A Blundstone Boots Giveaway? I Don't Mind If I Do!

I'm a fan of Blundstone Footwear, so when the opportunity came up to give a pair of their boots away to my fellow Canadians, I said WOO-HOO!

I also yelled WOO-HOO! at the mailman this morning when he delivered my new Blundstones. He actually leapt backward into the hallway. Stop yelling at the nice mailman, Schmutzie. Oops.



I've been wearing them all day, but I didn't put them on until I had put my own, personal stamp on them.

There's nothing wrong with The Original Blundstone in brown. It's a beautiful boot, and it's one I've coveted for quite some time, but I had this pot of burgundy shoe polish in the hall closet, and it was beautiful, too, so what could I do?



After sullying my perfectly good looking pair of Blundstones, I took them out for a walk.

They hung out with some flowers.



They helped me to carry three skillion pounds of cat food and cat litter over several blocks in 31°C (88°F) heat while wasps pelted me with their bodies. I don't know what is up with the wasps this year, but they're hyper-aggressive and seem to have evolved from being mere scavengers to being straight up predators.

Let me tell you, it's really hard to flail and run with three skillion pounds cat food and cat litter.



I should probably tell you a little more about the specifics of the Blundstone boot that makes it so loved by me:

Their oiled leather keeps out inclement weather and road salt.

The sole and leather upper are joined together without stitching, so grit can't get in between the two.

The patented Shock Protection System reduces foot strike shock by 33%.

They have TPU (thermoplastic polyurethane) outsoles that are not only slip resistant but are also oil and acid resistant and won't break down at colder and hotter temperatures.

They last for years.

Also? They hang out with terrific sandwiches (which, if you are in Regina, Saskatchewan, can be had at the Italian Star Deli).



Oh, and they have removable insoles, which I find is always a bonus if you've got orthotics to fit into the boots or if you want to slip in an extra set of insoles for more cushioning, although, after running around in my Blundstones all day, I can't imagine that you would need any more. The soles on these babies are fantastic.



I don't know if all Blundstone boots come with a hat, but mine did, and let's just say that my head and hats are not a match made in heaven.



Not to oversell these Blundstones or anything, but I even went so far as to shoot video of myself doing a terrible soft shoe in a public parking lot after walking around in them all day just to show you how much I really mean it when I say that these boots are comfortable:



I don't dance for just anybody.

So, without much further ado, I'd like to give you guys a chance to win a pair of these! And, actually, I'd like to give you two chances to win.

If you live in Canada and you would like ONE chance to get your hands on The Original Blundstone, do one of the following. If you would like TWO chances to win, do both of the following:

1. Leave a comment on this post. You can tell me why you want/love Blundstones, or you can just talk about your day or your kids or whatever.


2. Post the following tweet on Twitter, complete with hashtag:
   I want to win a free pair of Blundstone boots, because @schmutzie tells me they're awesome - http://tinyurl.com/FreeBlundstones  #FreeBlundstones

I will pick one lucky CANADIAN (sorry, all you non-Canucks) at random on Tuesday, September 13th at midnight using random.org, and then I will announce the winner both here and on Twitter.

Good luck!

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UPDATE: The contest is not closed, because the free pair of Blundstones has been won by nowlansgirl!

Wicked's Elphaba Is To This Schmutzie What Dorothy Is To Gay Men

Just before I went to BlogHer '11 in San Diego, Broadway Across Canada offered me a couple of tickets to go see Wicked in Saskatoon on August 11th. Would you believe that the last musical I saw just might have been a 1990s high school production of Oklahoma in which my father played a heavy-footed farmer? As soon as I received the invitation, I realized what a cultural troglodyte I was, and so I, of course, had to say yes.

My parents live up in Saskatoon, so I invited my mother along to the performance. As you can see, we both have this problem of looking half asleep, drunk, or crazy in photographs, so I just thought I would include all three attempts at taking our photo and let you piece our various parts together to imagine us as the wide awake, sober, and merely happy individuals that we were on August 11th:



I'll be honest. The reason I haven't been to a musical in so many years is that I am generally annoyed by them. When everyone breaks into song, I want them to shut up and get-the-hell-on-with-the-story-already-sweet-jeebus. Glee? Shut your overly produced yawps and get on with the character and storyline development already. Grease? Get a life, people, and eat a sandwich. Wicked, though? I LOVED WICKED, and I'm not just whistling Dixie.



Wicked is both the back and side story to L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. It follows the relationship between Glinda (played by Natalie Daradich) and Elphaba (played by Anne Brummel), who start out as diametrically opposed classmates whose lives grow into an intimately intertwined friendship as they mature and are later falsely labelled by the citizenry of Oz as Glinda the good and Elphaba the wicked.

I haven't read Gregory Maguire's Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (Wicked Years), the novel upon which the Broadway musical is based, but I think I'll have to pick up a copy, because Elphaba is to this Schmutzie now what Dorothy is to gay men.



