Step 1: Realize you are spending part of holidays in frozen tundra that is the Great Lakes region of United States.
Step 2: Realize only suitable pair of footwear you own for holidays in North (that are not your puffy Keens which also double as spaceboots) are pair of black heeled knee-highs, the heels of which are caked in mud and worn down to metal studs.
Step 3: Accept fact that must brave Sixth Ring of Dante's Inferno, aka The Mall A Week Before Christmas in order to drop off boots at cobbler.
Step 4: Tote Youngest Child to Mall Hell a Week Before Christmas where every temptation and glittering toy is on his eye-level display for greedily grubbily desiring.
Step 5: Concede as never have before in history to renting one of those Mall Carriages with the Car in Front for low low price of $5 for 25 minutes in order to pacify youngest child and not lose in crowd that is Mall Hall a Week before Christmas.
Step 5: Graciously deposit dilapidated boots with Korean cobbler. Speak in only known Korean pleasantries.
Step 6: Realize must return to Mall Hell the next day (T=6 days until Christmas) .
Step 7: Make beeline to Barnes and Noble while child still pacified by Most Expensive Plastic Car Rental in History.
Step 8: Read half a book in Barnes and Noble to younger child until realize only have 20 minutes to pick up older child from school.
Step 9: Drive like dickens back to return Plastic Car, trying not to contract hepatitis, scurvy, other communicable diseases from rental that smells and feels of partially hydrogenated oils fermenting on handlebars since 1994.
Step 10: Watch as child begs to be let out of Plastic Car like it is the Guantanamo Bay of child transportation vehicles.
Step 11: Return plastic rental.
Step 12: Return to Mall Hell next day to pick up boots, this time saddled with both children.
Step 13: Forewarn children this is a very brief one-errand trip that will not, by any means, include a stop at any play structure.
Step 14: Enter Sears; note reaction of children as though have just entered whimsically wonderland palace of wintry enchantment. oooohhhh ahhhhhh!
Step 15: Claim boots which are perfectly rehabilitated to former heeled age of innocence.
Step 16: Proceed to Mall Hall exit. Refuse to cave to indoor play structure's temptation. Note younger child pulling at seat of pants.
Step 17: Assume wrongly that a restroom can be found en route to exit.
Step 18: Find escalator to floor 1, find restroom. Cheat death by allowing youngest child to wear Crocs on escalator.
Step 19: Blink and suddenly younger child has managed not to pull down pants fully as seated on comode; gamely soaks underwear and pants with urine.
Step 20: Take escalator to second floor, pronounce fact that have both children, purse, and newly heeled boots a Christmas miracle.
Recommended eats at the Mercury Burger Bar - particularly their outdoor patio.
