Manolo says, it is Monday and you are back at your desk, working like the dog to make the ends meet. Thankfully, you have your good job, and your good man, and the house that is mostly almost paid for, even if the recent months have not been kind to your equity.

Happily, this was your dream home when you bought it, and you have no intention of leaving, ever. This sentiment has only grown stronger with your recent remodeling, in which you have finally installed the granite coutertops and stainless steel appliances of your dreams. (Yes, it is true, stainless steel is this generation’s Harvest Gold.)

But, what can you do? You are the product of your desires, as mediated through the images shown in Architectural Digest and Better Homes and Gardens and MTV Cribs, plus you had the powerful hankering for appliance garages, many, many appliance garages filled with exotic tools like carrot juicers and electric grape skinners, tools that your late Granny Dee, (who you remember using kindling to start the fire in her cast-iron cook stove) would have regarded as sinful extravagances.

But, you think to yourself, such is the nature of progress. Granny Dee made the world’s best fried chicken on her wood-fired stove, and forty years later you dream of building your own backyard peasant forno, so as to make the perfect chicken pesto wood-fired pizza.

It is axiomatic that we always love the peasant culture of other peoples more than our own, no? The phrase Hog-killing time in Alabama brings nothing but mockery from the same people who speaking glowingly of the “charming authenticity” of the Spanish matanaza del cerdo, and yet both events are fueled by the same motives: cultural pride, machismo, too much alcohol, and the promise of abundant and tasty pork.

Ayyyy! Your mind has wandered!

You must come back to the matter at hand, finding handsome and stylish new shoes to celebrate this fine October day. Look! here is the Annabel Sling from Michael by Michael Kors, the reasonably priced and exceedingly stylish slingback pump.