Of shoes and ... shoes

They might as well change their mottoes to "Service so good, it's painful." I felt a pang at work this morning when I checked the tracking of my two packages (one from Zappos, one from Endless) and saw that they had been delivered already, and were home, waiting for me to bring my feet to try the new shoes on. So I had work all over my desk to do ... what's more important? Is it 5 yet? No?

But seriously, isn't that amazing? I placed orders yesterday and by 9:30, shoes were on my doorstep, no extra charge. It makes other companies look pretty shabby, with their escalating shipping charges and 3-5 days to deliver if you're lucky.

And how were the shoes, you ask? Well, let's see. Four pairs of similar loafer-style shoes, and one of them actually fits! Isn't that nice? Not only that, but it was the least expensive pair! I would have bet heavily against that happening.

Of the three pair I ordered from Zappos, two were the same brand, Propét, and of course the same size, 9.5W. Thus it makes perfect sense, right, that one pair was too large:


and the other too small:


I will think twice before ordering that brand again! That's just weird. How Goldilocks.

The third pair was a brand called rsvp, and far from being just right, look how much too long they were:


The one nice thing, though, about all three pair is that none of them were too narrow. For a person with a wide foot (actually, two), that's saying something. Being able to order so many wide shoes was really nice.

The Zappos summary is nice try, zero for three, print out return label, and send them all back. I would certainly order from them again, though, it really was a good experience. However, this time the pair from Endless.com is the winner:

They fit, they're comfortable, end of story. Sometime I will head out to western Mass (well, west of where I am) and try that store in Gardner, Dow's, that Leslie recommended, but since I don't have time to drive even an hour each way right now, this was a really cool work-around for my shoe problem.

The reason I don't have time in the foreseeable future for such a jaunt is an influx of visits. I have house guests coming a week from today, which I'm not quite ready for (such a surprise, me not ready), and then after that my parents are in town for a long weekend (yay!), and since it's the first time they're seeing the condo, I want it to be at its best, or at least not at its most dusty and furry and so on, so you see what I mean? Even with all I got done over the weekend, the to-do list is still not appreciably smaller.

It's actually good for me to have people come over periodically, quite apart from the social aspect, because otherwise the housekeeping tends to slide a little when there are books to be read and cats to be lapped. I need outside motivation to make me look around and realize that when I refer to my home as Chez Cat Hair, it would be nice if that wasn't quite so literal.

Now, as your reward for making it to the end, here are some flowers:

Who's in charge here?

Have you ever seen this on a shirt or bumper sticker?

Cats don't have owners, they have staff.

As I was getting ready for work this morning, I was looking at Pan, snuggled on the bed, in the sun, clearly at about a 9.5 on the comfort scale.

I on the other hand was tired, and achy still from gardening, had cramps, had spent ten minutes cleaning up cat vomit, had a tickle in my throat from all the pollen in the air (I wait all winter for this weather and then it does this to me), and I was after all getting ready to go to work. I like my job, but it is a job: there's a reason they have to pay me to go.

He likes to complain when things don't follow his wishes 100%, like when I was late getting home last night, but he leads a very nice life overall, and there are times when I'd switch places with him (all I have to do is think "litter box" and "bathe with my tongue" and the feeling passes, but I bet you know what I mean).

Plus, I wish I could purr when I was really happy.

I hope I'll be purring tomorrow. I've ordered some new shoes, and maybe one pair will fit. I ordered some from Zappos and some from Endless.com, which a couple of Laurie's commenters recommended as comparable. I like the search features of both sites, how you search by size, width, heel height, price ranges, all these factors and probably more but that's what I cared about. And, very cool, free overnight shipping, and free return shipping if I don't like them or they don't fit. Endless even has a $5 "rebate" on shipping, so the $40 shoes cost me $35 (the least expensive shoes, so you know they won't fit, right?). I'll report on them when they all arrive.

Meanwhile, back in cat-land, I have a gray tabby draped over my right forearm. It's an interesting way to type...