I will not wear heels with bootcut jeans at work on a Monday, dammit, and you can’t make me. I’ll wear my cowboy boots instead.

Sure would be awfully nice if I could wear flats, though. Do I need to buy short length to do that?

In fact, I am not entirely sure when the next occasion calling for formalwear will even be, but let’s disregard those little details:

This is it for 2009, people. No more shopping until 2010.

I can always wear it to the opera in April, I suppose.

My favorite pair of shoes for the past two years have been a pair of magenta patent AK Anne Klein flats that I bought at Piperlime for $80. This was pretty expensive for me at the time – I was just getting into fashion and style stuff – but it paid off in this case. I wore them at least once a week, sometimes twice, in summer and winter, and for the past six months I’ve been wearing them despite the fact that I’ve actually worn a hole in one of the heels. But at some point you have to let go, and so for several months I’ve been looking for a replacement. Criteria: Flat, shiny, in a fun color that I can wear with a lot of things, and fairly inexpensive. I’m poor, people. I’ve worked only four days a week most of the year and was on furlough for August. Shoes over $100 weren’t happening.

It took forever to find anything; AK Anne Klein has an almost identical shoe this year, but it’s in yellow, which isn’t a favorite color of mine. There was a dearth of deep pinks and greens. A lot of purple, which I love, but nothing quite right – either was too lavender (I own some lavender peep toes already) or not patent, or absolutely perfect and $180 or something. I was beginning to wonder if I was going to need to tape over the hole or something.

Okay, not really. But still, it was dire.

Then someone in the comments of this post recommended Marais USA, and I went to check them out. They don’t have much in the way of selection – they’re a small, NYC-based firm that’s only been around for a few years – but what they do have is really cute, and I immediately began lusting after all three of their flats, especially in the Suit color. When the Mulberry Mary Jane went on sale at Urban Outfitters, I immediately bought them.

The shoes.

They were cute, they fit, and when they arrived, I wore them the very next day with tights and a black dress, and they looked good! With one minor issue: I hadn’t been walking for five minutes before the glue holding the heels on started coming undone.

What I should have done, of course, was ship them back to UO for a refund, but dammit, I really liked these shoes, it had taken me months to find a pair that I actually would wear, and I needed new flats and didn’t want to spend another three months looking again. So I Googled a cobbler, found one literally around the corner from my office, and took them in with me the next day, where we had the following conversation:

Me: The heels are coming off these shoes.

Cobbler: They just started doing this? You should take them back.

Me: Um…*mumbles something semi-coherent about final sales or lost receipts*

Cobbler: …Okay. So you want me to just glue them back on, or put on new ones?

Me: New ones, I think.

And fifteen dollars and two days later, I had them back, with new heels nailed on. I’ve worn them three times since; I might even wear them again today when I go out to buy my contact lenses, so in my mind the extra money was worth it. Not sure I’ll buy from Marais again, of course; the shoes are cute (especially the two-tone flats coming out this month) and I like supporting local start-ups, but…I don’t want to spend an extra $15 every time. My cobbler already thinks I’m nuts.

I guess we’ll see.

I know, it seems like a little thing, but for me there’s nothing more uncomfortable than the Slowly Creeping Downward Feeling of tights that won’t go all the way up. I actually think it goes back to a solitary incident in junior high school choir when a pair of pantyhose slipped down to the point where someone pointed it out and said they were trying to find a replacement.

I, of course, was completely humiliated and immediately ran for the bathroom to try to yank them back up again. But I digress.

This happened this morning with a brand new pair of dark brown tights. At first, I thought it would be bearable, but slowly – as I stood in the overcrowded NJ lightrail, and then the overcrowded PATH train, and then the overcrowded number 4 subway – I began to feel the inevitable pull of gravity and the first thing I did when I got to work was run for the bathroom to strip them off.

The second thing I did was logon to We Love Colors and order four pair of thigh highs. (I got black, brown, charcoal, and rubine, which is kind of a dark purple color.)

I’ve never actually worn thigh highs before; they aren’t readily available at, like, Target, which is where I generally buy most of my socks and tights (although the creeping pair this morning was $10 and from Sock Dreams, so they don’t even have the excuse of being cheap), but I have been interested in them for a while for just this reason.  I held off because I was using the stomach-minimizing power of full tights, but if they aren’t staying up, it’s not like they’re working for that, are they?

So stockings it is. Fingers crossed that they don’t end up being a separate but equal pain in my ass.

Let’s all pause for a moment to mourn the Vaguely Gothic Fairy costume that I was going to march down Sixth Avenue in. On the plus side, the parade’s at 8:30 pm on the last day of October, and I probably would have frozen my ass off.

The linchpin of any fairy costume: Purple and Silver Fairy Wings, $20 at Ricky's

So awesome. On the other hand, traveling on three trains with them was pretty much guaranteed to be a pain in the ass.

A skirt long enough to prevent flashing: Black Tulle Tutu, $25 at Sisters of the Moon Design

I may eventually get this anyway, just because it’s that kickass.

Black Turtleneck (It’s October in New York, people), fishnet stockings, Doc Martens, and perhaps most importantly:

Purple Eyeliner: Rockstar, $17 at Urban Decay

On the other hand, I’m not sure I could bring myself to spend that much money on eye makeup anyway.

I spend way too much time getting food out of the little serrated teeth. Way too much time.

Naturally, I chose the BIG one.

Am gamely resisting the urge to brandish it menacingly at irritating consultants.

In between the 59th St station and Crate & Barrel is Bloomingdales and two blocks of retail stores, all choked with after work Christmas crowds.  I thought I was going to kill people, and by the time I got home there was no way in hell I was going to make the torte that night; I got up and made it in the morning instead, and I decided I was going to do as much of my Christmas shopping online as possible this year.  Since I spent Thanksgiving alone in my apartment (cue teeny tiny violin music), I started mine yesterday while sitting on my bed eating the aforementioned torte.  And it feels awesome to not only have to fight through the crowds but to have it shipped straight to my parents’ house so I don’t have to worry about it.

I seriously have a thing for cute sheets and blankets and beds.  Quite possibly because I love to sleep (I do, really), but it surpasses any love I have for technicolor flat shoes or handbags or chunky jewelry.  It doesn’t surpass my love for romance novels, however, as the piles on my floor and nearly full bookcases will attest.

Anyway, in the interest of sharing, here is what will be on my bed when JC Penney gets around to sending it to me.  It’s teal, which is my favorite color – probably part of the reason I gave in.

At least it was on sale?

(We got soaked again while running back to the car after getting dinner at Pizzeria Uno, but that’s not the point of this post.)

Our first stop, pre-rain, was Best Buy, where Mura got When Harry Met Sally and Cowboy Bebop, and I got…Invader Zim. The entire series, for $25, people. At least two of my college friends would be jealous. Only one is reading this blog, though.

I also got a totally awesome t-shirt at Books Kinokuniya, which is, hands down, one of the most dangerous stores in New York.