You Don't Need a Weatherman ...

San Miguel de Allende is one of those places that draws boasts from people who live here about having the perfect climate. Although it’s in the tropics, it’s also at 6,400 feet so altitude cancels out latitude. Most of the year it’s warm to hot during the day; cool to cold at night. There is a distinct dry season when the sky is an impossible cobalt every day; and a rainy season when it clouds up building to late afternoon thunderstorms.



The thin air and clear days equal crazy blue skies



It’s perhaps a good thing that the weather is so predictable, because we don’t have a six local TV stations with dedicated weathermen giving us blow-by-blow, minute-by-minute up-dates on what’s going on right outside our windows. If I want to know if I should put on a jacket in the morning when I walk my little dog Henry, I stick an arm out of the door.

I’d recommend this technique to those people (and I’ve met many) who complain bitterly because forecasters sometimes understate the anticipated high temperature by a couple of degrees or the estimated arrival of rain by a few hours. “Those weathermen are so useless,” they whine.

Are you freakin’ kidding me?

There was a time when people had to depend on the color of the sky, grandma’s arthritic knee, or some old fisherman’s ability to smell a storm on the wind to know if one was blowing in. Even if they got it right, they had no idea of the intensity or exact time of arrival. People died in droves when they were caught off-guard by a hurricane or torrential rains that resulted in a flooded river.      

Livingstone, the African town where I spent my early childhood, had a tropical climate: hot, humid, and given to spectacular thunderstorms that dumped an average of 30 inches of rain a year on the region. The rain fell in summer and it would usually come as a blessed relief right after the most blistering part of the year. “Long term forecasting” meant we could literally see a storm coming from a distance. When we spotted the steel gray curtain reaching from the sky to the horizon line, shot by jagged streaks of lightening, my mother and I would sit on the veranda and hope—pray—the storm was moving our way.

As it approached, we’d watch its progress with anticipation tinged with a little fear. First we’d begin to hear the rumble of thunder, becoming louder and more synched to the lightning as it neared. Next we’d catch a whiff of the unmistakable smell of rain wetting the parched, red earth. The sky would darken as we heard the sound of the fat drops first drumming on the hard ground and the broad leaves of the pawpaw and mango trees. Then it was overhead, pounding on the corrugated tin roof. Often the lightning struck trees or wire fences outside the door and the thunder rattled both the windows and our nerves. The storms were fast moving and they’d pass over within minutes.

That was a typical year. But there were times when no rain came and we went into drought mode. Other years we’d get more than usual rain. The hydroelectric power plant located in a Zambezi River gorge at the foot of the Victoria Falls would flood and we’d be without power for weeks.

The Victoria Falls in full flood: the power station
was down below in the gorge

We had no television and got only crackly radio signals from the BBC World Service so weather reports were not part of our lives. Consequently, most people were caught flat-footed, without sufficient supplies of kerosene for their Tilley Lamps or dry fuel for fires to cook on.

This was the early 1950s. But even in later in the 60s, when I lived in England, we used to get weather forecasts from ships at sea sent by Morse code. If you carefully turned the dial—yes, the dial—on the radio, you could sometimes pick up the signal: dah, di di di, dah. Weather balloons, telegraphs, and human weather observers were about as technical as it got.

Now we’ve got weather satellites, Doppler Radar, and long-range computer forecasting. We can have an idea by October if it’s going to be a wet December by the temperature of the ocean currents. We can plan a weekend picnic on Wednesday with some assurance that it’s going to be sunny on Saturday.

Think about it. There’s this bucket of bolts and wires and some special kind of camera up in space circling the planet and letting us know whether to take an umbrella to work the next day.



This picture was taken just about when I was
writting this blog! Wow!


When I lived in Southern California, the weathermen would tell us four days out that a storm was on its way. I’d sit on the sofa in my living room watching pictures from space on TV of the big, white swirling mass out in the Pacific Ocean and a computer simulation of how it’s projected to come ashore north of us and travel down the coast bringing two to four inches of rain, depending on whether you live on the coastal plain or in the mountains. When we’d had fires over the summer, leaving mountain sides denuded and prone to mud slides and flash floods, people who lived in those areas would strategically place sand-bags and build drainage channels. And can you imagine the chaos if nobody had known how severe the recent blizzard of the century was going to be? This is something we wouldn’t have had opportunity to know in the dark ages, say about the time I was sitting on an African veranda, storm watching.

