Mama Needs a New Pair of Shoes

Don't you love when your state offers a tax holiday on certain goods? My state held the annual back-to-school tax-free weekend recently. Thankfully, my fashionista teenager was out of the country and was none the wiser that while the cat's the mice will buy.

About thirty miles from my house is an outlet mall; so off we went in the waning hours of the tax holiday weekend. We were on a mission: blue jeans for my youngest daughter who grows like a weed but whose slim frame makes it nearly impossible to buy ready-to-wear that's not cut for the ever expanding waist lines of America's children.

Horror of horrors awaited the 11-year-old. I dragged her into a store for me! Bad Mommy! Buying something for the child then expecting the child to reciprocate and wait patiently for Mommy!

Come close and I'll tell you a secret. I'm a shoe snob. I will only buy really well made shoes. Ladies, check your shoes. If you see a vertical seam on the instep side of the shoe, the manufacturer cut corners by using two pieces of leather to make the shoes. If there's no seam, they used one piece, which takes up more leather, and is therefore more expensive to make.

My shoe snobbery leads to a closet full of mostly designer shoes. But realizing that I could be the next Imelda, I only buy my shoes at outlets or places like DSW.

Having decided on a pair of the baddest, blackest, pointy-toe patent heels to cross my path in years, I resigned myself to paying tax on them since, even at their deeply discounted price, they were over the $100 per item limit for tax free. (I also had a replacement pair of black sandals under my arm.) As the cashier rung up the total, she said if I bought two regularly priced items I could get another thirty percent off the shoes. Any two items. Even two dark chocolate bars of chocolate.

My haul of two pairs of designer shoes, regularly priced at $379.99 and $249.99, plus two bars of Godiva dark chocolate, came to a whopping total of $132. No taxes paid!