The sun was shining high and I walked barefoot down the road

I finished a ridiculous amount of homework in the last few days, so I thought I'd be all clever and do something fun tonight...clean my closet! Little did I know what fun it would end up being.

I started by pulling out all the random things that have been layered along the floor of the closet. I found quite an assortment of items - most curiously, a plastic bag which was tied shut. Quite odoriferous, I was terrified of this bag. When I opened it up, I realized why. When I went home for our impromptu flood break, I kindly packed my Red-River-coated clothes. They were absolutely repulsive, and I am forever indebted to my parents for washing them for me! However, I forgot to clean something...MY SHOES!

In this plastic bag were my running shoes. Well, they will certainly never be running shoes again. These things looked awful - they were coated in about a bajillion layers of sand, clay, mud, and grossness. I did not know where to start.

I decided to take them down to the wash bin in the laundry room and tackle the big guys. I started by lathering them with laundry detergent and taking my scrubby to them. When I filled my left shoe with water, I promptly turned it upside down to dump it out. The water that came out was black. This is after washing them, mind you. I decided this would call for desperate measures.

I'd heard a rumor about washing shoes in the washing machine. I turned to the internet and found lots of handy articles about the best way to go about this. However, I did not have the nerves to actually put my shoes in the school machines (they already make a thumping noise and sound like they're murdering your clothes...sometimes they even flood! and we don't need any more flooding). Right now, my shoes are sitting outside just looking disgusting. I'm sorry for anyone who may walk by.

Hopefully the cleaning fairy will appear and in the morning, I'll look outside to see sparkly clean shoes. I am dying to go running again!