Personally, I think being able to forecast the weather so accurately is a nothing short of a miracle. So they’re not100 percent correct all the time. That’s because all the sophisticated equipment in the world can’t second guess Nature: she’s one capricious, perverse, moody mother.

This whole weather thing is just illustrative of what a bunch of entitled bellyachers we’ve become as life has gotten easier, more comfortable, and a whole lot safer. Even as we complain that all the technology that serves our lives doesn’t work well enough to make us unequivocally happy, we simultaneously bemoan a “simpler” time when we weren’t the proverbial slave to it all.

You know, the “simple” life hasn’t actually gone anywhere. You just have to shut off your computer, turn off the TV, take the plugs out of your ears, and sit on the veranda. Or take a walk. But remember to take an umbrella just in case: you won’t know if it’s going to rain.     

The Zen of Underpants

Ever since I moved to San Miguel de Allende, I’ve begun to appreciate the art of doing nothing.  I don’t mean in the formal sense like meditating. Nor do I mean in the Seinfeld sense of making a big to-do out of daily trivia. Perhaps it’s more accurate to say the art of not doing anything in particular.

I have three favorite places in which I practice this high-powered inertia. The first is the jardin, San Miguel's town square bordered by the rose colored parroquia, side-walk cafes, and vendors selling everything from fresh fruit to dried flowers. I go into town a few days a week to pick up my mail. Then I head for the jardin and take up residence on one of the wrought iron benches in the sun or in the shade of one of the manicured laurel trees, depending on the day. I get through my mail, mostly junk forwarded from the states, pretty quickly. Then I just sit there.

The parroquia bellringers don't do anything
in particular between bonging out the hour

Lots of other people just sit there, too. There are locals, gringos, young, old, single people, couples. Occasionally, some over-achiever will strum a guitar. But it’s the little kids who are truly unclear on the concept. Apparently unaware that they could be home sitting in front of the TV doing nothing, they rebelliously play with balloons and bubble makers or other low-tech toys.

Their parents sit watching them: not talking on the phone, listening to their iPods, texting, or tweeting. What’s the world coming to?

The second place I don’t do anything in particular is the local botanical gardens. I tend to picture Kew in England and the Huntington in California when I think botanical gardens: formal, pretty, landscaped. But El Charco del Ingenio is more of a large, enclosed wilderness area. A nature reserve with three different zones – high desert, canyon, and wetlands – it’s home to lots of waterfowl and is a winter stopover for Northern birds. One of these days I’m going to take the Audubon tour so I can learn to identify all the vibrantly colored birds that I see darting among the cacti, but that would be doing something. Right now, I go there an hour before sunset and just walk.

I suppose walking is technically doing something. But I’m not also wearing a pedometer or heart rate monitor, one of which I would always have on when I walked in California, where walking had a purpose. My favorite route in El Charco is along the banks of the presa, the man-made lake.  Ducks are great at not doing anything in particular. They just … float. When I get to the dam wall, I walk out along it and stand in the middle, facing the canyon and watching the setting sun get all crazy on the horizon.  I saw a beautiful fox doing the same there once.

When that gets too hectic, I switch to the lake side and wait for the big fly-over. At dusk, the water fowl take to the skies as one.  Hundreds of them head off towards the north, the whirring of their beating wings breaking the silence.  I don’t know where they’re going; probably to the big lake on the other side of town where they tuck in for the night, exhausted by all that floating.

The third place I don’t do anything in particular is the roof terrace of my casita. This is dangerous territory because it’s in such close proximity to where I should be doing something; namely working at my computer.  I can see it from where I write, and it exerts a strong pull. Sometimes I just gaze out there looking for inspiration then figure if I'm not doing much I may just as well be out there as in here.  

