Manolo says, it is Monday, another day on the hamster wheel.

Here is the thought: what ever happened to those lazy, crazy, hazy, dazys of summer?

You know, those long, long July days when you were twelve, riding your bike through the neighborhood with your best friend Melody and your crew of pre-teen miscreants.

Well, “miscreant” is not the right word, as not only were you the bookworm, specializing in Laura Ingalls Wilder, with the subspeciality in Lucy Maud Montgomery, but Melody would grow up to become the pastoral administrator at St. Amandus, the imposing woman in sensible shoes and navy blue, who has been known to cause young priests to shake with fear.

But things seemed so much simpler back in the day. Your mother kicked you and your siblings out of the house right after breakfast, locked the door, and shouted through the screen “Don’t come back until lunch time”. (Today, such commonsensical, summertime behavior would be considered child abuse.)

So, you went down the block, found the other children whose mothers had ejected them from their homes, and formed the pack, which, without the distraction of video games, got up to all sorts of entertaining analog hijinks, such as dress-up dolly, neighborhood hide and go seek, building hideouts from old refuse found along the creek, and because there were more boys in your hood, also such violent favorites as buck buck, and throwing rocks at each other.

But now, your children sit at home exercising their thumbs texting, texting, texting.

Look! Beautiful shoes for the fall…

This is the the scoop neck ankle boot from Reed Krakoff in the very trendy oxblood color.