Yesterday evening, I mentioned going to University Avenue to drop off some film, but Serra suggested that I hold on to it and bring it to Wal-mart to take advantage of their $4 developing. She'd been headed there, anyway, on a quest for tiger boxers for Ian in retaliation for his making fun of her tiger underwear.

We didn't exactly know where the San Antonio Shopping Center was, and Mapquest sent us on a rather roundabout route. (This is the second Mapquest-induced mini-fiasco this week. A pattern? Couldn't be.) We eventually got there, though, and that's all that counts.

Just like in Tarboro, Wal-mart was a throbbing hangout replete with household supplies, clothing galore, groceries, and a Mickey D's. Serra proposed wearing trashy-looking heels So, there we were, hobbling around Wal-mart: me in clear plastic pumps like a vinyl Cinderella, and she in neon orange slides adorned with vinyl flowers. Painful and ridiculous, but really fun at the same time.

While we were stomping around four inches taller than usual, we saw a rack of dusty blue, kinda retro-looking sneakers and got the inspiration to get matching ones. Yay housemates, yay matching tank tops and underwear that Serra and Jessie'd gotten for us, and now yay matching shoes!

So I'm wearing new shoes—blue suede shoes, no less—from Walmart right now. And in my snobby two-point-five-kids-and-picket-fence way I'm am going to take delight in that. It's my second pair of new shoes this month. The other was a pair I found in a vintage store and costume shop on Hamilton Avenue. I'd just happened by the store on the way back from the farmers' market last weekend and went in to take a look. By vintage, this place doesn't mean '70's. There were a couple of really beautiful beaded flapper dresses, as well as quaint first-half-of-the-20th-century bathing suits. Even the old woman behind the counter seemed to be from a different era, and sat behind a glass counter full of period costume jewelry bobbing her head to Victrola-type music as the ice cubes in an incongruous plastic cup from some fast-food place around the corner melted into the soda. I started poking around more out of curiosity than any intention to buy anything, and saw a rack of shoes around a corner from which something capital-R Red caught my eye amidst the sea of pastel pumps and ankle boots. It was a pair of crocheted shoes on wooden heels carved with the most extraordinary palms and flowers. They fit perfectly and their price was almost kinda sorta justifiable.

I am never gonna wear them. They're completely unbikeable, and I don't have anything to wear them with even if some freakish accident brought me an occasion to do so. But oh well. They just get to sit and look delicate and rrrrred next to my jumble of cleats and running shoes and hiking boots.