These Shoes are Meant for Walking

Yup. Those are shoes that my parents got bronzed when I was just a walking, talking chip off the old dysfunctional block. After I inherited them from my sister--the one affected by Only Child Syndrome--I placed them on my dining room hutch near the pewter candlesticks. Now they collect dust together. Naturally my sister kept her pair of booties and I assume they're catching dust somewhere in her house. I imagine she'll pass them down to one of her lucky kids, who will in turn put them on a shelf to collect dust. The pair are impossible to throw away--there must be some curse that befalls ungrateful children unwilling to properly revere family heirlooms--but no one quite knows what to do with them. Stick them in the bathroom? Maybe. They might pass for Odd Objets d"Art to note while on the Royal Throne. That would be one thought. Or how about pawning them off on my husband. He could decorate his office with them. They would join the approximately 2,000 other tchochkes (Google defines this term as decorative rather than functional objects) presently cluttering his office space. The husband has a problem with collecting (or hoarding) stuff, and it borders on the pathological, but he's in denial about it. So am I because I don't need another "crazy" in the family. One is already too much. I have an additional problem with using my pair of metallic beauties--no, no, I don't mean my boobs; I'm still talking about the shoes. I have no one to hand them down to. That's right; I'm childless or childfree depending on which side of the bed you got up on today. So I've been brainstorming what I could do with my shoes besides the obvious one of handing them over to some antique/consignment dealer. One idea is to hold a garage sale and try to peddle them as paper weights or planters. Or, I could make one of the dogs wear them for a millisecond and put the photo or video up on youtube or instagram or some such social media venue. Maybe that would get me my 15 seconds of fame. I don't know if that qualifies. Another possibility is to misrepresent them entirely, as in lie and deceive. I could get some bogus authentication documents off the Internet (you know the kind that tell people you graduated such and such prestigious university or that your pet tarantula is a service critter). I could then tell people they are Trump's baby shoes when he was just a wittle wee tycoon and willing to settle for bronze instead of gold plate. How much do you think they would fetch on E-Bay? I'd be willing to donate whatever I got to the National Fund for Getting Rid of Elected Idiots. So what's your idea? I'm open to suggestions.

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Should Old Acquaintances Be Forgot?

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Dogs and Cats: Tales that Strike Terror in the Hearts of Owners

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Are You Successful? Take this Test and Find Out

I grew up never believing I was as good or as #successful as the next guy, and it's a common problem or so my shrinks seem to think (some of these good doctors have earned six-figure salaries on just this one patient complaint alone). But after all these years of #consigning myself to the role of second-class citizen, I've figured out that success is just one of those meaningless words--like #beautiful or wonderful--that can be tweaked any way you want it. In other words, success is what you make of it. Take our #President for example. Here's a man who practically reeks of success by anyone's definition. He's built hotels, put together company #buyouts/mergers, fathered children, married, and earned the title of Most Important Person in the Land (perhaps the Globe). On the other hand, we could, if we wanted, tweak the word success into its opposite: failure. Trump has been divorced several times, declared #bankruptcy, been sued by countless litiga

The Dysfunctional Family

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