There are a number of different seating options and views on the terrace. Sitting one way, I can commune with the neighbor’s dog, Carmela, who recently had a litter of puppies so we know what she’s been doing.

Sitting another way, I can watch the full moon come up over the wall.

Sometimes, though, I just watch my neighbor’s underpants drying in the breeze.

The Streets of Laredo

I just got back from a 3-night, 2-day trip to Laredo, Texas, a city bisected by an eight-lane highway that has one-way streets lined with box stores, motels, and chain restaurants on either side of it. The Laredo visitor’s bureau website yielded an empty “events” page. The “to-do” page recommends the mall – famous all over South Texas, it claims. I know there's a historic center; but I never found it, mainly because the 40-degree weather and bitter rain were hardly conducive to exploring. I wasn't even inclined to take pictures.

The only picture I took on the streets of Laredo

What I did spend a lot of time looking for was a cup of coffee at breakfast time. There is a Starbucks in the mall’s food court, which doesn’t open until 10am. A sweet check-out girl at Target told me there was another and while I was driving around searching for it, I spotted a red neon Krispy Kreme sign glowing through the drizzle. They open at 6 am; make a decent latte; and if you arrive at the right moment, they give you a free donut warm and fresh off the assembly line! Just to add icing to the fritter, there was a tableful of cops there chowing down on donuts. That experience was the highlight of my entire stay.



I love you Krispy Kreme

Laredo was doubly disappointing because mostly what I’ve heard about it is that old ballad, The Streets of Laredo. It’s a lament about a young cowboy who’s been shot and the most haunting version is by an ailing Johnny Cash made just a few years before his own death. I got the impression from it that Laredo was some kind of dusty Texas frontier town on the banks of the Rio Grande, right out of the pages of Lonesome Dove (the sequel to which was called Streets of Laredo.) I should have known better because I’ve been disappointed by songs about cities before.

When I was a kid growing up in Africa in the 50s and 60s, we had great radio stations that kept us up-to-date on all the latest music from both England and the United States. We lived in an entirely British ex-pat community so the English music seemed more familiar and accessible. Also, we’d get bundles of newspapers and magazines from family back home that would come by sea mail. They’d arrive about six week out-of-date but would fill us in on the life and times of the singers, not to the extent of today’s tabloids, but still I knew what Cliff Richard’s favorite color was. Cliff was my first crush and before you watch these videos and snicker, a little pop trivia: John Lennon was a fan and The Beatles four-man line-up was based on Cliff’s backing band, The Shadows, who became stars in their own right.

Cliff Richard. Eat your heart out Justin Bieber

Cliff notwithstanding, the American music and musicians were way more intriguing to me than the British ones. It was all so foreign and glamorous. They used cool sounding expressions like “see ya later alligator” and “hot diggity, dog ziggity.” (Did anyone really ever say that?) They sang about proms and drive-ins and cars called Mustangs and Thunderbirds. No one ever mentioned genres so I didn’t know country from blues from gospel from pop. It was all just music and I either liked it or didn’t.

Mostly, I loved those songs about places. My mother’s sister had married an American soldier during World War II and had sailed out to New York as a G.I. bride. Now I had five American cousins who lived in some incredibly exotic sounding place called Wildwood, New Jersey. I was sick with envy since my parents had dragged me off to darkest Africa! How lame was that?

Anyway, I was enthralled by the idea of Chuck Berry’s Memphis, Tennessee, Fats Domino’s Walkin’ to New Orleans, and Marty Robbins’ El Paso among others. More than anything, I wanted to go to those undoubtedly fabulous places.

I took off for the states for the first time when I was 21. In those days, you could get a $99 Greyhound Bus pass that gave you unlimited mileage for three months. So I flew to Ottawa to first spend time with my Canadian friend Judy.

Beautiful 70s girl Judy on that trip to Canada.

And still beautiful in 2010
Just proving that great songs and great friends
never get old

Then I set off alone and “went off to look for America;” which along with mention of other cool places like Pittsburg, Saginaw, and the New Jersey turnpike are lyrics from the Simon and Garfunkel song, America. Because by then – 1971 – there had been an entire new crop of songs come out to whet my wanderlust.

