misosouper, a shopping blog

The last time I bought shoes from Payless, it was 2004, I was dead-ass broke, and desperate for a pair of winter boots that I could wear to work.  After purchasing said pleathered boots and enduring a blistering walk to the subway, I proceeded to break off one heel en route.  I hobbled to Macy’s, plunked down my credit card, and vowed never to let my feet cross the Payless threshold again.

But hey, promises are made to be broken, since it’s 2008 and I’m a whore.  Because Payless is now a choice rather than a curse, I choose to purchase all 9 pairs of these unexpectedly adorable shoes (click on the photo for individual links), which ring up to the very attractive total of $216.44.  Which is, of course, exactly the price of one pair of winter work boots.

Isn’t that right, Hillary?

In another lifetime, I interviewed for what promised to be an outwardly glamorous but probably plodding and dull position at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York. I didn’t get the job, but my affection for the place remains: its location in the wisteria-draped Andrew Carnegie mansion is second only to its walled garden, which serves wine at tables buffeted from the Museum Mile fray.

And oh, the stuff! Cooper-Hewitt’s rooms brim with showpieces that would make Apartment Therapists weep. Its gift-shop approximation of the classic Arco Floor Lamp–cheap, witty, battery-powered–was like me on that interview: totally out of my league, but aspirational nonetheless.

When Mr. Misosouper and I lived in New York, our apartment in Chelsea was catty-corner to the now-defunct Kitchen/Market burrito junket. Every day for three years, I traipsed past this bag in their window, promising myself that tomorrow, I’d stop in to buy it. Not to get all James Bondian on you, but tomorrow never came, for my bag, or for Kitchen/Market and its sister, Bright Food Shop: both restaurants closed in 2007. Here’s hoping for a resurrection.

MENTAL ILLNESS ISN’T FUNNY.

Except when it’s hilarious.

(Identity commands a perverse kind of authority. I am; therefore, I mock.)