Jimmy Choo Shoes and I Don't Care

Jimmy Choo Shoes and I Don't Care

Unlike a lot of women, I hate to shop for clothing. Online retailers get much of my business. I can order pretty much anything I need from the Internet with a quick Google search. But I have a daughter. She loves to shop. Her estrogen levels peak with the words “sale” and “new arrivals.”

Unfortunately, the downside of online shopping is shipping. It takes at least two days for delivery. My husband and I were invited to a party where the suggested attire was “festive wear.” The closest thing I had to that was a lime green and yellow muumuu my aunt bought in Hawaii a hundred years ago. I needed party pants, and I needed them fast. So off I went to shop at local stores with my daughter and her fashion guru friend.

“Miss Kristen, try this on.” It was a request I heard repeatedly from Katie’s friend, a young man with impeccable taste who knows Jimmy Choo shoes and is visiting the highbrow fashion district of Highland Park Village in Dallas for his summer vacation.

He dangled a dress for my inspection, noting the price tag at the armpit.

“It’s a 14 Wide,” he announced. “I think it will fit you.”

“Look, hon, the ‘W’ is for ‘Women,’ not ‘Wide,’” I corrected him scornfully.

“Well, it means ‘Wide’ in shoes. Speaking of shoes, you need some new ones.”

We spent hours like that, carting outfits to the dressing room, Katie and Mr. Picky waiting to see the results.

“Do you have it on? What does it look like? Let us see!” they implored.

“I’m going to need scissors to get out of this,” I growled, immobilized in a tight-fitting nightmare.

“But how does it LOOK?” they cried. And I cried, too. I felt far from festive trapped in a twisted tunic of glitter and taffeta.

By some miracle, we found a pair of black flowing pants and a spaghetti-strap top that didn’t look too bad.

“The sash bothers me,” I worried aloud. “I’m not certain it works with the top.”

“Are you kidding?” Pro-Sash Man exclaimed. “It’s works! And look. You can take it off easily. It’s only tacked on, not sewn down the full longness of it.”

“I think you mean ‘length.’”

“Longness, length, whatever. Use your seam ripper and take it off. We need to look at shoes!”

My feet ached, my back throbbed, and my credit card fell limp. I had something to wear to the party, and I wanted to go home.

“I already have some shoes. Let’s go.”

A look of horror crossed his face. My daughter retreated in disgust.

“Miss Kristen, you aren’t planning to wear those same black pumps, the ones you wore to the Christmas party, are you?” The puppy dog eyes filled with terror got to me.

“Oh, all right,” I conceded. “We’ll go to one shoe store, but that’s it. These dogs are barking, and they have no desire to squeeze into four-inch heels.”

Off we went, the two of them chattering about stilettos and snakeskin, while I braced myself for more retail exposure.

“Try these on, Miss Kristen.” Three pairs of shoes greeted me with menacing smiles, the slender heels and pointed forms taunting my pinky toes with sadistic suggestions.

“You have got to be kidding me,” I said. “Those would effectively hobble me. This event is at a horse farm, for heaven’s sake. I have to actually move around, preferably on my feet. Haven’t they got anything lower that doesn’t require blood-letting?”

Much to the chagrin of daughter and friend, I found nothing I liked better than the shoes I had at home. We left empty-handed while the teenaged shop-a-holics lectured me on the essential nature of women to desire lots of shoes, purses and jewelry.

I tried to enlighten their young minds with a lesson in “need” versus “want,” a soliloquy on the beauty of minimalism and the basic concept of home economics. But, they tuned me out with iPods and cell phones, suddenly very tired and eager to go home.

How to Say NO to Canine Cuties

How to Say NO to Canine Cuties

“What kind of dog do you have?” someone will ask. This usually follows my own inquiry into what kind of dog is at the end of a leash or pictured within a frame on a desk. When you have a pack of five dogs like our family, the explanation gets a little complicated.

We used to be a one-dog family. Her name was Winnie. She was absolutely the best dog who ever lived. She came from questionable lineage. Her mother was a full-blooded yellow Labrador, but her dad was a hot-blooded stranger in the night. Shortly before she died, our dog Spottie the orphan appeared on the scene.

Tailless with black-and-white spots, Spottie resembles a cross between a Dalmatian and an Australian cattle dog. For all we know, he could be from a champion bloodline of some rare canine breed. Likely, he’s all mutt. My brother David says he’s a sweet dog, but ugly as a mud fence. We think he’s beautiful. But then, come to think of it, I’m not sure that we have ever seen an ugly dog. And therein lies the story of our four poodles.

If you have never seen a poodle puppy with its voluminous coat of shiny curls, tiny ears and weepy brown eyes, then you have never witnessed the epitome of cute. It is the kind of cute that induces supposedly reasonable adults with a perfectly wonderful dog to lose all good sense and establish a poodle kingdom. It is also the kind of cute that fades in its intensity at 2 a.m. when the insufferable little whiners insist on human contact 24/7.

Honey and Scooter comprised our first pair. We bought Beignet because of his stellar pedigree. We intended to establish a profitable poodle breeding empire built on the cute factor. Only, we found out soon enough that cute is a relative term.

Honey and Scooter gave rise to three pups that survived the birthing process. Beignet simply stood around and looked confused. In spite of round-the-clock feedings and as much maternal nurturing as I could muster every two hours, only the runt, Daisy, made it. Somewhere between the completely disinterested mama dog and my sudden incarnation as a wet nurse, the cute factor disintegrated faster than you can say “pipe dream.” We had all four neutered and spayed and vowed never to contribute to the poodle gene pool again.

My brother-in-law visited over the weekend. He graciously tolerated the poodles, and they returned the favor by announcing his every move.

“Good morning, Mike,” we’d say.
“Yap, yap, yap, yap, yap!” the poodles answered.
“Let’s go grab a bite to eat, Mike.”
“Yap, yap, yap, yap, yap!”

It didn’t matter that they sat on his lap and he scratched their heads and called them by name. If Mike entered the room, he was re-introduced with a canine chorus every single time.

“He’s going outside!” (yap, yap, yap, yap, yap)
“He’s coming inside!” (yap, yap, yap, yap, yap)
“He’s, he’s, he’s, just sitting there!” (yap, yap, yap, yap, yap)

Sometimes we try to remember what it was that possessed us to lay claim to four poodles. All I can figure is that temporary madness can be blamed for a lot of things. I was looking through some old photos and I remembered all too clearly. Hordes of baby poodle pictures featured the face of a little angel and the hypnotic stare of a miniature master manipulator.

My daughter and I stopped by the pet shop to buy some supplies. Like complete idiots, we visited the puppy cages. There they were, two Pugs intent on stealing our hearts, a Basset Hound imploring us with woeful brown eyes, a trio of Schnauzers schmoozing through the glass and a couple of identical Schipperkes that I would swear mouthed the words “take us home.”

We never left a place faster in our lives.