and one day a knit pantsuit that’s as comfy and cool as pj’s.  The problem was from the ankle down. One of the reasons I named this trip the San Antonio Stroll was that there was going to be a lot of walking.  (Another reason is that I like alliteration and Tanya Tucker’s song.)

I have a lot of shoes, but for hours of walking most of them won’t do.  They’re just for looks, but do they ever look good!  I made a special trip to the closet to check out my options and quickly discovered I didn’t have any.  See, I call those kind of shoes “fun shoes” and my fun shoe factor was in sad shape – holes in the sole in my favorite sneakers, sandals falling apart, straps broken.  Even sadder was the fact that I’d worn all of them for so long and so hard that the cobbler wasn’t an option.  That meant DSW.  I threw away the dead soldiers and planned my shopping trip.

DSW Emergency!

Now my usual gig at DSW is to go to the clearance department and discover the gems – those interesting selections that have gotten to the 50% and more off.  I don’t go with a shopping list, I’m just looking for bargains.  When I pay a tiny price for fab footwear, I’m over the moon.  It was immediately obvious that I wasn’t going to make that sort of score on this trip.  If their clearance inventory had included fun shoes, someone else beat me to them.  So I grabbed a bag, wandered the store looking for likely suspects and then sat down to try them on.

This one was too ugly, that one too heavy, another one hit me at the wrong place on my foot.  I narrowed it down to a sandal, an espadrille and  well, I did find one bargain I couldn’t leave behind.  The bargain pair wouldn’t be going to San Antonio, but I’ll look marvelous when they do step out.  The bargain and the espadrille were thrifty, the sandal was not.  Have to take care of those dogs though, so I made my way to the check out counter.  Now I was ready to pack.

The Old Red Suitcase and My “Hairable” Mistake

After dragging the old red suitcase down from the attic (the wonderful walk-in attic in my new house) I pulled together all the stuff I wanted to take.   As Deb pointed out on this trip, the clothes took up one small corner of the suitcase, while the makeup and electronics needed to have their own bellhop.  It didn’t take long for me to get it all stowed away.

Then I had to decide what to do with my hair.  I’ve been letting it grow and most of the time I’m not quite sure what to do with it.  My mom liked my hair to be short and she had a way of getting what she wanted.  Now that she’s gone I’ve been having a little late-life rebellion and so far the hair is down to my shoulders.  We’ll see if it goes any longer.  Anyway, it sort of has a mind of its own, so trying to get it to do what I want is like trying to control a force of nature.

Rather than wrestle with it on the morning we were going to leave, I decided to wash it in the laundry room sink.  That would be easier – right?  Well, first of all, I don’t think I’ve ever washed my hair in a sink when it was this long.  You’ve never seen a mess like the one I made.  I was so wet that I looked like I’d washed the dog’s hair, not mine.  I think I should have just stepped in the shower.  Then about the time I got it washed and towel-dried, I went outside to talk to Bill about something.  I do live next to a pond, so I exposed my hair to the damp night air.  Then I decided to see what it would do if I didn’t use any product in it.  Remember, Diana Ross’s huge ‘fro from her solo years.  Yep, that’s what my hair looked like when I woke up.

Come back next week and we’ll load the car and then head out on the San Antonio Stroll.