The Shoes Make the Man

I need a massage.

I’m not a lazy person. I work pretty hard keeping my house from descending into a pit of filth, and I’m lifting (fairly heavy) things all the time. But housekeeping tasks use different muscles than those needed for my new job.

I can separate a night of work into three sections: loading/setting up, working with customers, and dismantling/unloading. For the first and last portions of the evening, I’m using muscles that I don’t use when I’m tossing my kids around during the week. I guess my three year old also weighs less than 2 printers shoved into a plastic tote, so that probably has an impact on how I hold myself to carry it. I never have to make sure I’m “lifting with my legs” when I pick up my kids.

Setting up a photo booth is a workout. It’s a lot of bending, reaching, and puzzle solving. And if I’m at a prom or a wedding, I’m not going to be dressed in jeans and a t-shirt. By the time I’m finished, I’m sweating in my formal clothes and wishing I’d brought along a pair of tennis shoes for this part instead of thinking I could get everything done in my high heels.

The second section of the night is mostly me standing. I don’t run around too much, just hang out with guests, laugh with them at the silly pictures they took, and just stand. On my feet. For four hours. In high heels. I used to stand around on high heels for hours at work when I was in college (seating people at a restaurant) and my shifts were more often than once a week, so my body could get used to it.

Someone buy me these shoes.
My size is 8 1/2 WIDE.
Seriously, they're pretty cheap.

When the night is over, I don’t have to worry about still being presentable after I’m finished working, so if I get gross and sweaty carrying all my equipment out to my car to play tetris with it, it’s not a big deal. This is the moment in my night that it’s appropriate to break out the tennis shoes, but this last weekend, I forgot them.

So in addition to the workout of standing in my very conservative heels all night, I lugged my heavy equipment around and put it all away while wearing my heels. I could have taken them off, but working in bare feet instead may have hurt my feet more. Although it would have prevented the moment when I twisted my ankle and fell on my butt trying to get a particularly stubborn article out of my tiny car.

I need a massage.

And maybe new shoes...