My Fashion Advisor

I have discovered the thing I hate the worst about school shopping.

It's not the hordes of people all trying to buy all the clothes in the exact same sizes my kids wear before we even get to the store. It's not the insanely large sum of money spent for clothes that kids will outgrow by Christmas. It's not the fact that my kids remind me every half-hour that I told them I'd take them shopping before school started and there's only 15 days left in which to accomplish it.

It's buying new shoes.

Seriously. Taking my kids to the shoe store completely gets on my every last nerve. And not because of my kids. They're relatively pretty well-behaved at stores. Hey, I said "relatively". It's the whole shoe shopping experience. We went shoe shopping tonight and once again I came away completely frazzled. And I don't ever get completely frazzled. Mildly annoyed, yes. Completely frazzled, no. Shoe shopping does it.

So I was wondering on the way home why exactly it stressed me out. And why I like the word "frazzled" so much. I think it's the combination of helping all three kids find shoes they like (usually all at the same time), helping them trying on the shoes (usually all at the same time), watching them show me the shoes (usually all at the same time), making sure the shoes all fit (usually at the same time), keeping track of their old shoes which are left at various places in the shoe aisles, helping short people get shoes down off the top racks, picking up all the little pieces of paper that come out of the toes of the shoes, making sure the discarded shoes get put back in the right boxes, and starting the whole process over again when they find the next pair of shoes they like. Yeah. I think that might be why.

But as always, I try to find the good in things that drive me crazy. One good thing did come out of our shoe shopping expedition. I found out that Sassy has an express interest in keeping her mom fashionable. Somewhere in all that mayhem I found time to wander over to the aisle where my size is, accompanied by Sassy, who likes to try on any shoes no matter the fit. As I stood looking at the shoes, Sassy announced to me: "Mom, you need prettier shoes." I asked her which ones I should try and she pointed out some snake skin beauties with three inch heels. I humored her and tried them on. "Oh, these are nice." I told her, "But where would I wear them?" She replied, "To Scotland, Mom. You could show them to all of your friends!"

Well, there you go. And so, my Scottish friends, if I ever make it back over to Scotland you'd better be checking out my shoes. Because Sassy will make sure they're pretty.