الوسم: colts

(Real Simple) You would be forgiven for thinking that I have a dozen daughters, scurrying around on a total of [عزيزي الزائر يتوجب عليك التسجيل لمشاهدة الرابط للتسجيل اضغط هنا] 24 feet, judging by the quantity of footwear in our house. But it turns out that it takes only two fast growing girls to amass way too many shoes.

I grew up in a small apartment; there was not much room for hoarding. My husband moved every couple of years growing up, so he learned to travel light. The very idea of one family owning so many shoes was a little unsettling so [عزيزي الزائر يتوجب عليك التسجيل لمشاهدة الرابط للتسجيل اضغط هنا] Imelda Marcos, so Kardashian until I came to see them as a form of archaeology. Footprints, you might say, from our journey together.

We didn’t really have so many shoes until our daughters approached adolescence (they are now 13 and 16). At that point, several things happened simultaneously, which triggered a sudden infusion of footwear. They started playing different sports in different seasons, and so the single pair of sneakers that worked just fine for third grade gym class spawned soccer cleats and running shoes, aqua socks, hiking boots, high tops.

They started going to parties, so the Mary Janes that worked for church were supplemented with strappy, shiny, teetering invitations to orthopedic disaster. They started growing like weeds, which meant that at any given time, some number of shoes hung in suspended animation too small for big sister, too big for little sister. And, [عزيزي الزائر يتوجب عليك التسجيل لمشاهدة الرابط للتسجيل اضغط هنا] finally, we found a shoe outlet near school where the fanciest pairs go for $21.99 and many are $8 or $10, which makes it easier to view those awesome purple shoes as a defensible investment.

As their shoes began to spread all through the house like mushrooms, we found we had a management problem. My husband is highly, admirably, thoughtfully organized: The coffee cup handles all face the same direction; the books are ****ved by genre. But the girls and I are more (shall we say) spontaneous in our storage choices. Some objects with wanderlust defy our attempts to contain them: Who can find a bobby pin when she needs one, or the cell phone charger, or, on a bad day, the house keys?

Finding a way to round up and contain the shoes was a priority. The girls’ bedrooms could not accommodate them all, and getting out the door for school in the morning was already a challenge without repeated races back upstairs to search for shoes that matched and fit.

Real Simple: Family fun on the cheap

Eventually a solution became clear. There’s a dark, oddball closet with a sloping floor tucked under our main staircase; in 16 years of living in the house, we had never known what to do with it. On the one hand, it is at the center of everything. On the other, the slope is treacherous and there’s no place for a clothes rod. It was a natural place for shoes to nest and breed: safe, dim, private. Shoes began to find their way there, sometimes intentionally, sometimes [عزيزي الزائر يتوجب عليك التسجيل لمشاهدة الرابط للتسجيل اضغط هنا] tossed into a pile to be excavated many months later.

When the shoes finally ran amok, fully taking over the space, we brightened the bulbs and installed hooks and grippy runners on the slope. Then we headed to the local home store and bought six hanging shoe bags (each holds a dozen pairs), which now line the walls.

Thus was born our shoe closet, the nearest thing I have short of my photo albums to an anthology of my daughters’ various interests and idiosyncrasies. There is one child’s hippie phase, with the funky sandals; then she is a preppy, in saddle shoes or espadrilles. The other is playing dress up, in heels beyond her years.

Then she discovers a passion, the riding boots caked in mud, broken in over long, hard hours in the ring; now she’s a young lady, in proper pumps, going to an interview, a confirmation, a school dance. Ugg boots take [عزيزي الزائر يتوجب عليك التسجيل لمشاهدة الرابط للتسجيل اضغط هنا] up a lot of space. "What becomes of the brokenhearted?" asks the great philosopher Mimi Pond. "They buy shoes."

Real Simple: 11 fun things to do on a rainy day

I will admit that there are some consolation shoes in the collection, from days when one of them was feeling low and somehow a trip to the shoe place, followed maybe by ice cream, would lift her spirits, help change her direction. Now and then, I scan the array of shoes in search of a stray sandal and spot a pair I’m fairly sure hasn’t fit either of them in years. So we reap and cull, filling bags for the clothing drive.

It is all there in the closet, all the roads taken and the shoes that took us on our way. My husband and I saved some pockets for ourselves, though most of our shoes are in our bedroom closet upstairs or, in the case of ridiculous, once a year shoes, in the attic.

My shoes do not so much convey my past and present interests; rather, they present a handy overview of my daily needs and habits and work life balance. More of a table of contents than a full anthology.

I don’t know how many black dress shoes I own, but I do know that my go to pair the risk free pumps that don’t pinch, don’t slip, and have the right heel and height lives down in the shoe closet, next to the other chapters of my week: the sneakers for morning dog walks, a pair of flip flops, the flats that get me to the train station, the rubber garden shoes, the slippers for my mom for when she comes out every Saturday.

