How many more days....

..... till Christmas? Twenty-four.

The stores are just starting to get a little crowded here...... I don't know how busy it was in town on the day after Thanksgiving with the crazy Black Friday shopping, but all the local stores have mailed out coupons and today when I went looking for shoes, it seemed as if every woman in the store was holding sale-coupons for their purchases. I was also.... I used them for shoes that were already 50% off, then with my coupon, the shoes were an additional 20% off. My kind of shopping.

It's hard to find shoes in this town...... hard to find pretty shoes, that is. I can buy flats by the dozen, all sorts of plain-looking industrial-strength shoes that seem to be all the rage here. The only store in this town that carries pretty shoes is Palais Royal. But you have to get there as soon as they stock the shelves..... a day or two later and the range of sizes is very limited.

I've had a bronze pair of heels that I've worn with my dress jeans for about three years now. They should have been tossed out at least six months ago, but I couldn't find anything similar for my good jeans. So I just kept them shined up and they were fine. Plenty of other shoes in my closet, but not a good walking pair of heels for my dress jeans. I wanted a heel, not a flat.... and there were no metallic colors to be seen here. Hasn't anyone in this town heard of bronze? Not gold or silver so it looks like you're wearing slippers, but honest-to-goodness bronze, which looks great with a pair of dark dress jeans. (Isn't anyone else here watching "What Not To Wear!")

I guess the closest place to here that has real shoe-stores is College Station.... and I will have to look up there the next time we go. Until then... I did find a pair of brown heels with a crocodile pattern in the leather...... the heel was just fine, they're super-comfortable... and I would have bought two identical pairs if there had been another pair in my size.

I have a greeting card from years and years ago that I've kept...... on the front of it, there are dozens of pretty shoes... on the inside of the card it says "All I want out of life are comfortable shoes that are pretty... and I'd be perfectly content." For today, I am perfectly content..... and I have tossed out those old bronze heels.


I've been re-reading a lot of Christmas books since the beginning of November.... I try to re-read as many of my Christmas books as I can between the first of November and the last day of December. At the thrift shop yesterday, I found a 1954 copy of "The Little Fir Tree." I had that book when I was a kid.... and this copy is in pristine condition, but without the dust-jacket. The vintage artwork on the book's pages is very old-fashioned and sweet, and I read the book from cover to cover last night (didn't take long-- it's a children's book) and then I paged through it twice more just to look at the illustrations. I can't remember how many times I read and re-read that book when I was a kid..... such a simple little story, all about a young boy's Christmas and a lonely little tree out in the forest.

Jingle bells....... just 24 more days till Christmas.