Footwear Faux Pas

Today I realized that I have made an egregious oversight in regards to the material covered on this blog. It’s simply unjustifiable that I created a blog and named it Pistol in Pumps as a dual reflection of my sassy attitude and my love for fabulous footwear, yet I’ve neglected to write at all about said fabulous footwear. Well, Missies, the buck stops here.

So you’re in luck. Today I happen to be clicking around in my very favorite pair of heels. They are the pride and joy of my extensive shoe collection.

These are a few of the reasons why I love them and refuse to allow anyone in the world to borrow them:

1. They are tall, very tall – upwards of 4 inches. Keep your judgments about my future physical pain to yourself. My 5’4 stature comes nowhere close to matching my 5’11 attitude, so I enlist a little help.
2. My idol, Gwen Stefani, made them for me with her very own hands. That might be an exaggeration, but they part of her L.A.M.B. line and I feel like they were made just for me.
3. They were a gift from my mom and pretty much claim the title of the Best Gift I’ve Ever Received.
4. They are the most expensive of my collection, see item #2 (I hope that someday the pair of black patent peep toe Louboutins will claim this title, but for now I appreciate what I have).
5. They go with everything.
6. My feet are super narrow (unlike my hips) and for whatever reason (probably that high price tags correspond with narrow insteps) these are perfect. For this reason, no, you may never borrow my fabulous pair of L.A.M.B.s and you will undergo a width test for any other pair. You have been warned.

Regarding item #4, please don’t feel discouraged from donating to the Ragan Loves Louboutin Fund. All forms of payment are accepted.

Shedding Those Pesky 500 Kilowatts

While I certainly cannot claim to be an environmental maven, I do consider myself a logical, socially-minded individual who derives a dangerous amount of satisfaction from saving cash on the boring stuff that you just can’t get avoid sacrificing your hard earned cash on. Like electricity. And water. And gas. I mean, how boring can it get? You can’t even entertain yourself with comparison shopping. Now, shoe shopping is a different story. There are green ones and gold ones and pointy and peep toe. That’s some good, worthwhile shopping. But I digress.

The point is that reducing your electric, water and gas usage is a good thing in many, very measurable ways. I know this not only because I am a smarter than a doorknob, but because I recently attended a pitch at my office given by a rep from the University of Arkansas Applied Sustainability Center. Basically, you spend a good 10 minutes signing up for an Earth Aid account at www.earthaid.net. The website downloads your utility usage information for the past year (less if you’ve lived there a shorter time) and, if you’re me, you get to be astonished and ashamed that you’re more than 3.2 times above the national average. Oh, the unbearable shame…

I bet you’re thinking that the crazy high numbers were all part of my diabolical plan to create a high baseline so that I could earn extra points for my dramatic improvement. You might be right and you might be wrong. Either way, I recommend checking it out. My plan is to track our usage, brag about my highly evolved sense of environmental responsibility and spend the money I saved on a new pair of shoes. A nice give and take in my opinion – my carbon emissions shrink and my shoe collection grows.