women, shoes and....does it really matter?

The wife is like most women, in that she likes shoes...shoes for different purposes, shoes that match outfits, shoes that match handbags, shoes for breakfast, lunch and dinner, shoes for shoe shopping, shoes for......you get my point.

She also works around doctors, and apparently doctors prefer Cole Haan shoes, which are nice...and pricey. For whatever reason, she thinks this is a good thing, and that I should aspire to wear them. Twice in my life, she has bought these shoes for me. Once about 10 years ago, and once as a Christmas present a little over a year ago. When she did it 10 years ago, the soles wore out in about a year, and she said..."These are the kind of shoes you get resoled. You don't just throw them away and get new ones. They're too expensive for that." I did that about three times and finally said, "this is a pain in the ass", and bought some less expensive shoes that lasted longer.

Now, I've had these shoes for a bit over a year and...I have a hole in the sole. I really don't need to wear $300 shoes. Granted, she got them on sale, which combined two words in the wife's lexicon that, put together, are as dangerous as crack...shoes and sale. It's the perfect storm of female retail therapy. It also explains why they showed up for Christmas, but still...Give me something that costs half that (or less), and lasts twice as long so I don't have to continually get them repaired or replaced, and I'll be happy. Shoe maintenance is an activity I want to spend as little time in as possible. Just finding someone who repairs shoes these days takes more time than I want to spend dealing with shoes. Cobblers aren't exactly on every street corner. All I do in them is walk around at work, and nobody there (including me) gives a rats ass about what shoes I'm wearing, as long as they meet the dress code.