Cracked. Like nuts…
posted in Dance, Holidays and Festivals, Music, OmegaDotter, OmegaMom |For many years, my mom took me to see the Nutcracker in downtown Chicago. I am trying to follow in her footsteps by taking the dotter as well.
Big City Ballet was showing the Nutcracker, so I bought (ack gasp!) (expensive!) tickets for the three of us for this afternoon. Unfortunately, OmegaDad got the creeping crud yesterday and was feeling like hell today, so it was just the dotter and I.
Of course, we had already purchased the requisite fancy Christmas dress…last year’s is much too small, making me forcefully aware of how much bigger the girl has gotten. (As Miss C. said in her commentary on my last post, OmegaDotter is forever three years old in memory.)
What might not be immediately evident in the above picture is the fact that this year’s requisite fancy shoes that grabbed the dotter’s fancy are…
…are…
Well…urg…they have heels. ACK!
Strappy black shoes with heels. I felt like I was introducing an innocent to something like crack. Or like a traitor to feminism and battling the patriarchy. Additionally, I felt like a dreadfully wussy woman, to cave to the dotter’s pleas for these shoes, no others. But, dayum, they did look mighty cute.
In honor of the occasion, I, too, wore heels.
Let me just say: I am out of practice with high heels. My feet have gotten longer. And fatter. And flatter. My darling husband, my the Kozmik All forever smile upon him, eyeballed the shoes and asked me, “You are going to take some ’sensible’ shoes with you, right?” Quickly disabused of the idea of wearing them all the way to Big City and back, I backpedaled and said, ”Oh, of course!” and crammed my tootsies into my nice, comfy, ugly faux Ugg boots.
Thank heavens.
Because wearing the high heels and walking the two blocks from the parking garage to the ballet venue made me quite aware of how out of high-heel-shape my feet are. By the time we sat down in our seats, I heaved a huge sigh of relief as I surreptitiously kicked my pointy-toed high heels off.
At intermission, out in the middle of the lobby while looking at kewl Christmas ornaments for sale, I slipped them off again, and just carried them with us wherever we went.
There was, of course, a whirlwind of little girls dressed in fancy dresses and holiday finery. I adore looking at all the girly girls in their Christmas splendor, and sighed quietly at some of the dresses which OmegaDotter had nixed (in favor of that triumph of marketing, the fancy dress with the doll-sized version of the fancy dress hanging off, ready for your 18″ doll to wear to match you).
The problem was, at the end of the performance (which was splendid) I couldn’t just walk back to the car in my stocking feet. By the time we got downstairs and outdoors, I was mincing and wincing with every step.
So say bye-bye to the pointy-toed high heel shoes. They are hitting the “donate to Goodwill” pile as of this evening. Too bad, because they are quite pretty…but I will not suffer for beauty!
(P.S. For those who are wondering: Yes. That is a Christmas sweater. Not only is it a Christmas sweater, but it has glitter and beads, to boot. I have admitted in many previous posts that I am an anti-fashionista, and I’m sure the very fact that I have a Christmas sweater, let alone wear it, consigns me to the utter depths of non-fashionable depravity in some people’s eyes.)
