Barefoot in the Rain

Never before has rain on my feet felt so good as it did Thursday afternoon. I had just got done with this huge presentation, dressed in my skirt suit, sweating because of being in a room filled with people with little air circulating, and this amazing feeling of relief came in the form of cool rain. As I walked out of the door at Amway, rain was pouring down. I had no choice but to walk the long distance to my car, lugging my laptop, purse, with my jacket flung over my shoulder. More importantly, however, was the fact that I was wearing my most expensive, most beautiful pair of heels I own.
I will not disclose the price of the shoes, or go into the fact that they are grey suede and explain the detriment that the rain could have on their rich color, but I will say that beauty is pain and those heels, beautiful as they are, kill my feet. They aren’t so bad when I don’t have to stand for long periods of time, but on that day, I did have to stand for 3 hours straight talking to people. Ouch. My feet were swollen with blisters all along the toes and heels. I will be the first to tell you that these shoes are totally worth the blisters because they match my skirt suit perfectly, but at 5:00 on Thursday, my feet were screaming to let them out, and the rain was the perfect excuse to do so. I took off my heels, covered them in my bag, and stepped out into the parking lot barefoot walking through puddles where my feet were finally cooled and the rain could wash my sweat away (disgusting, yes, sorry). It was perfect.

This week has been crazy exciting and busy. It all started last Saturday when all of the interns had an unofficial intern formal. I am so thankful for that night because it was kind of like the fun, have a good time night before the intense week began. The formal (and you can laugh at the fact that a bunch of 20 something year olds got dressed up to spend an evening together and dance, but it was very fun) was held at the third floor Pearl Room at McFadden’s. You probably would not at first think “classy place,” but it really was nice, and somehow we ended up getting a connection so we got the whole floor for a great deal. All of us did come dressed up, and it was great to be able to spend some quality time with these people outside of work.

[The only reason I included this photo was to show that Jill and I did participate in trying our hand at being DJs. We were no good.]

[The lovely Sam and I]

Then, the week began. Do you ever have it when you are not worrying about anything, and then suddenly during the strangest hour you begin to freak out about everything? That happened to me on Sunday right at the beginning of church. It was like I knew the week was about to begin and BAM it was time to get going again. I was literally sitting in church when I thought of every minuscule detail of my life that I needed to fix. I was almost ready to just get up and leave and go make a freaking check list and get to work. Seriously. My car has been filthy for the past 2 months, I needed to wash a shirt for Monday morning…oh wait, it is silk so I should have brought that to the dry cleaners on Friday, I need to type up this document for a meeting, my toe nail polish is smudging all over the place, I have to call so and so, my room needs to be vacuumed, I need to practice my presentation and organize all my college documents (yeah, why I got worried about that right then I will never know), and oh my gosh I never set up a sports physical. Yes, that is sadly where my mind was all during church. Guess what? I never cleaned out my car this week or organized my college documents, hah. I never had time.

From there, the week just flew by. It was just fantastic because I was being challenged and able to expand different skills. While it felt like I was running from one presentation to another and then after that having meetings or updating my resume, never before have I felt so stimulated at work. It was great. I like tight deadlines and busy schedules, strange, I know. That does not mean that I was not tired (because holy cow, I was, but a little thing called adrenaline kicked in) or a little stressed. I am just saying that this week was simply great, and I cannot totally explain why unless you had hours and hours to listen to all of the crazy happenings that occurred.

Thursday was sort of that ‘big day’ that we all were preparing for. After some hours of preparation, lunch meetings, and meeting the California interns who were flown in for the presentation, the day was basically over. So, as I was walking through the parking lot in the rain barefoot, you can imagine my relief. My eyes and body were telling me to go and sleep finally, but my mind could not stop…once again, that is adrenaline. I was thankful for it, however, because there was no time for sleeping. Instead, I drove home, cleaned myself up, changed into a cuter dress, grabbed my lip gloss and hit the road again. Destination: Bull’s Tavern to have dinner with the California interns. The night was unpredictably fun. I love meeting new people, but I had the mindset to go, mingle, eat and after about an hour and a half, leave. I ended up leaving three hours later. It was fun, the coffee was great, cheesecake even better, and the people I was with were delightfully fun. We swapped stories of living in different places, I was able to meet and talk with an executive, spend time with my intern friends, laugh a whole lot, and develop connections and new friendships. When we all finally did leave at 10 o’clock, this incredible storm was striking Grand Rapids. As we walked out, a huge bolt of lightning hit, and lit up the entire city of Grand Rapids.

If I remember any sight from this summer that will be it. It was like I could see every building, every car, and every parking meter for miles around, and for some strange reason, I felt completely content in that moment. We walked to the parking ramp getting soaking wet, laughing about how tired we were going to be when we had to get up for work in a few hours, and told each other how glad we were to have the opportunities we had that day, and this summer. I felt like the night belonged in some movie scene or something.

And guess what? The strap off my sandal broke so I had to walk barefoot through the rain puddles in downtown Grand Rapids; and it felt wonderful.