Allow Me to Introduce You To.....

My feet!

Yes, it's high time you've met. It's actually quite rude of me to have not introduced you sooner!

Hello!

Don't be fooled by the picture above, my feet are not pretty, dainty little things. I have runner's feet through and through. And I love every bit of their callused, mutated misshapenness!

My feet weren't always the gorgeous little things that they are now. They actually used to be quite normal. Until one day...............

At the end of my sophmore year of college, I was finishing up a workout in my basement. I was pretty excited because I'd just survived finals week (including the final for the dreaded Psychology of Women course, yick!) and was going to a wedding reception that night.  I must have been pretty distracted with thoughts of chocolate fountains and what shoes to wear, because I hadn't noticed how precariously I'd positioned the dumbbell on the weight bench. Next thing I knew...........

BANG!!!!!!!

That's right. The dumbbell rolled off and fell on my left foot, smack on my big toe and the one next to it (and it also left a nice little dent in the tile). So much for that last set. Hmph.

So, I did what any normal person would do. I hobbled up the steps and started banging my head into the door in pain.

My mom came a running and assessed the damage.

I spent the next few hours sitting on the bathroom counter trying to fix my hair for the wedding, while my mom sat next to me, holding my foot in her lap as she tried to stop the bleeding.

When the time for the reception came, my toe still hadn't stopped bleeding, and my mom was doubtful about letting me go. For some reason, she seemed to think dancing the night away wouldn't help my situation!

So of course I went anyway :-) . And of course, she was right, and made a special trip out to the reception hall with fresh bandages to rewrap my toes in the parking lot so I could continue to party. We came up with a plan that if it hadn't stopped bleeding by the time I came home that night, we'd go to the ER.

So much for daydreaming about shoes...it was flipflops that night

We never did go to the ER, even though my toes hadn't really stopped oozing til sometime the next day. I spent the next month and a half on the eliptical, wearing one running shoe and one sandal (they'd swelled so much I couldn't fit them in a shoe!). I was pretty proud strutting around in my mismatched footwear, bandage flopping around!

Fast forward to now, and my feet have never been the same.

 

The dumbbell cracked my big toe's nail down the middle and its had this weird line splitting it ever since (which I wear proudly as a racing stripe!).

The toe next to it never healed quite right, and as a result, has suffered from several bouts of black toe. I have very little feeling on the top of it and when a nail does grow in, it sticks up.

They do NOT make toenail clippers big enough for these suckers

And not to be left out, the same toe on my other foot got black toe years ago, and IT hasn't been the same since either!

It's like a giant callus is under my nail, pushing it up

Now that you have been properly introduced, feel free to go barf if you were disgusted or offended by any of these photos (the Turtle is pretty grossed out by them..in fact, his groaning while reading this post was quite loud). As for me, I love these little piggies and wouldn't change them for anything! No one will ever accuse me of having pretty feet, but to me, I think they're positively glamorous. I earned these feet, and I will wear them proudly!