Real Simple: New uses for [عزيزي الزائر يتوجب عليك التسجيل لمشاهدة الرابط للتسجيل اضغط هنا] old things the family edition

Here’s what I dream about: Someday, when I’m no longer working, when our daughters are safely dispatched to college and the wider world and my husband and I have downshifted and downsized, perhaps whole precincts of our home could reflect the level of organizational commitment exhibited by our shoe closet.

The girls’ random bins of award certificates and recital programs will all be tucked neatly into scrapbooks, my lost earrings reunited, the gift wrap sorted by season and purpose.

It’s not just that my home would look tidy and I could find things more easily, thereby ensuring I could spend less time on futile searches and more on learning to **** a really good cassoulet. It would also mean I had reached a point when I was if not quite in control at least in my right mind.

[عزيزي الزائر يتوجب عليك التسجيل لمشاهدة الرابط للتسجيل اضغط هنا] [عزيزي الزائر يتوجب عليك التسجيل لمشاهدة الرابط للتسجيل اضغط هنا] [عزيزي الزائر يتوجب عليك التسجيل لمشاهدة الرابط للتسجيل اضغط هنا]

Ugg boots are becoming extremely popular as a footwear fashion item, but good Uggs are not [عزيزي الزائر يتوجب عليك التسجيل لمشاهدة الرابط للتسجيل اضغط هنا] cheap, so there are a lot of people searching for ways to buy cheap Uggs.

But first, what exactly are Ugg boots and why are they so popular, so why are so many people looking to buy cheap Uggs?

Sheepskin boots are an Australian icon. They have been made in Australia for decades and are well known there, but are now being marketed in the US. Sheepskin boots are now getting as popular in the US now as they have been in Australia for years.

The Ugg boot is a boot made from sheepskin. The actual wool of the sheepskin faces into the boot so that it is worn with the leather side of the skin facing out. Sometimes the actual skin leather forms the exterior of the boot and sometimes it is itself covered with another leather, making it more durable.

The sheepskin is [عزيزي الزائر يتوجب عليك التسجيل لمشاهدة الرابط للتسجيل اضغط هنا] sewn onto [عزيزي الزائر يتوجب عليك التسجيل لمشاهدة الرابط للتسجيل اضغط هنا] what is normally a plastic sole, and so the boot is a boot that is worn outdoors as well as indoors. Usually the boot is worn outside any trousers so that the boot is visible in it’s entirety, and as Uggs [عزيزي الزائر يتوجب عليك التسجيل لمشاهدة الرابط للتسجيل اضغط هنا] are available in a variety of designs and colors they are very conspicuous. And now a fashion footwear item.

Uggs are very comfortable and warm, and are wonderful to wear in winter. However as they are made from a natural material, namely sheepskin, they breath well, and so are also comfortable in summer.

There is, however, one problem with acquiring a pair so that you too can join the new movement to wearing these hot Aussie icons of footwear. The price.

[عزيزي الزائر يتوجب عليك التسجيل لمشاهدة الرابط للتسجيل اضغط هنا] [عزيزي الزائر يتوجب عليك التسجيل لمشاهدة الرابط للتسجيل اضغط هنا] [عزيزي الزائر يتوجب عليك التسجيل لمشاهدة الرابط للتسجيل اضغط هنا]

As Lord Justice Leveson reports this Thursday the findings of his exhaustive inquiry, it may be thought that given my own experiences, I would be in favour of draconian statutory Press regulation.

After all, eight years ago my family and I not only experienced illegal hacking but constant intrusion and surveillance. Only through tenacity and the use of the law was I able to put the record straight.

But despite my own harrowing experience, I cannot join the chorus of outrage demanding tougher state controls, for we should be extremely cautious [عزيزي الزائر يتوجب عليك التسجيل لمشاهدة الرابط للتسجيل اضغط هنا] about any extension of political power over the Press.

Eight years ago, David Blunkett’s family experienced illegal hacking and constant intrusion and surveillance yet he still believed in freedom of the Press

Of course the newspapers can sometimes get it wrong or indulge [عزيزي الزائر يتوجب عليك التسجيل لمشاهدة الرابط للتسجيل اضغط هنا] in nasty, even criminal, practices, but we have to recognise that freedom of the Press is one of the true bulwarks of democracy. It is no coincidence that totalitarian regimes always seek to curb the influence of the Press once they gain power. And there is no doubt that we in Britain are lucky to have some of the most noisy, rumbustious and irreverent national newspapers in the world, ensuring that neither politicians nor business tycoons, and nor for that matter, celebrities, can ever become complacent.

This is not to say that the Press should not clean up its act. It is clear that the current system of self regulation, led by the Press Complaints Commission, is perceived by many to be toothless, not least because some newspaper groups refuse to come under the jurisdiction of the PCC, while the Commission itself lacks independence. When my ordeal was at its worst in 2024, I found the organisation totally inadequate, even though individual staff were always thoughtful and helpful.

