After my other overly-sentimental post about my gross old sneakers, it seemed appropriate to mention that this enormous transition had finally been made, but I promise I won’t make a habit of posting about my shoes.

Still can’t bring myself to throw them out though. I feel like I should get them one of those glass trophy boxes that people keep game-winning footballs in, or something.

In other news, The Baroness Knows Best has finally been updated! Thanks so much for sending in your questions and please, keep them coming! I’ve just started formatting the next Promises Promises book (yes!) and the advice column was such a fun feature of the first one, (Starting Tomorrow – available in the Promises Shop) I’d like to make it an ongoing thing.

If I had found a pair like that, I would have thrown them out, thinking I’d done someone a favour. But lucky for me, they held on to them and I got them back the next day (wrapped up in a giant clear plastic garbage bag that gave me visions of the hazmat team it must have taken to get at them with the proverbial ten foot pole).

It was a surprisingly big relief to get them back. This gross old pair of running shoes. At first I dismissed it, thinking I just didn’t want to have to go shopping or that they were comfy and who wants to break in a new pair if they can spare themselves the blisters? But throughout the day it kept creeping into my thoughts; “sure am glad I got these back”, and it really started to bug me. What was the big deal? It made me think about that line from Forest Gump:

I remembered when I got those shoes. It would have been 2004-2005ish (somewhere in there). I had just moved back to Ontario and taken a new job on a stop motion show. That meant long days on my feet so I splurged on a really good quality pair. Not crazy-expensive, but for my budget at the time it was a pretty sizable investment and well worth it. I also started my membership at the gym where I met the real-life Fiona, Trish and Shanta that year. Clearly something that inspired me for a long time.

Even after I’d retired them from gym use for a new pair, those shoes saw me through three different companies and twelve different productions before I went to freelance. They have walked four Relays For Life in two different cities, three of Toronto’s Weekends To End Breast Cancer, one Terry Fox Run, one Run For The Cure, two Mardi-Bras and one MS Society 5k. They tromped up and down Queen’s Park for three Word On The Street Festivals, before I started exhibiting. Then there’s the comic conventions – eight that I can think of off the top of my head in two different countries. Three vacations, who knows how many long weekends and one really good day at a Craps table in Vegas.

I don’t like to think of myself as a nostalgic person, but as I sat there looking over these filthy sneakers, it felt like I was looking at a map or timeline of my own years. I knew every one of the paint smudges, spots of dried glue, the grass stains, food stains, my own blood stains, the Butyl stuck in what was left of the worn down purple treads, almost personally. So many memories of so many people, places, conversations, laughs, tears, fights, melt-downs, jokes… heh. Most people only get this way over photo albums or boxes of mementos.

So in response to Forest’s Momma; I may not have any clue where I’m going most of the time, but it was really nice to reconnect with where I’ve been.

New navigation buttons under the comic! (and they work!) The random button is new here too and easily my favourite feature. I was testing it out and hit one of the public service announcements, (“we interrupt this comic”) and I actually felt interrupted. hee hee!

I’m terribly impressed with myself at the moment, but I’d best get to actually finishing some comics now that the site is all fancy. (squee!)