American cities in the early 70s were for the most part at the peak of the urban blight years and far from song-worthy. There had been a big out migration to the suburbs leaving city centers prone to decay, crime, and graffiti. It was also a jittery time. The passing of the hippie era was leaving a lot burn-out cases in its wake. I remember New Orleans, in particular, to be characterized by stoned, aggressive young pan-handlers everywhere on the streets. Vietnam War protests were still going on and Kent State had happened the year before. The women’s moment was cranking up and the Black Panthers were scaring everyone to death. In Washington D.C. I was surrounded by a group of young black men with huge afros. “You know what you are?” they taunted me. “Ugly. And you know why? Because all white girls are ugly.” Their rage left me shaken and sick and is still vivid in my mind 40 years later.   

By now I was little more educated about music. In Memphis I went to Beale Street looking for the birthplace of the blues. It was largely run-down and boarded-up.  I also took the bus tour to Graceland. Elvis lived there and you couldn’t go in. As we drove through the grounds, the guide pointed to a young dog scratching its armpit on the lawn. “That the ol’ hound dog E-vis wrote about,” he said.

Little foreign girl in the back of the bus piped up, “No it’s not. It’s way too young and in any case, Elvis didn’t write Hound Dog.” When 40 furious Elvis fans turned to glare at me, I slunk down in my seat and kept my counsel through the rest of the misinformed spiel.

Lest it sounds like I’m being excessively negative, I did leave my heart in San Francisco; I think Chicago is a rockin’ town, which might be the same as a toddlin’ town but I don’t know for sure; and New York is so great it deserves to be named twice (although I tended to like the sleazy 70s Times Square more than the current Disneyfied one).  

Pictures from The New York Times of 70s New York

I also love LA. My mother recently reminded me that I used to sit in my room repeatedly playing Santa Monica Pier by Noel Harrison (son of Rex) in the 1960s – long before I ended up living in Santa Monica for 16 years.

However, to be on the safe side, I’m never going to Biloxi, Mississippi. By far my favorite place name song is Biloxi by Jesse Winchester. I first heard it in the mid-1970s and have never once listened to it in all the years since that it hasn’t given me goose bumps and made me tear up. Although about Biloxi, the lyrics are so evocative of people and places and experiences I was having at the time the song first came out that I find it almost painfully nostalgic. I originally had the song on vinyl but couldn’t find it in any other format for years. Then when I was in Austin (a city Texas does get right!) a few years ago, I found it in one of their fabulous music stores on CD. It’s now on my MP3 player.

Jesse Winchester is one of the best songwriters our generation (Bob Dylan said it so it must be true), but his own singing career was pretty much derailed when he fled the US for Canada to avoid the draft. Biloxi is such a beautiful song I wanted to share it. But I searched the internet high and low all I could run across was a recent poorly recorded version that really doesn’t do it justice.  If you’re inspired to track it down, you can find it on Pandora.

I went to Laredo to renew my temporary car import license for Mexico and will have to do it again in six months. Laredo is not calling for a second visit but another option is to go to Brownsville, Texas. And there is that great Bob Dylan song, Brownsville Girl … 

We Don't Need No Stinkin' Lists

Almost every time you tap into the media this week, you’ll hear how the first baby-boomers are turning 65 this year. And just as frequently, you hear how this generation is re-defining aging and retirement. Today on one of the morning television shows, some psychologist was talking about how we should all be making our “bucket lists;” a term I’ve come to have an aversion to.

I dislike it for the same reason I’ve never bought that book, 1,000 Places to See Before You Die by Patricia Schultz, which has been a best-seller for years now. The title is certainly compelling and when it came out I thumbed through it several times in the bookstore. Undoubtedly it has a certain Arabian Nights appeal: “Sorry, Grim Reaper, you’ll have to come back another day; I haven’t seen Angel Falls yet.” But I resisted buying it or any of its many spin-offs.  I figured the pressure would be just too great. The book would sit on my shelf making me feeling guilty for vacuuming the rug or walking the dog instead of exploring the Kasbah or hiking the Appalachian Trail.

