Today was gorgeous. We had fine sunshine all day. What a relief, because I was seriously getting depressed. All of the ladies walked about town in their finest sundresses—If you want to wear it this season, you’d better seize the day, I tell you! I guess tomorrow everyone will be wearing their second favorite dress. Sunshine through Tuesday, baby!

As luck would have it, without even trying, I got “the book” back. Okay, I’ll admit there was a bit of strategy involved. I just happened to happen upon the book in a drawer while I was rummaging for a pink lipstick which my mother-in-law did give me permission to look for. So I just took it out of the drawer and set it on the stairs where I’d left it in the first place. When she noticed it she said, “jzee-naa, (have I mentioned she’s French?) I haven’t started your book yet” and she brought out a whole stack of other books and told me she intended to take one or two of them to France. So I really emphasized that she should read the shopoholic books in order and that we should look for them together since I need to buy the last one anyway. Problema solved, I can get it into the post before we leave for France on Wednesday. (which I am SO excited about, BTW.)

The HOPE Burmese refugee relief sale at Doogies kicked off well on Saturday. There was definitely public interest. I was so surprised to see how many people shop for comfort shoes for their children. In fact it was so busy when we were setting up that I had to start helping customers. I forgot what good exercise working in a shoe store is!! (The local Birkenstock shop fed me through college). The shop is such a cool little store—-it’s an old tudor house with really low ceilings. It’s not great for merchandising but it is SO charming. And Doogies (the shop) also has a shoe recycling program where people in the town can drop old shoes at any time, day or night, and they are then shipped off to Africa.

We’ve started putting some fliers around town and tomorrow I’m hitting up all the grannies at the aqua fit class. We went to post one at the leisure center and were informed we must get approval from “the council”. Doesn’t that sound official? We’ll be phoning in the morning. Fingers crossed that we are “council” approved!