Two years of scarcely relenting sciatic pain, leg muscle loss, and knees that were getting unreliable, having to take it easy on stairs because of balance problems…

I’m wearing these new sandals from the time I get out of bed til I go to bed. They fixed the sciatica inside 3 hours. I’ve since ordered several pairs.

Then, yesterday, we had a cool day, and I decided to save Jane the trouble of hand-sweeping the patio and drive, by running the leaf-blower, which she hates to do—and to clean up the thin ridge of weeds between the alley and the drive, which grew up during our driving trip. So…

I didn’t want to wear my good new sandals out there. So I wore the old ones. Went out, ran the leafblower on the drive, piece of cake; ran the weedwhacker, climbing up and down the little 3×20′ ridge of weedy ground; messing with the damn machine, which of course runs out of cord 3′ into the job—for once, I did have a spare spool, which Jane had helpfully hung from a nail near the machine’s hanging hook!–and changing that.

Got back in, and noticed the knee pain. Took some Advil, changed shoes. My knee and lower back had a fit for the next number of hours. More Advil at bedtime, rest, back to the good new shoes today—no pain, no unsteadiness this morning—which is a relief. I feared I’d done a number on that knee.

I think I’m not wearing any shoes but these hereafter, and I’m going to send any shoes for which I can’t replace the insole with a Vionics insole—to our local charity. I’ll keep a couple of pairs of heels and my pirate boots, but the rest? They’re outta here. While the worst thing you generally can do for your feet is wear the same pair of shoes day after day, this is more a case of getting a support under the arches and keeping the heel low relative to the arch support, which is the magical angle that solves the problem. Damn! that hurt yesterday evening!