These Boots Were Made for...Not Me

I'm not ashamed to admit I'm not a good shopper. But even I'm embarrassed at how many pairs of rain/snow boots I've bought and returned in the last few months.

"Just get the tall rubber boots everyone else has," my friend Teresa keeps telling me.

But I can't bring myself to do that. I actually had a pair of the tall rubber boots everyone else has--10 years ago. They were as yellow as a bathtub duck, and I wore them exactly twice. Just long enough to figure out I don't like the suction cup-y feel of tall rubber boots.

I haven't needed rain/snow boots in a long time. It never rained in Los Angeles where Tiffany and I first moved together as a couple. And it rarely rained in San Francisco. But since we've been back in New York, already I'm fed up of stepping in puddles, sitting at my desk with soggy pant legs and stuffing my running shoes with newspaper when I get home at the end of the day. In fact, I was fed up with it the first time it happened, the day we pulled our U-Haul into Teresa and Bobby's driveway in August.

I bought a pair of boots right away. When I tried them on for Teresa and Tiffany later, they covered their mouths in horror at the puffy monstrosities on my feet.

"Peter loved them," I said defensively.

"Peter is two," Tiffany pointed out. "And a boy."

My dilemma is this: I can't bear the thought of buying one pair of boots for the rain and one pair of boots for the snow, but in trying to find something that works for both, I keep coming home with shoewear certified for the Olympic ski team.

I put my latest pair on recently with a pair of running tights and Tiffany refused to let me out of the house--to do laundry!

"I guess they are a little ridiculous," I said, rummaging around in my wallet for the receipt, which I had not dared throw away. "Maybe if we lived in Alaska..."