Shoe Mourning

Today I am in mourning. I'm mourning the demise of my favorite pair of ankle high black suede boots! (pause to wipe tear here)

The little heel on my left boot broke, well actually it's more like it just broke into pieces, just fell apart! The heel is not salvagable, so into to the trash they went this morning. These boots were my absolute favorite pair of shoes for at least the past 3 years. I loved them! From the beginning, I felt they were just made for me!

I have a $50 Nordstroms gift card that's been burning a hole in my wallet for a while, so off to Nordstroms rack I went. My mission was to find a suitable substitute for my now gone boots.

I was at Notrdstroms rack for about 45 min hopelessly looking for a new pair of boots, and I found very few suitable pairs. First of all, even deeply discounted shoes were still way over my $50 gift card limit, and they had about every color suede boot except black.

I had no luck in finding anything for me but I did have a few laughs at some of the shoes I saw. A couple of shoes I saw are posted here:

The yellow rain boots were discounted to a "bargain" price of $89.00!

These "Hollywood Hooker" shoes were marked down to only $190.00!
What a bargain!  They weren't even designer shoes!

Affordable, simple, little black suede boots. Where are you?!

Memory Lane

I received 2 surprise deliveries today. A UPS truck pulled up in front of my house today (I never mind seeing a UPS truck in front of my house, especially if there's a cute driver inside wearing the uniform shorts!)and delivered a couple of huge white boxes at my doorstep.
The surprises were courtesy of my parents. I've been here almost 10 years now and they just now decided to send me the last of my belongings from my old bedroom, I thought I had everything already.
I opened one box and immediately found one of my grandfather's coats (he died in 1993)which instantly brought tears to my eyes, I gave it a tight hug for a moment. Under the coat was a large, furry, yellow, stuffed dog that provided my grandmother with a lot of comfort during her last few days of life (she died in 1984), that brought more tears, and I kept squeezing the dog.
Aside from the sad sentimental things, most things in the boxes brought back a lot of good memories.
It's amazing how items from the past can take you back! I found a few albums from my childhood in one of the boxes. One of my favorite albums was as a child was the soundtrack to the movie "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang", and has soon as I saw that album I just had to play it! I put the album on and cranked up the volume like I did when I was a kid, and I still remembered all the words to every song! The album played as I looked through the rest of the box.
I found pictures of me performing with my high school concert band at the world's fair along with pictures of past birthday parties, and family. I had a couple of old baseball ticket stubs from games my dad used to take me to.
The funniest thing I found was my diary from when I was in junior high through high school. The minute I saw my old diary I had to read it! I wrote entries about boys I had crushes on (OMG!), my older brother's wedding (he just recently got divorced after 26 years of marriage), my grandmother passing away, space shuttle Challenger exploding, the 49ers winning the superbowl, family vacations etc...What a flood of memories!
My trip down memory lane today brought a mixed bag of emotions but at the same time it was a wonderful trip!