MeanMrMustard's Musings

Kristi's training is going swimmingly. She's now fully qualified to do whole blood donations -- which is funny, because (a) she wasn't hired to do whole blood donations, and (b) now that she's fully trained to do whole blood donations, she won't be allowed to pick up extra shifts doing whole blood donations.

(Having done a week or so of drawing whole blood, she now starts training for aphoresis -- the job she was hired for. When she finishes that training, she'll be turned loose on the unsuspecting citizens of Saint Paul.)

While doing her shifts in whole blood, she made an unpleasant discovery: standing for 8 hours hurts. Surprisingly, it doesn't hurt her feet (it would leave mine in agony). No, it hurt her lower back.

The solution, as she saw it, was to get better shoes. Makes sense to me. So she's been exploring all of the holistic/vegan/metaphysically-correct (and expensive) options like earth shoes, Masai Barefoot Technology (MBT), etc. -- along with the more traditional options like Nursemates. We've spent far more time than you probably want to know about crawling uniform stores, shoe stores and websites looking for The Perfect Shoe. To complicate things, she wasn't sure if she wanted something nursey (i.e., white) that would work with scrubs, or something that would let her wear street clothes.

After checking every uniform store nearby, every specialized footwear store in the immediate vicinity, and every shoe store at the Mall of America (of which, I have to say, there are a fair number), including Nordstroms, we came up empty. Well, sorta. I got myself a nice pair of clearance Rockports, which are waaaay comfortable. But for Kristi, nothing. They either don't have enough toe-room, or there isn't enough support, or the color is wrong, or they're not stain-resistant, or they're not in her size, or (in the case of earth shoes and MBTs) they're a combination of funny-feeling, prohibitively expensive, and dorky-looking.

So yesterday, with only a little daylight left, we lit out for the outlets at Albertville, about 30 minutes northwest of Minneapolis, and just a few miles down the road from Scooter's old house. We tried Clarks, Hushpuppies, Eccos, but no luck. Finally, with only a few minutes until closing, we found the Rockport outlet, and bingo! -- she found some black pump-like shoes that she thinks will work. And in the Reebok outlet next door, a new zip-up hooded sweatshirt for me (Kristi keeps appropriating mine).

Emma didn't accompany us to Albertville; she stayed at a friend's house. But she did do two runs through the Mall of America with us, and was a champion both times. Clearly she's fully recovered from the bug of two weeks ago.