I have to confess, though, I did make a photocopy of the Mexico section of the book in the library before I left California. There are 20 entries, including the town of San Miguel De Allende.

Our lovely town of San Miguel de Allende
made the 1,000 Places list

Apart from that, I’ve experience two of the others: the market in Oaxaca and a Mexican Day of the Dead. I’ve never really paid much attention to the other 17 as I don’t want to limit my experiences here to a check list.

Day of the Dead

I frequently had out-of-town visitors in California. Nothing made me crazier than people who refused my offer to take them on a guided insider’s tour but would say, “We’ve ‘done’ Hollywood; now we want to ‘do’ Malibu.” They were often so busy keeping score and peering through a camera lens that they missed the essence of the place.

I’m not sure if Schultz’s book and that Bucket List movie are responsible, but there’s also a big craze for people to make lists of 100 things to do before they die which show up all over the internet. Most are singularly unimaginative: if everyone who claims they want to sky dive actually did, the heavens really would be raining men.



Was Magritte thinking about his bucket list, I wonder?


And to the person who has “make soap” at number 12, I say, “Did you know there’s a whole aisle full of it at Walgreens?”

Others provide fascinating reading. You have to admire the lofty ambition of the person who wrote “learn the meaning of life,” and the baser goals of the one who aspires to “fart in a crowded place.” I particularly appreciate the whimsy of the listee who wants to “hide a dollar where a kid will find it.” But I was stumped by “go snout hunting.” I wondered if it was a hunting method or whether a snout is some poor critter that’s unaware its demise is number 98 on a to-do list. However, when I Googled it, I discovered that it’s a fishing thing. When trout raise their noses out of the water to catch flies on the surface of the river, fishermen know where and when to cast for them. The things you learn on the internet: I could have gone my whole life without knowing that and I bet you could have, too!

But I digress.

While one hundred to-dos seem more manageable than one thousand, I worry about what happens when you finally cross off number 100. I’m too Irish and too superstitious to tempt fate that way. Besides, contemplating all this makes me aware of my mortality, and who wants that on a daily basis? I’d rather put the emphasis on being alive.

For my part, while I do think that to be truly alive, I need to keep having novel experiences, challenging myself in fresh ways, making goals, and thinking about how to improve my sense of well-being, not every experience needs to be a list-worthy event. I think when I focus on the big-ticket items, I stand to miss those little special micro-moments that occur every day. And lord knows, San Miguel de Allende offers those opportunities in spades. Every day here is something of a magical mystery tour if you just go with flow.

Take this day for example. I decided to go along for an early morning ride with a couple of friends, one of whom was looking for a gadget for his gas heater. Before we got to the store, he needed to stop off at Senor X’s house. Senor X turned out to be fabulously wealthy and his “house” was a mansion, practically a castle, filled with exquisite antiques and art. Yes, folks, there was a Picasso painting leaning against a sofa because there was no room for it on the walls.  We had breakfast in his kitchen and after a tour of the breathtaking property, Senor X insisted we accompany him to an old hacienda he was restoring.  After a wild ride into the countryside we arrived at the beautiful, half-ruined ancient compound.

A 200-year-old yucca tree in the
courtyard of the hacienda

One of the rooms that was finished was the bar! More people joined us and by 11am we were having a tequila party. I was introduced to a new drink: a charro negro, which is tequila and Coca Cola. (Someone really ought to write a song about it.) Then it was time for comida.  We all piled into (now chauffeur-driven!) cars and went to a nearby town that I hadn’t been to before. We had a long, leisurely meal in a lovely courtyard restaurant. More people came and went as the afternoon spun out. Our original little group got home about eight hours after we left on our errand: and no, my friend never did get his gadget!

 Now whoever would have put a special day that on a list?

A New Year's Moment

This little story has three chapters.

Chapter One. I couple of years ago, I edited a book for fabulous intuitive counselor and life strategist, Colette Baron-Reid. It was called Messages from Spirit: The Extraordinary Powers of Oracles, Omens, and Signs and is about how we get divine guidance through symbols all around us, often found in the most mundane of places. This was a familiar concept to me as my own mother used to read tea leaves. But even if you’re not inclined toward such ideas, becoming more observant is still a way to appreciate the world around you.

