these boots were made for dog shit

02-02-00

You don't want to read my entry from yesterday. It sucked. I'm a big whiner.

Work sucks. I hate work. I don't want to work any more.

Yesterday I got called in. It was my day off, but I worked about twice the time that I work on a normal day. I did a lot of stuff that I thought would help me get out faster today, but it didn't work. Backfired, actually, because today I had a couple of flea baths to do, so while the dogs were under the dryers, I had nothing to do, since I'd done all my work yesterday. I spent over three hours today reading magazines, and I was only there for about 5 and a half hours, total. Like I said, work sucks.

If I bitch too much about work my friends get mad and tell me to quit. There's no way I can quit; I have to have a job. Just can it already.

So, does anyone still like me? I'm not a bad person, really I'm not. Just frustrated, overqualified, conceited, and self-centered.

I might be in a better mood after work now, though! John finally convinced (forced) me to buy new boots. I'd been saving up change in a special jar to buy new work boots, but I was told emphatically that work shoes are not luxuries that we save up for, they are things we must buy if we need them. My old boots, besides being from Payless, were made of cheap fake leather, weren't designed for work (not sure what they were designed for, other than a profit,) and aren't exactly waterproof.

I've always been pretty cheap when it comes to shoes. Back in high school I bought 6 dollar white tennis shoes from Meijer, the mid-west equivalent of, well, WalMart-plus-Kroger. I'd get a new pair every 3 or 4 weeks, so I always had sharp-looking white shoes. My brother got a pair of 70 dollar bubble-butt sneakers every 6 months, I got about ten pairs of shoes in that time, so we were even. As I got older, I continued to shop Payless for sandals and school shoes, because it meant I could have lots of shoes, and new shoes fairly often.

Well. Cheap-but-frequent isn't always the best with shoes, I've learned. Over the years I've learned to buy good tennis shoes and a decent pair of low-top black Marten-esque shoes. Those got me through until now. The boots I've been wearing to work are funky-looking, sure, and they did okay for a few months of part-time grocery schlepping, but they really suck for dog work. They're some sort of plasticky leather, so the material itself is waterproof, but water sneaks in through the cracks. Then, since the water can't get out (on account of the waterproof factor,) it just pools in my unsupported arches. I try to save all dog-baths and floor-scrubbings for the end of my shift, but often I end up squooshing around for an hour or two. Not cool. My weight was unevenly distributed, too, so sometimes my toes were numb. Very not cool.

John dragged me to the base this afternoon and we bought a pair of combat boots. The real shit, not Marten Boots. There are some cool things about marrying the military. These boots aren't waterproof just yet, but they will be. They will be.