All this recent talk about shoe whore-ishness forced me to take stock of my own brood:

There are 31 and 1/2 pairs of shoes in the above picture, although I also own a pair of hiking boots and a pair of running shoes that are in the trunk of my car, and I’m too lazy to fetch them. The lone shoe is a mary jane whose mate has been missing for almost three or four years. I don’t know why I still have it — sentimental reasons, maybe, since I wore those shoes to some of my med school interviews. I also realized that I only wear about a third of these with any regularity; a third of them that make it out of the closet maybe three times a year; then a third of them make their appearance as frequently as leap years occur. I wonder how many shoes, on average, American women own. And looking at my ridiculous shoe wealth, I don’t feel like I need to buy more shoes, either. I feel like I need to buy more socks.

Okay, now that I’ve gotten started with shoes, tonight, I can’t stop thinking about them. Specifically, I’ve been looking at all the shoes that are designed to go under a wedding dress, and they kind of come in either one of two flavors:

The Hooker Wedding Shoe

4″ heel, reminds me of…pole dancers, not brides.

The Old Lady Wedding Shoe

1″ heel, thick and sturdy, like Dinty Moore beef stew and 4-runners.

Everything in between is sort of weirdly in-between, and they all look hard to walk in. Need to find a 3″ sneaker or clog.

As once promised long ago, a review of the shoes that have managed to keep me comfortable and relatively uncrippled through rotations:

Asics Trail Sneaker

My version of the Asic trail running sneaker is about 4 years older than this one (why would I waste a perfectly good pair of sneakers at the hospital unless it didn’t have its mileage worn out of it?) but it was the ONLY shoe that fit the job on surgery. I tried the wooden clog, I tried the flat clog, I tried just a regular pair of normal running shoes, but for some reason or other, these were the ONLY ones that allowed me to stay standing for a 14-16 hour work day and 24-hour overnight shifts. These sneakers are not allowed in the house, not only for odoriforous reasons (which are reason enough) but also because they are spattered in all sorts of bodily fluids. I wore them on most of my ob/gyn rotation, too. The near-worst bodily fluid experience: I was scrubbed in on a gyn surgery case where they were removing a humongous mucinous cystadenocarcinoma from a woman’s abdomen (think: 9 month preggers with a tumor), and I forgot to put shoe cover booties over my shoes. Actually, they always warn you to put not just those little paper booties on, but to put on the gigantic mountain-boot sized white boots that come up to your thighs like you’re going trout fishing when you do gyn surgery. So they forgot to tell me that this woman also likely had ascites as a result (that’s when you’re filled with fluids in spaces you’re not supposed to be fluid-filled) and as soon as we started yanking the tumor out, a huge gush of yellowy pink fluid gushes down my leg, into my shoe. I was soaked from the knee downward. The only reason why this is the near-worst bodily fluid experience is because there are definitely worst ones. They just don’t involve shoes.

The Quintessential Medical Professional Clog

These are comfortable shoes when you don’t actually have to spend all day on your feet. Thus, they are my psychiatry and clinic shoes. Comfy without being too ugly, stylish without being trendy in any way, shape or form. I tried wearing them one night on surgery, and that was a mistake, because they are actually in my normal shoe size, and if you spend your days standing, you will want to get a shoe that is a full size larger than your normal shoe size. I had clog-shaped indents in my edematous feet by the next morning. Plus, they make you about 1.5-2 inches taller, which is a bonus, at least for me. I have had these shoes for 3+ years now, and they are my mainstay. Although now, if I wear them out and about town, they feel a tad ridiculous–it’s like wearing your white coat to go grocery shopping. Just kind of silly and out of place. They are a strictly clinical kind of shoe in my eyes.

The Hipper Professional Clog

What can I say, I was tempted by the trendy outdoorsy look of the Merrell clog, and they were cheap ($34.95) at DSW shoe warehouse. They are lightweight and breathable, too, so it gets bonus points in the odor category. The only problem is that they look kind of out of place when you’re wearing something on the nice side. And the longer I look at them, the more I realize they actually aren’t very nice to look at.

The Uber-Profressional Clog

After wearing sneakers to work for 8 weeks, I suddenly has this urge to buy “grown up” shoes, because I’ve been wearing sneakers all my life. Hence, the grown-up clog. I was smart enough to buy them a size larger, so they last me through the day. They are very comfy as clogs go–unlike the Dansko wooden clog, these clogs have no wood. They are rubber and leather and lots of soft springy cushy-mooshy padding. The only downside is that they provide no height, so they, alas, are not my favorite clog.

The Hipster Cute Comfort Shoe

I rewarded myself after surgery with this shoe, plus it was a good way to use the REI cash back reward that was probably not going to be used this year on anything as joyous as actually being outdoors. It’s the widest, softest, cushiest shoe to date. The only problem is that they attract so much attention, probably because they are red. The resident noticed. The nurses at the nursing station noticed. “Nice shoe,” my psychotic patient noticed, and proceeded to focus in on the shoes to avoid the uncomfortable issues at hand. Feeling a little less excited about this shoe, but the novelty still hasn’t worn out yet.

Okay, that’s all the shoes for now. Looking at this review, one might think, “gee, this chick has a lot of ugly shoes,” but looking at what I’ve written so far, all I can think is, “gee, I wish I had more comfy shoes to review.”