Chapter Two. After an amazing year of exhilarating change, I decided there would be no heavy duty resolutions for me. But I recently came across a Mexican saying that I decided would be my words to live by in 2011. Lo bailado y lo comido nadie se lo quita. Translated, it means “What one danced and ate cannot be taken away.” I love this, and plan to make the new year one of dancing and desserts and revel in the enjoyment of them.

Chapter Three. Last night – New Year’s Eve – I decided to stay home because I knew there would be lots of fireworks; this is San Miguel de Allende and we do love our fireworks here! They terrorize my little dog Henry, and I wanted to be here to comfort him. I had a lovely evening, sharing a take-out Chinese meal and a bottle of wine with my friend, Eleanor, and then called it a night.  Before I went to bed, I made a cup of hot chocolate. (Okay, this part is a bit embarrassing: hot chocolate and an early night on New Year’s Eve?) Anyway, it wasn’t until this morning that I glanced at the cup I’d left on the table and saw the symbol left there for me.  You tell me it’s not a number 11 with an ecstatic figure dancing beside it. And it was writ large!

A Happy, Juicy New Year my friends!

A Gringa Moment

So I was sitting at my computer doing my Rosetta Stone Spanish Language exercises and absentmindedly picking from a bag of peanuts – I do like my salty snacks – when I pulled out something that was definitely not a peanut. It was a desiccated carcass about half an inch long, reddish brown in color. It had what appeared to be little legs or tentacles sticking off it. I screamed in horror; spitting partially masticated bits of peanut all over my laptop screen.

 Because we all love to share our disgust and horror, I dropped the “thing” back into the bag of peanuts and I dashed over to my landlady’s house.

“Oh, JesusMaryandJoseph,” I cried. “There’s a dead roach in my peanuts. I think I already ate some. There are other broken bits of it in the bag. Look! I’m going to throw up. Do you think I’ll die?”

She recoiled, suitably horrified. We went back and forth saying very bad words and shuddering with revulsion. 

Then she calmed down and took a closer look. She frowned, picked it up, and popped it into her mouth. Now I know people in Mexico eat fried grasshoppers and drink worms in their mescal, but a cockroach? Are you serious?

 “It’s a dried chili,” she said.

Oh.

Before you pass judgement ...
what would you have thought?

San Miguel de Allende: The City of Fallen Women

San Miguel de Allende is often called the “city of fallen women.” The streets are alive with the sounds of snapping clavicles and cracking ulnae as members of the brittle bone brigade make contact with the sidewalk. Cranky ex-pat retirees regularly write to Atencion, the weekly paper, and post to the local Yahoo group, somewhat ironically named the civil list, demanding to know why the city doesn’t do something about the streets.

Hello! Did you not know before you moved here that San Miguel is famous for its cobblestones, 18-inch wide sidewalks, ski-slope streets, and precipitous stairways? All of them made more hazardous when you have to quickly sidestep the parade of the day or a speeding horse (it has happened!).

It took some nifty footwork to not get mowed down here

This state of affairs has even given rise to one thriving business: the San Miguel Shoe; subtitled, the original combat cocktail sandal. Designed and made by a local cobbler, they look a bit like Ace bandages on rubber soles and are apparently very comfy and perfect for helping you remain upright in San Miguel de Allende.



The combat cockatail sandal

I’m looking forward to eventually getting a pair but don’t need to just yet because I came down here with a suitcase full of Birkenstocks.

Happy feet are important to me.

For my last birthday, a friend kindly invited me to choose a gift from a catalog that she would then have delivered to my house. It was filled with lotions deliciously scented with vanilla and jasmine; glamorous costume jewelry; silk scarves, and useful gadgets. So what did I choose? Why, a vibrating foot bath. It’s a device about the size and shape of a bedpan. You fill it with hot water, plunge your feet in, and switch it on for a pulsating massage. I can’t think of any other choice that would have more loudly screamed, “Congratulations: You’re 60!”

