Tight Pussy Loose Shoes and a Warm Place to Shit

A Made in America Update.

Really.

Yes, we are still working on the made in America challenge. We've done pretty well, although we have purposely failed at times and accidentally failed at others. Nonetheless, I'd say 98.5% of the discretionary dollars our family has spent since the beginning of the year has been from domestic products.

After the year is over I swear I won't go back to shopping at regular clothing stores again. Part of our deal was that we could buy any clothes made anywhere as long as we bought them at second-hand stores. Within walking distance from my house is a children's clothing store that is a dream. And I discovered Savers which is set up like a big store but it's like a resale store for Easter Seals. If you spend a little time looking, many things in the store are like new.

Having said that, shoes are a major problem. Children shouldn't wear second hand shoes because their feet are still developing and I shouldn't wear second hand shoes because eww gross.

Last weekend I was at a party and was explaining this whole thing to my cousin. I said "please note that's why everyone in my family has on shabby looking shoes".

"Why's that?" she asked, and I said that almost all shoes are now made in China. She took her sandal off to check the label. "Not this one" she said. "It says 'Made in USA'".

After I stopped crying, she told me she bought her sandals at REI so that's where I went this week to buy my first new pair of shoes since January. Some of you may say 'big deal'. Some of you may wonder how I've survived this long.

Not only did the $95 price tag not deter me, neither did the post-graduate degree required to put on the damn shoes. (Yeah, Ben. That's what I spent. See me for excuses justifications. The shoes are called Chacos. They come with a diagram, just in case you miss the six times the patient salesman tries to show you. If that doesn't work there's a video on their website.

I thought I had my shoes properly adjusted at the store. Then I left and ran some other errands. The toe started to feel really tight - humidity was making my feet swell- and without instructions I desperately tried to adjust my shoes in the grocery store. You know those carnival prizes called 'Chinese handcuffs' where the more you try to pull out of them the tighter they become? That was my toe in these shoes.

I spent an hour or two this morning, and now I think I'm pretty well set.


Oh, and my label says "Assembled With Pride in Colorado USA". How cool is that? (Beware that some of their products are made in China if you're thinking about buying some).

BTW in case you were wondering, the title of this post came from a racist remark made by Earl Butz, Nixon and Ford's Secretary of Agriculture. It also influence my cuss-o-meter nicely. However, I learned the saying from a movie I saw when I was 11 or 12. The whole movie was made up of fake movie trailers, and this song was from a trailer for the fake movie "Darktown after Dark". I had no idea what a 'tight pussy' was, but I used to go around singing the song. It's catchy. Thanks to YouTube I can link to it here. (I had to take the actual video off my page because something was causing my whole layout to shift. Whack.)