Shoe stories.

I would give just about anything if this town had a really good shoe store.  The Palais Royal store does have shoes, but the choices there are limited. You can pick from a small grouping of four-inch stilettos (who is buying those way out here?)... or you can choose from a selection of flats (most of which look orthopedic), or sneakers (an endless variety there), or they have sandals (the kind with itty-bitty straps that will put out a welcome sign to an army of fire ants and scorpions).

The town of College Station has lots of shoe stores, but that's a 40-minute drive from here, which is a long way to go when you just want to browse among the shoe boxes and see what catches your eye and calls out to you that your closet has room for another pair. Or two.

I've been buying shoes on the Internet lately. Saves a lot of time, and as long as you find a good brand of shoe, there's no doubting what size to order. These days, my favorite shoes are Pikolinos..... made in Spain with real leather, hand-stitched and beautifully hand-made, and so comfortable that I could probably walk from here to College Station without breaking stride. First time, every time.... when you put your feet into Pikolinos, that gorgeous leather wraps itself around your feet, literally hugs your feet, and total foot-comfort is yours.  I first discovered Pikolinos when we went to Germany in 2008.... my city-girl shoes just didn't cut it on the cobblestones over there, and I quickly realized that I'd either have to buy a good pair of European walking shoes or fly back to the US with two sprained ankles and a couple of broken toes.

We don't have many cobblestone streets in this town, but we don't exactly have city-smooth concrete sidewalks to welcome us at every place we go. Hence, most of my city-girl high heels haven't come out of my shoe closet in quite some time. They'll make an appearance if we're having a dinner or a party right here at home, where at least I know that I won't have to jump over cow-patties or tip-toe through loose gravel.

The shoes at Palais Royal are okay, but just not quite as comfortable as I want a pair of flats to be. (And out here, wearing flats has become part of the country uniform, along with jeans in the cooler weather and Capris in the warm weather.)  We do have a PayLess shoe store in town, but I don't much like that store. PayLess. You do pay less there, but as that old saying goes, you get what you pay for. (What marketing genius came up with the name for that store in the first place?)

So the Pikolinos search on the Internet began, and as each pair was delivered, I had to go into my shoe closet and pick out a pair of not-very-often-worn shoes to discard.  My basic rule has always been "One thing in, one thing out."  Doing that cuts down on clutter, eliminates keeping things that I probably won't use or wear again, and the 'discards' either go into my space at the antique shop or they go into a donation box.

Looking through my collection of shoes and picking a pair to either sell or give away just wasn't that easy. The vintage-looking shoes would easily sell in the antique shop, but was I truly ready to part with the red silk heels with the rhinestone hearts on the side?  And what about those see-through raw silk black stilettos with the silver threads.... I had worn those for countless Halloween parties over the years... was it time to just put those into a donation box?

One thing in, one thing out.  Just who made that rule anyway?  (I did.)

Maybe I can just toss a box of toothpicks into the donation bag and call it a day.  There's 250 individual toothpicks in a full box..... that should cover my 'rule' for a good long while.