R's Holy Grail

Well, team, it's official. I am the best housewife with no kid ever.

My palms are sweating, my hands shaking (not a joke, it is actually impeding my already abysmal typing). I just won a Very Important ebay auction. Let me tell you, it was heated. I had a lot riding on this one. Perhaps a bit of background would be helpful. My spouse has very large and very flat feet. Perhaps more interestingly, they also have one extra bone each, which causes troubles including, but not limited to, crippling back pain. The only shoes that have ever been helpful are Birkenstocks, but during the long, often snowy winters, they just don't cut it. You may suggest that he simply invest in some Birkenstock shoes, but you would be informed that, although your suggestion was not terrible, sadly Birkenstock does not use the same footbed in their regular shoes as they do in their sandals. We discovered this after having the same idea you had and paying to ship them to our house...and back from whence they came. We have shopped and shipped like madmen, desperate for shoes to replace the pair R has worn every day, without significant exception, for the last seven years. Their life is about to terminate, and the manufacturer had made the egregious error of discontinuing them. What were we to do?

Then it hit me: Earth shoes. With a negative heel similar to Birkenstock's but even more pronounced, surely R's arches would receive adequate support, his knees and back would cease hurting, and there would be no need to pay for shipping any more superfluous shoes. Now, to find a pair. There is only one store in Utah that sells men's styles, so we made the pilgrimage only to find ourselves in a tiny supplements store (picture Burt's Bees products, endless Dairy Whey Protein Powder, and a man with shaved muscular arms offering to assist us) that had an out of place though invaluable section in the back containing hundreds of Earth shoes for men. R tried them. He loved them. They cost more than aforementioned estimate for a month's worth of my hair maintenance. Thus ebay. Fueled by animosity for the other bidders (why were they jacking up the price even though I was certain to be the winner?), I won in the end. $45 for my victory and worth every penny, although I will admit that my sensitive system is not accustomed to such adrenaline. I kind of liked it, but I apologize as it seems to have fanned the flame of my verbosity.

Please, everyone, pray hard that they are perfect, R loves them, and we can quit shoe shopping for another seven years.