Let me tell you about Friday night…
Friday was payday for me and last week was pay week for my husband (he teaches private music lessons and all the checks come in the first lessons of the month) so we decided to take advantage of the temporarily swollen status of our bank account and go out to dinner. We heard about a cool new place that serves Tapas so off we went.
The food was good. The wine was excellent. The sommelier was extra helpful and offered us a taste of the more expensive cousin of what we had ordered They were both Argentinian Malbec and quite tasty. The pricier model was more complex but what we had ordered compared quite nicely.
So, our tapas arrive. We’re sipping our delicious wine and generally enjoying a really nice new restaurant that we probably can’t really afford when the waitress arrives. Our table is up against a wall and directly over the end of the table that touches the wall is the thermostat. The waitress has to pass behind my chair and lean over the table to get to the thermostat. While she’s doing this the manager is standing right next to me giving instructions. So, our delightful dinner is momentarily interrupted by the adjustment of the thermostat.
We are not amused.
I’m just really perplexed at why they would think it was a good idea to do this while we were seated there. Really.
But Mr. Jones was quite perturbed. I could tell that this wasn’t going to be something he could brush off. At the end of the meal when we were presented with the check he asked to see the manager (yes, the same one that was directing the thermostat operation). The manager arrived and he advised her in the nicest way possible that she could have waited 10 minutes until we were finished to adjust the thermostat. She apologized and said there was a patron at the other side of the restaurant who was “freezing”. Mr. Jones could have argued that our comfort was every bit as important as hers but he just reiterated that she could have waited 10 minutes or just not seat people at that table if that’s likely to occur. The manager was only slightly apologetic and really seemed angry that we had even mentioned it (but he was ever so nice about it, really). Bitch. She could have at least acknowledged that it was awkward and our dinner was disturbed but you could tell she thought she was right and we were wrong to be annoyed. But if you’re going to drop almost $100 on dinner shouldn’t you be able to enjoy the meal unmolested by this sort of thing. It was quite the intrusion.
But this was about footwear wasn’t it?
So, we exit the restaurant and now Mr. Jones sighs. He had really wanted to try the flan. (Mr. Jones has a wicked sweet tooth) but his annoyance at the Thermostat Incident did not allow that. We decide to have dessert elsewhere. We drive down the block and around the corner to Park Avenue (no, not NY), a quaint little street about a mile long with rows of shops and restaurants. We know the area well and want to check out a little Italian place that may be having live music (we’re shopping a gig) We stop and have the most delightful slice of riccotta cake and beautiful muscato wine that, paired with the cake, was just heavenly. Sadly, the place is much too small to house our quartet. We pay the check and depart. Here the waitress slips one of her real estate business cards in the folder with our receipt. :dubious: We are quite shocked and wonder if the management knows she does this. Interesting. What was she thinking?
This is where the story of the shoe pain really begins. Mr. Jones suggests that we walk down to another place we know and see who’s playing. This place is at the far end of the avenue. About a 5 block walk. I suggest that we drive as the walk is long and I’m wearing these heels but Mr. Jones wants to walk off some of that wine we’ve consumed. So, off we go.
The heels I’m wearing are not my most comfortable pair. They’ve given me a little rub in one spot on my instep before but nothing horrible so I decide I can make the trek. About halfway there I realize that I have foot issues. It’s humid as hell, and hot and my bare feet are sticking to the inside of the shoes and they’re rub, rub, rubbing. I feel the blisters forming. Not only are they rubbing my instep where I expected them to but my toes are not happy. Really. Extremely sad toes. 
By the time we arrive I’ve got blisters the size of dimes on both of my big toes. We sit down and I surrepticiously kick off my shoes under the table. We order a very nice single malt scotch. Turns out the regular performer isn’t there and instead it’s someone we know which is a nice turn of events. Eventually a couple we know comes in and joins us. One more round of scotch. We listen to the rest of the set and decide it’s time to go.
I have to put the shoes back on. I slip my feet in them. It hurts just to put them on. We exit the restaurant and I stare down the length of Park Avenue and realize that there’s no freaking way I’m going to make it back to the car without being crippled for life.
But it’s Park Avenue. A place where “the beautiful people” come to meet and mingle and ogle each other’s beauty. I know that it’s just wrong, wrong, wrong and so very unacceptabley tacky to take off my shoes but I am in pain so I don’t care.
I take them off and we walk. I’ve got my shoes in my hand. About halfway back to the car Mr. Jones says, why don’t you throw those things away if they hurt. This sounds like a great idea to me and as we pass a public trash receptacle I toss the shoes in feeling suddenly liberated from the oppression of bad shoes.
But now I’m barefoot, on Park Avenue, and I’ve got no shoes to put on. It’s been raining. There are puddles. Mr. Jones, who is taking great pleasure in my discomfort, is making jokes about my breeding or lack thereof. By the time we’ve gotten back to the car I’m feeling… well, I’m feeling nothing thanks to those two scotches and all that wine but my feet are still hurting and I am utterly humiliated. Apparently I’m not one of the “beautiful people”. :o
Now, throughout the evening my daughter has been calling. She’s sick and wants me to stop at the store and bring her home some chicken soup and orange juice. Stopping at the store didn’t really enter my brain while I was tossing those shoes in the trash can but as we pulled in to the parking lot at the grocery store it was certainly on my mind.
Mr. Jones offered to leave me in the car and pick up those couple of items but I decided I had to help him shop so I went in the store, barefoot.
The floors at Albertson’s are quite cold.
My blisters are finally healing.
I’ll go back to Park Avenue some day. Probably soon. Next time I’ll wear comfortable shoes but I probalby still won’t be one of the “beautiful people”. Maybe I’m just not the Park Avenue type.
C’est la vie.
). From the moment I hit the reception, I was barefoot. Luckily, I wasn’t wearing stockings, and didn’t embarrass myself with lack of dance-floor traction.