The overarching message that stuck with me is that you can't judge books by their covers. Each of the characters was both an idealist and a pragmatist, good and bad, faulted and brilliant. Glinda suffered from a gross sense of entitlement, but she had a big heart and a sense of civic duty, and Elphaba had low self-esteem and was socially awkward, but she was constitutionally unable not to stand up for what she saw was right. Despite the strengths of both characters, they each feel victim to the oversimplified and extreme labels that the citizens of Oz placed upon them and had to struggle to be true to themselves and to the issues they held dear.

My crush on Elphaba started with Act I's "No One Mourns the Wicked", and I was pretty much a panties-throwing, blushing, fully girl-crushed fan by the end of the performance, without the panties-throwing, of course. I was with my mother, after all.



Wicked has won me over. The incredible voices of Natalie Daradich and Anne Brummel coupled with an engaging storyline, seriously breathtaking light production, and a rich, industrial-flavoured set, brought me out of my troglodytism and into the wicked world of Broadway musicals.

There is a reason that Wicked's North American and international companies have cumulatively grossed over $2.2 billion and have been seen by nearly 28 million people worldwide, and that reason is that the show is more than well worth the ticket price. It is a story that underscores the truth that our individual relationships matter more than the court of popular opinion and that popular opinion is rarely a reflection of the depth, complexity, and courage we each possess as individuals.

In a world where our stories and politics seem to fall more and more to the extreme lefts and rights of the issues, Wicked is a thoughtful center, and, frankly, it made me feel a little more hopeful for our continued ability to embrace diversity and love our fellow human beings with an understanding our public stories often do not admit.

Hot Thai Food, A Sticky Offhand Comment, And The Postal Service

The Palinode has been out of town working for a couple of days, and, as is my usual bachelorette style, I am living like a hobo in my own apartment. I am right this second drinking out of a coffee mug that shows three days of old coffee rings, which I am telling myself brings out the full-bodied flavour. My front right jeans pocket is pulled inside out. I just ate a sandwich made out of peanut butter, the grainy scrapings of old honey I found in the back of the cupboard, and the leftover heels of an old loaf of bread.



Because I am magically chaotic, I managed to turn our kitchen into a deplorable mess in less than 36 hours, so I picked up some Thai food on my way home last night. I ordered it hot, because that's how we usually order it, and because the Palinode likes to sweat where he's bald when he eats. The food turned out to be so hot, though, that I found myself sitting on the couch and contemplating sucking on sugar cubes to kill the heat.

"Ho, baby!" I called out. "Is this Thai food ever hot!"



The Palinode, being 257 kilometers (that's 159.7 miles) away, did not answer, and then I felt instantly lonely, and then I felt depressed about my loneliness, so I took my computer to bed in a small fit of faux-lovelorn drama. Of course, not being actually lovelorn and knowing that the Palinode would be home in less than 24 hours made it a very short fit, and as I lay back against my pillow waiting for sleep, I remembered something my mother told me 23 years ago.

I was lying in bed, home sick from school with the flu that day in 1988, when my mother came in to the room to see how I was doing. She looked like she had something serious to say, but as soon as she saw my face, she started laughing.

"What's so funny, Mom?" I asked.

"The way your face looks right now when you're lying down [hahahahaha], you're going to [hahahahaha], you're going to [hahahahaha], you're going to have to have sex in the dark when you grow up," she said.

She was referring to the fact that I have a naturally round face that changes shape a bit when I lie down. Strangely, her comment, although it has followed me for 23 years, has never made me feel awkward about having sex with the lights on, but I do think about it like a knee jerk reflex every time I recline even slightly.

I lie down on a beach towel. You're going to have to have sex in the dark. I kick back in a reclining chair. You're going to have to have sex in the dark. I lie down in the bathtub. You're going to have to have sex in the dark.

The only time I don't think You're going to have to have sex in the dark when I lie down is during sexy times. You'd think I would, but I don't. That's how we know I don't have issues.

And then I turned out the light and didn't have sex in the dark, because the Palinode was 257 kilometers away.



And then I woke up this morning, very excited yet again about the mailman, because I am nothing if not excited about the mailman for some reason, and then I was suddenly not so excited about the mailman, because I remembered that ours hasn't bothered to deliver magazines to us for months, and our postal workers might be going on strike, and all I really want is for my Etsy orders to arrive so I can wear my dorky punctuation earrings and tinted lip balm.

I'm sorry Mr. Mailman if your job is sucking so much that it requires a strike, because I was once a striking worker myself and feel your pain, except that my pain was much worse because my stupid union called a strike during a cold snap and I had to march around for four hours straight every day in -40°C (that's -40°F) weather. Really, though, I'm not that sorry, because I'm the selfish sort of person today who just wants her earrings and tinted lip balm and magazines already. You are stifling my ability to foster my inner gender slave, goddamnit.

The End.

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PS.  Help me welcome Schmutzie.com's latest sponsor, Live It to the Full, which is "...a place of refuge for people seeking a new way of processing through a transitional period in their life."