Let’s have a little chat about shoes.

I’m not known for being practical about shoes. Not at all.

I wear ballet flats and flip flops, both notorious for their utter lack of support and protective abilities.

In fact, I’d be barefoot most of the time, if someone was willing to walk ahead of me with, say, a yoga mat and a Costco-size vat of Purel.

But, in a rare moment of practicality a couple years back, I got Uggs.

Yep. Uggs.

Go ahead, laugh. My dad bought them for me (HE WANTED ME TO BE WARM) so he will likely cry (OR PUNCH YOU), but mock all you want… my toes go to sleep each night (or if I sit down too long in a weird position) knowing I’ve made them a priority.

It’s not like I’m doing this, people:

I’ve never worn them with:

shorts
a skirt
sweatpants
a miniskirt (who are we kidding?)
a sundress
short shorts (again, IT’S NOT LIKE I HATE YOUR EYES)
a bikini (now you’re just being foolish)
a panda costume (though I would… I would)

Nope, I’m all Kate Winslet in MY Uggs (sans watermark):

(I’m well aware I don’t look anything like Kate Winslet but MAYBE IN MY UGGS?!?)

Check it: warm coat. Warm pants. A scarf. Casual family erranding. She’s not trying to look stylish, but I don’t think she looks bad, either. SHE’S KATE FRIGGIN’ WINSLET, PEOPLE.

And she wears Uggs.

The most important consideration here is that Uggs keep my feet happy in the cool temperatures of New England (when we actually have them, and no, I don’t wear them unless we do)… AND they make me look like a cozy Eskimo (Inuit!) girl. Fun!

From where I stand, the primary argument against Uggs rests on the proposition that they’re not “stylish.”

“Ugg — that’s short for ugly!” WOW, NO ONE ELSE HAS EVER MADE THAT JOKE BEFORE. GOOD ONE.

And I’m not saying they look fantastic. But I think function, in this case, trumps form.

Besides, Judgy McJudgington, I’d like to point out that y’all wear some pretty goofy stuff yourselves in your quest for cutting-edge style.

Like gladiator heels, my MOST HATED SHOE.

To me, it just looks like you’ve got some sort of physiotherapy issue or ankle ailment.

Can you tell which are which?

I’m just saying.

There are zillions of less functional, more ugly pairs of shoes than the ones I use to keep my toes from freezing off, and yet the worst of these are trumpeted by all manner of style-setters and fashionistas… as they tumble from their lofty torture heels into city gutters, and fill their handbag du jour with gum wrappers, rain water, and vermin.

Blech!

So I don’t worry too much about it.

Anyway, if I had to choose:

That guy wears Uggs.

This guy? Doesn’t:

I REST MY CASE.

I haven’t written a love list since May.

MAY.

It’s not like I ceased to love things that day — I mean, the whole wedding thing would have been a bit of a wash if that were the case.

Nope, I still love lots of things… just as many as I did when I used to write these lists every Friday. And since this week has achieved new heights of awkward lameness (HAPPY 2012) I figured now was a good time to remember the GREAT in my life.

So here they are!

(As always, I welcome your lists in the comments or wherever you feel like putting them. Unless it’s in my eye. Don’t put your list in my eye.)

THINGS I LOVE

My family
Salty vinegar-y capers added to a good Marinara sauce
Lotions that smell like coconut
Sleeping in
New babies (Eli, Jackson, and Campbell, I’m looking at YOU!)
That I am excellently loud at finger-snapping
E’s long, winding, exhaustive recaps of playing video games
Salt spray for my weird hair
Pine-scented candles
Making people laugh
Making people think
Making people give me weird faces when I repeatedly attempt to buy my T pass with my Sephora Beauty Insider card
The multiple magical uses of bobby pins
Realizing how blessed we both are to be employed and in a warm home in a place we like every. single. night.
Pedicures (charcoal shimmer or shiny red, this time of year)
Our nightly cup of chamomile tea
Gaviscon. Truly.
Fresh-baked biscuits
Timex watches — the more old-school the better
FaceTime-ing with my parents
Driving with Gradon (well, I am passenging, but still…)
Loving Christmas, and not being even a bit cynical about it
Peanut butter M&Ms
My fluffy white down coat which is en route to me but taking an AGE because I ordered it during the holidays and didn’t expedite the shipping but I do like anticipation so that’s fun
Brussels sprouts
Freshly bought magazines
Not always looking 37
Seeing my friends *happy*
When people give great hugs — no “pat pat pat” or fragility
Ella Fitzgerald, always
Mr. Matthew Knell of Long Island City, NY, owner of many caps
Amazing and terrifying aerobics videos on YouTube
That my new husband and I did not kill one another during our Big Budget Chat
My reorganized iTunes (I created my own genre labels. In other news, I have insomnia)
The wee pug that hangs out in one of our neighborhood stores
My washing machine. And what’s more… my dryer
Addictive television: The Wire, Dexter, Friday Night Lights, Downton Abbey, Top Gear, playoff anything…
Olives!
The possibility of bangs, as yet unrealized
The Cloud
You.

