Peanut Butter & Jelly Shoes

Children of the 80's: . . . . . more specifically, GIRLS of the 80's: Do you remember jelly shoes? Of course you do. I had two pairs between the ages of 7 and 9 I think. I had a light pink pair and a clear pair. My favorite place to wear them was on any hard surface upon which they would click and slap and make that wonderfully grown-up woman sound resembling a heel. So I would walk around in the kitchen in them, just to hear the sound of them on the linoleum. And then I would wear them to play hopscotch in the driveway with my friends. I felt so cool and confident as I hopped along expertly in my jellies. Until - OUCH, damnit, a rock got in there! That seemed to happen a lot with those didn't it?

So being a girl who grew into a woman who adores shoes, imagine my delight when I saw that jelly shoes are back - in adult form. Melissa is making shoes made out of jelly material in all kinds of versions including flats, heels, pumps, slingbacks, sandals, gladiators, and more. And they are designed by noteworthy fashion icons such as Vivienne Westwood. Of course, this is probably so they can jack up the price, but hey, it's the fashion world.

I first laid eyes on the Melissa shoes while visiting Las Vegas this month and shopping the incredible stores at The Wynn and Encore hotels. They were like shiny, rubbery, girly beacons of candy and rainbows glittering at me from across the store. As Garth in Wayne's World would say, I was pulled in by their tractor beam. They had huge plastic cherries on the toe! I couldn't stand it. I touched, I pulled back, I picked up, I put down, I picked up again. And I grinned. And was that something yummy I smelled? Why yes, the cheerful sales gal said - all the Melissa's are scented like bubblegum. Well, now isn't that just taking me right back to the hopscotch line?! Instead of being turned off by the blatant girliness, I was pulled even further in, and after an encouraging nod from my shopping partner Angela, (thank you Ange for not saying they were hideous, or things might have gone differently) I asked to try them on.
It was jel at first sight.
They had me at jello.

So, my silly new shoes came home with me from Vegas and might have started an obsession.

An obsession which my internet browser is not helping by grabbing my cookies and having banner ads pop up with coupons to Zappos, showing pics of the other Melissa styles. Damn you Firefox! Stop stalking me! Oooo - are those burgundy ones?

Note: The shoebox said this style was named 'Lady Drag' and when Angela I saw that we had to laugh. Great, I thought, they are associating these shoes with drag queens. But later when I searched the plethora of Melissa shoes online I saw that the name had been cut off and they are called Lady Dragon. ;)

Dust

I never got to accompany Jenny to church. She was dressed in a light blue summer dress and walking down the hallway to the front door when she stopped at a low table to pick up a stuffed dog toy lying there. It was then that I glimpsed a mirror hanging on the wall above the table. But Jenny didn’t look up enough for me to see anything but her waist and the stuffed dog in her hands. She stood silently for a moment, clutching the dog tightly and fingering the satin lining of its ears. Then, at the shrill burst of Laura’s voice from outside, demanding Jenny hurry up, she turned and ran outside. As she threw open the front door something strange happened. A burst of orange light assaulted me and I knew instantly it wasn’t the sun. The world in front of me disappeared and I heard the same whoosh of air I had heard when I left my hospital bed. The strange feeling of pressure returned and the air roared around me while the light permeated my brain. As I felt myself moving through the air and fighting against the tremendous pressure, I had one thought infiltrating the chaos: I never got to see Jenny’s face.

As I hurled through the thickness I felt nauseous and dizzy. Okay, I should be headed where I need to go now, I thought. I took a little detour and now I will be on the right road to the unearthly palace of souls. Just wait until I tell the others what happened! First person I meet in heaven will get to hear quite the story. ‘Hey, I’m Grey. Yep, yep, just arrived. Would I like a pair of angora hair slippers? Why yes I would. A Patargus Series No. 4 cigar and a tumbler of Middleton? Don’t mind if I do. And how did you end up here? Ahhh, wife killed you huh? Well I can hardly blame her what with the way you’ve let yourself go man.’ But maybe the first ‘person’ I will be talking to will be God. How would THAT go? I wasn’t ready to think about that. I was ready to get there and get on with exploring this new world. Now, I was assuming that I wouldn’t just hit a black hole and disappear. If my soul was living right now, surely there was some destination ahead. I started to get a little nervous that there wasn’t. What happened next surprised me even more than the first time. The dizzying whirl and roar abruptly ended and a scene instantly appeared before my eyes. (My eyes?) I think I took another detour. Damnit. I was looking at a huge bookshelf towering over me, filled to the edges with worn book spines lined up like siding on an old barn. My hand reached for a book two shelves above my head. Damnit, not my hand. I watched as a hand with hairy knuckles slowly pulled a two-inch thick book off the shelf carefully. My knuckles were definitely not hairy. The book came down in front of my view and I read the title before the cover was gently pulled back. Cultural Anthropological Analysis of Brazil’s Pua Tribe. Okay now I knew I must be in hell. 

No Pun Intended

I took this picture in an old building in Victor, Colorado - a small mining town close to Cripple Creek. The sign is even funnier considering that the building used to be a brothel. Things that make you go hmmmm.