The PCC’s flaws were demonstrated most graphically by its failure to deal with the most recent scandals of hacking and corruption, and it was only public fury that compelled Rupert Murdoch to take the drastic step of closing down the News of the World.

It was this tidal wave of public anger which forced the Government in July 2024 to establish the inquiry by Lord Justice Leveson into the ethical standards and culture of the Press. But over the lengthy proceedings and interminable parade of celebrity witnesses, I have developed serious concerns about the nature of the inquiry. For a start, it seems to me that a lot of attention has been given to matters that are already the subject of criminal proceedings, which shows we already have laws in place that can challenge extreme abuses by journalists. Indeed, I myself am due to be called as a witness in the forthcoming News of the World criminal trial.

I further gained the impression that much of the ground covered by Leveson related to the past and was already known to the public. There was endless, often repetitive raking over of history, with some participants all too obviously eager to settle old scores. Just as worryingly, there was little [عزيزي الزائر يتوجب عليك التسجيل لمشاهدة الرابط للتسجيل اضغط هنا] sense of how journalism operates in a ferociously competitive environment of tight deadlines and 24 hour news.

An undue emphasis was given to questioning about procedures, management hierarchies, and reporting lines. Even their fiercest critics have to recognise that newspapers are not like other corporate organisations.

But perhaps the greatest weakness of the inquiry was that it focused on the wrong target. All its deliberations were concentrated on newspapers, and it almost completely ignored what is euphemistically called ‘the new media’, made up of blogging, Twitter, the internet, Facebook and ****ing.

The Leveson Inquiry failed [عزيزي الزائر يتوجب عليك التسجيل لمشاهدة الرابط للتسجيل اضغط هنا] to address the vital point that those who operate in this unregulated world can display a reckless, occasionally sadistic, indifference to the damage that might be done to people and their families.

Yet, as demonstrated by the recent scandal of the wholly ***** paedophile allegations made against Lord McAlpine [عزيزي الزائر يتوجب عليك التسجيل لمشاهدة الرابط للتسجيل اضغط هنا] whose name was openly circulated on the internet this is where some of the worst harassment is now taking place.

In the anarchic online world, reputations can be trashed, individual rights ignored and users systematically bullied. It is a verbal Wild West with no editorial [عزيزي الزائر يتوجب عليك التسجيل لمشاهدة الرابط للتسجيل اضغط هنا] standards at all, no oversight, no accountability, no moderation. And those who operate in this unregulated world can display a reckless, occasionally sadistic, indifference to the damage that might be done to people and their families.

Yet in my view, the Leveson Inquiry failed to address this vital point. As a result, my profound worry is that the unregulated world of the internet will be allowed to carry on regardless, while the printed media has to endure an increasingly tight straitjacket of regulation.

That would be a disastrous outcome, since newspapers are already under severe pressure thanks to the technological revolution. With so much news and comment available online, papers are finding it ever harder to compete.

Circulation of most national papers is falling, while numerous regional and provincial titles have disappeared altogether in recent years.

So any improvements to the system of self regulation should not be heavy handed. What is needed is proper redress when things go wrong and standards that can be enforced, setting the kind of benchmark which would restore confidence in the media.

It would be a disaster for printed newspapers if they had to endure a straitjacket of regulation.

This would entail taking up and strengthening the proposals currently on the table from Lord Hunt, who wants to replace the PCC with an entirely new, tough and independent ****.

He suggests a contract signed by all publishers to behave properly and provide effective remedies for legitimate complainants and tough sanctions for the editors responsible. In cases where there is found to have been systematic abuse of standards these sanctions could include fining of the publication in question.

It is important that the new committee regulating those proposals is independent.

Some will say that we already have powerful libel laws in Britain to deal with such problems, but it can be daunting and expensive to take the risk of mounting legal actions against the media. There needs to be another avenue of recompense for ordinary people and the new regulator could in time also offer a quicker and cheaper means of settling libel actions.

Above all, I hope that it will be possible to reach a deal in Parliament on improving self regulation without resorting to oppressive legislation. It will not be easy since there are many MPs on both sides of the Commons who are genuinely angry about the way they have been treated by papers in the past. But we need to set aside any instinct to score political points and instead address the future.

Fifty years on from the Shawcross Royal Commission into the Press, it is time to reach a genuine consensus. The great French statesman Georges Clemenceau once famously said that ‘war is too important to be left to the generals’. Well, freedom of the press is far too precious to be subject to the machinations of a political squabble.

[عزيزي الزائر يتوجب عليك التسجيل لمشاهدة الرابط للتسجيل اضغط هنا] [عزيزي الزائر يتوجب عليك التسجيل لمشاهدة الرابط للتسجيل اضغط هنا] [عزيزي الزائر يتوجب عليك التسجيل لمشاهدة الرابط للتسجيل اضغط هنا]