I just want a decent pair of athletic shoes!

I've been working out with a trainer now for the past year and a half. I've gotten into really good shape and I feel better and stronger than I have in a very long time. I've lost weight and kept it off and that's also a very good side benefit of working out. Motivation to eat better is also something good that has come out of the whole experience. The problem? The shoe you see above, a K-Swiss classic tennis shoe, is what I wear for workouts, because it has a flat enough sole to have a 1½" lift fitted on to it. I'm told now that I really need to be wearing a good pair of training shoes that will offer better stability for the tendency of my feet to supinate (roll outward) and will do a better job of cushioning as well to protect my bad knee. The problem here is that most training shoes are not outfitted for having a lift put on them. I've been spending days on line searching for a shoe that might work, but to no avail. Having one short leg is frustrating enough without having to worry about shoes, but when I have to go and look for something to wear, I have to inspect every single shoe I am interested in buying to see if a lift could possibly be built on to it. It severely limits the selection of shoes available to me and it just makes me crazy whenever I consider trying to find shoes, and the worst are athletic shoes, because they're all so specialized now. They've got air, gel, foam and all kinds of stuff built into the soles to provide cushioning and stability, but none of them are able to have lifts built on to them. So I am left with having to choose shoes that are wholly inappropriate for what I want to do. Well, I just scheduled an appointment with an orthotist who I hope will be able to point me to some athletic shoes that can be outfitted with the size of lift I need, so we'll see what happens. The problem is that now I need a prescription for the lift, meaning I may have to schedule an appointment with my orthopaedic surgeon before then, and he's next to impossible to see on a next day basis. I don't know if he'll be able to just write a prescription for me sight unseen, but I'll ask. If I can't get it by the time I see the orthotist, maybe I'll see if he can do the measuring himself and then we'll go from there. After all, it was when I went to the orthotist in the first place that I found out how much of a discrepancy I did have, so maybe if I can't get a prescription, I can ask them to do the measuring themselves. We'll see.

SCRABBLE HELL

Lately, whenever I have dinner over at my mom's house, the after dinner activity is to play what usually ends up being a somewhat cutthroat game of Scrabble, played between my mom, my brother, his girlfriend and myself. Cynthia, the girlfriend, is probably the best and most savvy Scrabble player I've ever been matched against, and I am still learning the little techniques that will score me big points. Sometimes, I'm just screwed by the letters I end up getting and I really struggle to find a word that I can form on the board, but it always seems that the minute I have something really good, Cynthia's turn is up and she screws me over by using a vowel or a consonant that I was going to play to form a word. I've come up with some good words lately, though, in spite of it all: Quid, Viper, Rank, XRay, Zone, Doge, Chad, Lasso (formed by putting an "s" at the end of my brother's excellent word, "Burqa", allowing me to get the points for that word in addition to my own), just to name a few. We usually have the dictionary handy to look up words we want to be sure are legit and it's getting really comical now that our family is learning how to play against Cynthia and make really savvy moves. I haven't won a game yet, but I'm beginning to catch on to all those little strategies that Cynthia employs in order to rack up big points. Sometimes, it only takes a few letters to really drop a big points bomb, as I am finding out. I guess we all just need more practice, and goodness knows, we're sure getting enough of that lately! I'm really enjoying this nightly activity and finding that even a good vocabulary as mine is no match for when you just have a bad run of letter draws. Some nights, you just can't win. Some nights, you get a good run going and you're off and going with tons of points. It's all the luck of the draw that counts, and you can't control that, unfortunately. You just have to make do with what you've got and make the best word combinations with them. That's the trick of this game that I am slowly learning.