{"id":3641,"date":"2024-10-25T02:00:37","date_gmt":"2024-10-25T10:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/?p=3641"},"modified":"2024-10-23T19:30:16","modified_gmt":"2024-10-24T03:30:16","slug":"a-matter-of-feet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/2024\/10\/25\/a-matter-of-feet\/","title":{"rendered":"A Matter of Feet"},"content":{"rendered":"

I recently bought new shoes.<\/p>\n

Now this in and of itself isn\u2019t monumental news. I don\u2019t buy shoes all the time, but I do get new ones as needed.<\/p>\n

What makes this time different is the kind of shoe, though you might not be able to tell the difference just by looking at them.<\/p>\n

\"Black<\/p>\n

These are lace-up leather shoes, not precisely sneakers but not precisely oxfords either. They\u2019re made by Birkenstock, a well-known brand, though not one I\u2019ve favored over the years.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the thing: they have a very firm sole \u2013 they are not in any way flexible.<\/p>\n

It turns out that I need shoes like this, because I not only have bunions, I have very rigid big toes, which is to say arthritis in the toe. There\u2019s even a medical name for that: hallux rigidus.<\/p>\n

And according to my physical therapist, shoes with very flexible soles aggravate that big toe, leading to various kinds of problems. <\/p>\n

Now a few years ago, I discovered some running shoes with a large toe box, which was heaven for my bunions. Finding a shoe that gave my toes plenty of room and didn\u2019t cut right across the bunion was glorious.<\/p>\n

I mean, my bunions don\u2019t hurt unless something is pressing on them and there\u2019s no way I\u2019m having the barbaric-sounding surgery to fix them unless they hurt so much I have no choice. (They break the bones in your feet to realign them. I cannot believe that\u2019s the solution in 2024.)<\/p>\n

I bought several pair. During the height of the pandemic, I had an attack of what felt like sciatica in my legs. I didn\u2019t get it diagnosed because I was damned if I was going to the doctor for anything less serious than a heart attack at that point. I looked up some exercises online (from the UK National Health Service) and it went away.<\/p>\n

I now suspect that it was wearing those very flexible shoes that caused the leg pain. Lately I\u2019ve had other issues, including tingling and sometimes pain in my feet when wearing those shoes, but much less of it when wearing a pair of sandals I have that have a stiff sole and wide toe box.<\/p>\n

Here are those sandals. I get compliments on them all the time, but it is possible that they are, like my aging Scion xB automobile, ugly cute.<\/p>\n

\"Keen<\/p>\n

Now the truth is that, in a perfect world, I\u2019d go barefoot. I spent a lot of years on the Aikido mat not wearing shoes and I love it. Flexible soled shoes seemed like the perfect compromise.<\/p>\n

And for a lot of people, they probably are. Just not me.<\/p>\n

My new shoes are awfully heavy, and even my sandals are a little stiff for quick pivots. I\u2019m going to dive deeper into shoes and see if I can find shoes with rigid soles that are lighter and give me a little more freedom of movement.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s likely that wearing such shoes will mean I have fewer problems with my legs and feet. And as someone whose knees are more than a little cranky, I want all the help I can get.<\/p>\n

When I research such shoes online, I find a lot of things labeled \u201corthopedic.\u201d When I was a little kid, I wore saddle shoes \u2013 lace up oxfords with a \u201csaddle\u201d in a different color across the instep \u2013 at a time when penny loafers were all the rage. The doctor said I needed the oxfords for my ankles. It was very much not cool.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not sure the doctor was right back then, because he also said I should take ballet classes \u2013 that being the primary form of exercise available for little girls back in my day. (Doctors, in my experience, are good at diagnosing problems but bad at solutions.)<\/p>\n

The ballet teacher put me in toe shoes. Toe shoes! A horrible thing for growing feet. I\u2019m willing to blame my bunions and hallux rigidus on them (though genetics is also a big factor).<\/p>\n

I am fortunate that I was supremely terrible at ballet and didn\u2019t really like it, so when we moved to the country I gave it up.<\/p>\n

Of course, I have ranted about the evils of women\u2019s shoes for years \u2013 high heels are an invention of the devil, one I gave up many decades ago \u2013 but I still was looking for those perfect shoes, the ones that were both gorgeous and comfortable.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m having to rethink what comfortable means. I\u2019m even having to rethink the virtues of orthopedic shoes.<\/p>\n

Not that I\u2019m going to quit looking for cute shoes. Purple shoes. Sparkly shoes. Shoes that stand out in a crowd and make people young enough to be my grandchildren swoon.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m on the prowl for cute shoes with big toe boxes and rigid soles in size 11. Shoemakers, get on it!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I recently bought new shoes. Now this in and of itself isn\u2019t monumental news. I don\u2019t buy shoes all the time, but I do get new ones as needed. What makes this time different is the kind of shoe, though you might not be able to tell the difference just by looking at them. These […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[701,56],"tags":[947,948,946],"class_list":["post-3641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aging","category-life-experiences","tag-bunions","tag-hallux-rigidus","tag-shoes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3641"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3641\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3644,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3641\/revisions\/3644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}