If love is blind, why is lingerie so popular?
Comment overheard under the hair dryer at the Dazzling Do’s

I love the line above from Karin Gillespie’s latest novel, Dollar Daze: The Bottom Dollar Girls in Love. Karin brings back the Bottom Dollar Girls with a sugar-spun vengeance as they broach the age-old question – Is it ever too late to find one’s heart’s desire?

Mavis Loomis, Birdie Purdy, and Gracie Tobias, widows in their mid-sixties are certain their dating days are over until they observe their friend eighty-something Attalee Gaines in tempestuous relationship with Dooley Prichard, a trifocal-wearing charmer. If it’s not too late for Attalee, how can it be too late for them?

Unfortunately the eligible men in Cayboo Creek are as picked over as a garage sale at noontime. Things look discouraging until an old high school heartthrob comes to town and Birdie and Mavis compete for his attentions. In the meantime socialite Gracie Tobias finds unlikely love in the arms of a rugged duct doctor. Can she overlook the vast differences in their backgrounds?

In honor of the upcoming Cheetah Girls concert we're taking our daughters to, I purchased this lovely pair of shoes. My friend, Vangie, has become a total shoe whore in the past year, and, luckily, her sized 7 1/2 foot has grown into an 8 so we now wear the same size. That allows me to justify the purchase of a completely useless pair of 4 inch cheetah-print platform heels. The fact that she can also wear them. It also allows Vangie and I to go shopping together and buy twice as many shoes as we should, figuring we can each wear them - the multiplicative theory of shoe shopping.

Actually, I'm not much of a shoe person. I haven't worked in an office in six years, so there's no need to buy work shoes. I wear flip flops every day. In fact, when I did work in an office, I would never, ever have worn open toed shoes. They just weren't professional. Now Vangie tells me that's all changed and she wears her open-toed heels to the office all the time. And she's a VP so she must know what she's doing, even though I can't imagine having my piggies poke out all day long.

In any case, that stereotype of women all being shoe mongers doesn't apply with me., although I have a real weakness for high heels. So I do sometimes see a pair of shoes I absolutely must have - like these leopard print heels. I have no idea when I'll ever wear them, they'll probably give me blisters, and given that it's going to be winter soon, they don't seem well suited to the snow and ice. They'll probably sit next to the black Stuart Weitzman strappy be-jeweled heels I just had to have a few years ago. When Vangie saw them for the first time I thought I'd have to revive her - they're that beautiful. She was plotting when she'd wear them after she finally caught her breath. I've worn them twice in four years. Black strappy heels with jewels aren't exactly an everyday sort of shoe. But they do look damn good lined up in my closet. And my daughter wants to borrow them when she grows up. I told her she could.