I Guess I Wasn't Really Paying Attention

Took a break from working on my book today to run three errands along Lakeshore and Grand aves today. First, I parked in the large lot on Lakeshore and walked by the crowd outside Peet’s across the street to my friendly bank from Washington that came in and bought up all the banks a few years ago, greatly improving service. Deposited a check for B, deposited an advance check into the Open Publishing checking account, and transferred my monthly savings to the joint savings account. So far, so good.
Now, my left shoulderblade has been killing me lately, probably from falling asleep on the couch with my head and neck propped in an awkward position, somewhere between a good angle to watch the TV and a good angle for dropping off to nod. There’s also a parallel pain in my chest on the left side, either a chest muscle or the lung itself. My allergies have been bad lately (so windy and with the Spring starting), so it could be that, or it could just be the same overall muscle ache or pull, with overcompensation and a parallel affect on the other side of the body. Who knows? Anyway, I’m standing there waiting for the pedestrian light to change to walk again and I’m trying to stretch my shoulders and back muscle. Then I feel like doing a standing forward bend, and only then do I notice that I somehow—in my haste to rush out and do these errands—put on two nonmatching shoes, a black one on the left and a brown one on the right:

I felt a mild, private form of embarassment, but I also found it strangely amusing. I looked around and of course nobody had noticed, although I do suspect most women of looking at shoes and noticing them far more often than I do myself. Like, whenever I think about how I don’t like my shoes and would like new shoes but I can’t figure out really even what my options are—what looks good these days, what other men are wearing, that sort of thing—I tell myself I should start looking at guy’s shoes. Just look down and notice what other people at work are wearing, guys on the street, wherever. But then I never remember to do that.
The other two errands (returning videos and exchanging smoke detectors) were relatively uneventful, though it was nice to be out on a sunny day tooling around in Mr. Bean and gettin’ stuff done. When I got home I remembered to snap the above picture before changing my shoe(s).