On writing this, something just occurred to me. All my favorite gifts have involved my feet. A few years ago for Christmas, I got this pair of soft bootees with bags of seeds in the bottom that you heat in the microwave. When you slip your feet into them, the warm soles send waves of pure bliss throughout your entire body. I brought them with me even though the seeds are getting a bit funky now from being zapped so often. They’ve come in really handy on these below-freezing San Miguel nights.

Another time, someone took me for a Chinese reflexology foot massage in Los Angeles for my birthday at a kind of a hole-in-the-wall place short on any kind of pampering elements. The masseurs were all elderly Chinese guys who didn’t speak any English and wore hospital scrubs. I suspect they are real deal Chinese doctors, possibly illegally in the US. I picture them living together in a shipping container somewhere,  since the massage only cost $20 for an hour of unadulterated agony and ecstasy.

That’s sort of emblematic of feet: they can bring both pleasure and pain.

On the pleasure front, they dance and dig pleasingly in sand at the beach and look pretty when you paint your toenails. Well, that’s about it for the good stuff.

Then there’s the pain. You’ve heard the adage that says not to judge a man until you’ve walked a mile in his shoes. If you’d have walked in my pointy-toed stilettos during my 20s and 30s, you’d have thought I was an idiot at best, a masochist at worst. You’d have experienced agonizing calluses, painful heel spurs, cramped toes, and tight Achilles tendons that caused shin splints. Why would I have done that to myself? Well, part of it was because I’m so short and spent years trying to measure up to the rest of world. But also because heels gave me elegant arches, shapely calves, and a sensuous swing to my walk. Mostly it was because I was in my 20s and 30s and was indeed a masochistic idiot.

This madness included the years I lived in London. I became quite adept at running for a bus or walking up and down the stairs to my third floor flat in three-inch heels without breaking an ankle. It makes me laugh when people think those “Sex and the City” girls invented all that. Let’s not forget that in my day your feet were also usually encased in binding nylon pantyhose. How my feet would throb and burn by the time I got home from work or a night out (sometimes experienced consecutively and not necessarily in that order).

Finally, motivated by I know not what — late blooming common sense; a fashion for flats? — I eased with a grateful sigh into comfortable shoes. I’ve never worn high heels again; probably couldn’t anymore if I tried. (Actually, I think this was just a return to my roots. Apparently, I was raised in sensible shoes as you can see below.)

Me at four: a hula girl in Clark's sandals

By then I was living in California and overcompensated by wearing nothing but rubber flip flops and ballet flats in all seasons. Then I developed an excruciating pain in my left sole. I hot-footed it to the podiatrist, who diagnosed plantar fasciitis, a fairly common inflammatory condition that feels like you’re walking barefoot across the rocky floor of Death Valley in July.

“It’s your shoes,” the doctor admonished me. It turns out what I was wearing offered no arch support, heel cushioning, or shock absorption. In fact, a report had just come out saying that flip flops were more damaging to your feet and your musculature than high heels. What! That doesn’t seem fair. I got a big lecture on how I had to wear sensible shoes. He recommended that from then on I should wear only athletic shoes.



Comfortable boots and Amazon mud with my friend, Christine.

I hobbled off with some stretching exercises to do, a prescription for pain killers, and a determination to find shoes I could wear. Many hundreds of dollars and a closet full of butt ugly shoes later, I discovered my dream footwear.

Have you see Birkenstocks recently? Yes, they still make those clunky, wide-strap, buckled, beige clod-hoppers so beloved by die-hard granola-heads (well, okay, I suppose that’s me). But now you can also get cool ones in a variety of colors and my favorites, for dressing up, are silver thongs. They support your arches, don’t crunch your toes, and those cork soles are surprisingly warm, even in cold weather. That’s a good thing since I figure I’m still a decade or so away from wearing them with socks. To be honest, I can’t wait because Birkenstocks and cozy socks sound like a dream team for happy feet if ever I heard one, especially on the streets of San Miguel. But then I haven’t tried those combat cocktail sandals yet.