Boots

Everyone knows that to ride horses, you must have the proper gear. Not only for the horse, but for yourself. I don't tend to go for style, more comfort and snot and dirt-resistance - except when it comes to my boots.

My red Ariat cowboy boots are my favorite article of clothing, riding or not. Steve got them for me about a year and a half ago and - at first - they were not used for actual horse handling.

That was pre-Lena.

I wear them every day. They are almost perfectly formed, now, wrapping like a glove around my feet, creased and pliable, stained with aluminum from the stirrups, always vaguely horse-scented. (Dogs love them.) In other words, they are perfect.

I wore through the left insole and resorted to gray tape until I got around - 6 months later - to ordering new insoles. It's almost (almost) like having new boots! (Especially when I clean off the dust and condition the leather a little.)

Recently, though, I started to worry about what would happen when my red boots got too worn out to wear for going out to eat on the weekends, or my signal for the pending weekend, "red-boot Friday." I started looking at other boots, thinking either to replace my red boots with another color to ride in, preserving the red ones for "good," or to use the new, different color as my "dress" boots. I was having a hard time choosing because, really, I just wanted another pair of red boots.

Luckily, Steve understands me and convinced me to get what I wanted, even if other people thought it was silly to have two pairs of red boots.



I'm not quite sure what I'll do if Ariat stops making red boots, but for now, my feet are quite happily covered in red boots for most future occasions I can think of.