Stigmata of the Foot

Yesterday was my first day of being a temp. I was looking forward to getting out of the house and actually getting paid for a day's work. The only part that I was really nervous about was getting to the job. Public transportation is hard for me under the best of circumstances (familiar city, familiar area) so having to take an unknown bus to an unknown area was very daunting. I checked the bus schedule at least 5 times and set out really early. I got off the bus at 8:20 a.m. thinking that I had plenty of time to get there for a 9:00 a.m. start. Wrong! I walked in a big circle around the grocery store that I was supposed to be using as a landmark. After 40 minutes, two frantic phone calls to the temp agency and one to the hospital where I was supposed to be working I managed to get to the hospital only 10 minutes late.

The only element of work that I dislike is work clothes/work shoes. I am not fashionable. I have accepted this fact. I would happily wear t-shirts, jeans and sneakers (trainers) every day. I needed to dress appropriately for the job which meant breaking out the dressier shoes. These were not sky high heels. They were small kitten heels that were already broken in. As I wandered around desperately looking for the hospital, my feet were killing me. I tried to ignore it and attributed the pain to wearing heels for the first time in months.

My work day went fine once I got there. It was tedious work but interesting to read the incident/accident reports occurring in a psychiatric hospital. I also enjoyed that the guy in the office across from me spent the entire day discussing his holiday plans and telling everyone that they would be getting an extra stat holiday in 2011.

I finished my day and left in search of the bus stop for the journey home. I had no idea where the bus stop was and I'm sure that I walked at least 5 blocks more than I had to but eventually found the stop and waited 25 minutes. In Canada, when you are waiting at the bus stop that is the indication to the bus driver that you want the bus to stop because you want to get on. In England, if you want the bus to stop you have to flag the bus down. I forgot about this but luckily the bus stopped anyways. I got on and the bus driver barked at me "Next time if you want the bus to stop could you give us a clue??" I said nothing and took my seat.

A quick bus ride and I was almost home. The walk home was very slow because at this point my feet were absolutely killing me. What I didn't know at this point was that my shoes were really cutting my feet and as a result my shoes had been filling with blood all day.

I arrived at home, opened the door, kicked off my shoes and needed to use the bathroom. I really had to go so I opened the door but didn't bother putting the light on right away. When I did turn the light on, I saw a trail of bloody foot prints leading from the front door and onto the bath mats. Yes, we have carpet.

Through the help of ehow.com a quick search of how to get blood out of a carpet yielded very helpful results. By the time Matt got home, he couldn't even tell where the offending foot prints had been.

When I took off my socks and went to bandage up my feet a strange thing happened. There were no cuts on my feet. There were a few blisters and they were red and sore but no cuts. Where did the blood come from? So clearly the answer is stigmata of the foot.

The shoes have been thrown out never to be worn again!