I have no problem deleting files, texts, emails, blog posts, tweets… anything.

I am a confident, swift, positively gleeful deleter if I don’t feel the need to keep something around, either because it has served its purpose… or failed to serve one in the first place.

Sometimes I delete things too soon, which requires reproducing them — but they’re usually better the second time, even if I drive myself insane in the process. If I have to request them from someone else, however, I end up feeling like the kind of heedless, irritating person who throws out a birthday card with cash still tucked inside.

Sometimes I delete out of some combination of thoughtfulness and cowardice because of the reaction something fosters in others (or might foster in others — I don’t hedge my bets), or I delete because I am confident I shouldn’t have sent whatever into the ether in the first place.

I’d like to say my tendency to delete has kept me out of hot water… but while you can delete things, you can’t actually un-say them.

I’d like to believe all this deleting uncomplicates my life… but I just fill in more where I delete, and complication returns via a sort of queasy, inevitable osmosis.

But I think I delete because I like tiny control.

I like to wrest order from disorder in temporary, yet giddy ways… though I don’t recognize them as that at the time.

It isn’t lost on me that when things seem truly crucial — work email, client email, pictures of family and friends on my phone/camera/laptop, texts full of loving, ridiculously gushy words from my gift of a new husband — my delete-happy ways fall by the proverbial wayside.

And I can’t ignore the reality that I most often delete to alleviate discomfort or self-disdain: when I say something badly or offend someone without thinking (or with thought, but just stupid ones); when I blather on and don’t recognize it in time; when I recognize the need for an edit after the fact; when I am temporarily uncomfortable in my own skin and figure that tapping out words or images or ideas will give me a bit more room to breathe.

It’s chicken.

I mean, sometimes it’s organized and smart and together. But it can definitely be chicken.

I don’t like to be an ass, as much as I may show tremendous facility for it. So I try and clean things up the same sort of vigor with which I’d attack a client paragraph with my virtual red pen: let’s get life down to the best of what it should have been, and hope that I don’t yammer on quite so much the next time.

But I will.

And something tells me I need to live with that discomfort a little more than I’m willing to now, even if I want to run up a tree like a crazy squirrel, dodging the feral cat of my own lameness.

(See? That metaphor was terrible, and I didn’t even get rid of it.)

Because it radiates out into the rest of my life, this delete-happy way of approaching the world. Uncomfortable conversations don’t get… conversed. Stupid mistakes don’t get learned from because I don’t choose to truly walk through how I got there. I don’t like revisiting failures, even though I am a past-master at self-deprecation. But I only think about it if I can make fun of it.

And ask, if you dare, my domestic co-pilot how much I love staring into a Google spreadsheet and calculating costs down to the dollar to set our family budget. You’ll learn that I don’t really want to know just how much I overspent on that really lovely block of Parmesan for really lovely Carbonara and also? I would like to not know AND buy it again.

I delete what I should learn from. I delete what is worth looking in the eye. I even delete what I could accept about myself, instead of feeling like I dodged a bullet by not having to look in the mirror. I delete before I figure out it’s not so bad, or that there might be a solution… other than obliteration.

Does it really go away, anyway?

I’ve become this for what seemed like the right reasons, but perhaps it’s time to be a little less of it for the right reasons.

Deleting my deleting.

And dealing.