It rains and rains, and nothing drains. Crossing the street is an exciting adventure in fording streams. It is damp even inside the clothes dryer and my hair is retaining water like a pre-menstrual victim of congestive heart failure.
First world dilemmas, how embarrassing you are. For instance, I wear the same shoes--boots, actually--nineteen days out of twenty. They are quite wet at the moment. They were aggressively expensive, but considering the use I have gotten out of them I am not too ashamed about it. Then this week I started thinking with alarm about the eventual day they wear out, not to mention the fact that wearing them daily puts greater wear on them than giving them a day between wearings would do. The future looms, cold and bootless.
Obvious solution: buy a second pair of related but different boots from the same maker, if you like them so much. And yet the prospect of spending nigh on (oh I can't actually quite bring myself to say it, after all) for no real pressing reason seems not entirely prudent or frugal, somehow. Yet is it not less frugal to wear my existing boots into the ground like a horse that is never rested nor watered?
This in fact goes well beyond being a mere first world dilemma into the realm of moneyed-idiot pseudo dilemma, a whole super-class of moronic "problem" best solved with a quick slash of the guillotine. I do hanker after those boots, though.
No matter. It is easy for me to deny myself in this case, quite aside from the sway of my bank balance and common decency, because I am far too incompetent to deserve any treats at all. Today's major achievements have been making vast quantities of horribly mediocre tofu curry (you may wonder how mediocrity, by its nature, can be horrible, but I assure you it was), somehow giving myself an itchy face rash in the course of trying to make my skin look nice, failing to take a shower, and tramping mud all over the kitchen and laundry room floor.
("I don't wonder how mediocrity can be horrible," Steve remarks, reading over my shoulder. "It's an existential horror." Isn't it, though. And he ate the curry.)
Buy a pair of cheap boots (I recommend red ones with little ladybug antennae) and when you come to the point where you have to use them, buy your fancy boots? Your feet will be dry in between fancy boots and you can keep your ladybug boots in the back of the closet to be your bridge pair in the future.
Posted by: jennifer13 | 02/20/2011 at 07:35 AM
easy solution: take extra good care of your boots, have them re-soled every year, oil them, and enjoy how comfortable they become with age.
cheap ladybug boots are also a good solution, but my problem with them is that they leak. that's $20 down the drain. my first world solution was to pay too much for a pair of reliable aigle rain boots.
Posted by: erica | 02/20/2011 at 08:12 PM
When I'm resisting a practical but expensive purchase, I reframe how I think about the cost. I think of the (initial lump-sum) cost not as $XXX, but as $X/day over the course of the object's lifetime.
You aren't likely to use the new boots just once or twice, or even once a week, but every other day (switching off pairs daily to give them a rest and, in rainy seasons, let them dry well).
Not only does that bring the lifetime cost of the desired new boots to dollars (or even cents) a day, but by buying a second pair, you decrease the daily cost and increase the useful life of both pairs.
It's actually the most frugal path if you can afford it. There. That was easy.
Posted by: Elsa | 02/21/2011 at 12:19 PM
Elsa knows whereof she speaks. The trick is to have the money to lay out in the first place. Another reason why the rich get richer, and etc., I suppose. And those are some really nice boots.
Posted by: Yer Mum | 02/21/2011 at 03:01 PM
Elsa speaks my language! Well, of course, all of you do, but she has the direct line to my greedy/frugal heart.
They're my all purpose work shoe, on top of keeping my feet dry in the rain, so ladybug boots wouldn't sub in very well, adorable though they are. I do oil them and resole them lovingly, but it seems that I walk too hard, as I wear through the heel taps in much less than a year. It doesn't feel like I grind my feet into the ground with every step, but my cobbler might beg to differ.
Posted by: redfox | 02/22/2011 at 06:42 PM
Hi - my first comment here ... Perhaps you need to expand your catalogue horizons - in the hunting and generally outdoorsy world you can purchase boot dryers. I imagine you put on toasty and dry shoes every day using these lovely gadgets...
Posted by: Suze | 02/23/2011 at 06:14 PM
Of course, my reasoning only works when one can afford the initial outlay, which is why boots are a ready metaphor for the brutal and constantly compounding trap of poverty, from H.G. Wells to Terry Pratchett.
Posted by: Elsa | 02/23/2011 at 09:16 PM
Your boots may not be rested, but at least they're watered. Maybe they could be curried, too.
Posted by: murr brewster | 02/27/2011 at 03:24 AM
Suze: I had no idea, and yet, now that you say it, it seems obvious that someone must have invented such a thing. How luxurious (but in a clever way that one might conceivably pass off as simple sensible practicality - I think the hunting world is often very cunning in this way)! Are there sock-warmers to go with them?
Murr Brewster: Mmm, curried boots.
Posted by: redfox | 02/27/2011 at 02:27 PM