Aarghh!

Take a good look at these shoes. What do you notice? (What I notice first is that the shoes are pretty beat up and ugly. I didn't realize how bad they were- my feet are a long way from my eyes, you know.)

What I meant to point out is the laces.

The shoe on the right has a broken lace. I am somehow still able to get a little knot right up at the top. The shoelace on the left is much worse. It has broken three times. I'm reduced to tying it halfway down the eyes.

"But, Jeff, you idiot," you say, "just run out and buy some new laces!"
What you don't know is that these are the new laces. I broke the original laces that came with the shoes a couple of months ago.

After breaking the original laces, I went to Target, Shopko, Payless shoes, everywhere I could think of looking for replacement laces. None of those stores carry laces. I couldn't believe that laces were so hard to find. Why don't the shoe manufacturers stock stores with replacement laces that match the shoes that they are selling? Does no one else break their laces? I do pull pretty hard when I tighten them, and I am pretty strong. Please comment and let me know if I am the only one.

Personally, I blame George Bush and Karl Rove for the conspiracy to make me buy new shoes when all I need is new laces.

I finally found some laces at Dillards at the mall. I don't live very close to the mall and I don't really like the mall, so I don't go there very often. But Dillards had the laces shown in the picture- they don't really match and they're really thin, but what are you going to do?

And now, Aarghh! Broken again. I guess I'd better get back to the mall.

p.s. As part of my lace-search, I did find this interesting page about different methods of tying laces. This one is called the "one-handed lacing", which supposedly lets you tighten the shoes without tying a knot. That would be perfect for my boys. They HATE tying their shoes. Their hatred results in them walking around with their lace ends dragging on the ground, or trying to jam their feet into their shoes while still tied.

I think I'll try this and let you know how it goes.