If there's anything Di's battle with cancer can teach us (and YAY for her great new numbers and rapid, giggly recovery after her second chemo!) But if there's anything we all can learn, it's to slow down and not miss out on what's important in life. Priorities are different for everyone and one of the things I'm learning with age is never to judge anyone else's priorities. I was born with a love for shoes and handbags. In fact, my first memory of money is actually of the little leather purse my grandfather brought me from Arizona. Today as we passed the Geox shoe store, I longed for those days when I could put my kids into cute shoes. Now I get no say in the matter. But as we passed on the way to spend my son's Lego gift certificate for his birthday, he asked me. "Mom, how come we always had great shoes? I remember that."

"Because I always had sturdy, brown ugly shoes." As Scarlett stood on that hill with the turnip in her hand and wailed, I did much the same thing with my first paycheck at 13 years old. "As God is my witness, I will NEVER have ugly shoes again!"

I can't tell you the kind of motivation several pairs of boots have provided me with the urge to get up and go to work. In College, I had a $200 leather messenger bag by Kenneth Cole. My rent was $210 a month then. I lived with three other roommates. Just so that I COULD not be without cute shoes.

Here's what irritates me. When people say that buying those kind of things are a self-esteem issue. Or that if I felt better about myself, I wouldn't need cute shoes. Listen, I knew at FOUR that something was wrong with my shoes. And I was a spoiled, only granddaughter on both sides. (Though they thought it was spoiling me to give me brown sturdy shoes from Macy's -- go figure.) Listen if Buster Brown is hiding in it? I do NOT want it, all right?

I would wear cute shoes if I were the ONLY one on the planet. I do not do it for YOU. I do it because like a piece of artwork, it makes me happy to see cute feet. Same reason I like pedicures. I live within my means. I am a Christian. So I'm not Mother Theresa. Please, one visit to the streets of Calcutta and I would be vomiting the last five years. I'd like to be sweet-natured and just constantly doing good works. But that's not how God built me.

He built me to take the kids no one else can handle at church. He built me to put crabby babies to sleep, to be the playdate house, to write. He did NOT build me to wear ugly shoes. And if that's your job, more power to you. Just don't judge mine. All I'm saying.