Thanks, everyone. Joy, I appreciate the heads-up a lot and will try! Rita, I should experiment with your idea. I do think my calves are more close to "standard" in terms of height...this is because I manage tall boots usually, including the Doc 20-eyelets that Angie had told me a petite had never been able to fit (up till me!) From the knee down may even be longer than my upper leg, or at least the same. On thinking about it though, when the online specs mention "shaft opening" or whatever the term as being let's say 15.5", they are talking about the top, which is probably the widest part of the whole boot shaft. And that's not the widest part of my leg, which is about a third of a way down. I also noticed that new member ThePearShape, who talked about the J. Crew boots, has calves that look to me widest toward the top by the knee, so things like these would mean a huge discrepancy in fitting, even with the blanket label "wide calves."
I'm not that disappointed anymore but I do need a nice boot soon or otherwise it's the LL Bean duck boots, which do the job but are decidedly unfab. And here I was trying to step up my game.
