12 smokin' hot wedges you'll love for summer

Give me the smooth, buttery leather of a knee-high boot or some wool socks and suede ankle booties any day — any day from mid-September to late-April. But as soon as the slightest warm breeze blows through my city (OK, some years, that’s in March, other years it is in late June), I am delighted to stash the boots away in under-bed boxes and pull out the summer shoes.

From my flip-flops to my rocker-girl dancing heels, the summer shoes I love best are wedges. That little bit of boost makes fake-tanned bare legs look great and wedge heels, even at five inches high, feel better from toes to heels than spiky styles. Lucky for me and other shoe whores who swear by them, this season is full of wedge styles.

Espadrilles are everywhere, cork continues to pop, and trendy colors, florals and stripes show up on straps, ties and even the heels. And if you’re not a high-heel lover? No worries. Lower-height and nearly flat wedges will work beautifully with your favorite little dresses, swimsuits with cute cover-ups and rompers.

From my closet to my online shopping cart to already-on-my-feet, here are the wedges I’m wooing this summer. And get this — every pair here is less than $150, most under $70 and even a few under $40. 

Which ones do you love best?

For all the links and lots of what-what commentary on each pair, click here.

You'd think I'd be used to the leaving by now

The Not Boyfriend left Thursday too soon after the birds started chirping in the trees outside his bedroom window. As soon as he'd jumped out of bed, which he does after decades of being a before-dawn baker, I'd eased over to the center of his bed and pulled out the ear plugs from my ears. I could hear the warbles of the birds clearly as kissed me quickly and I pulled him in close for a longer, tighter hug. A few short steps later, he was out the door. I listened, eyes open, as the deadbolt clicked, then pressed my eyes shut against the sadness.

Two weeks. He will be back from this year's mission in a little more than two weeks. He's in the National Guard, which takes him far past the city once a month and out into the depths of somewhere horrendously humid for two weeks in the summer months. Last year, an additional specialization training landed him in Virginia for four very long months. None of it, thankfully so far, is deployment. None of it war or scary or more than a year of serving in harm's way too many miles and hours and months away from home. That will come. In good time.

But for this June, for this time, I felt the familiar ache of goodbye. I felt my brain wander, even after I woke up alone, still in the center of the bed, even as I pounded it out on the treadmill and then my laptop keyboard and then in rush-hour traffic. I was OK, not sobby or even weepy. But that's not how loss always emerges.

We did the long-distance thing for nearly three years, seeing each other monthly during the best times and six weeks or more during the tougher ones. Just getting to each other was complicated by airline cancellations and delays, fare hikes and spontaneous deadlines at work. There were times that we spent more time in the air then we did in person on our weekends together.

We developed rituals -- sitting at a crowded bar and sharing entrees for dinner, lazing about in bed far past the Not Boyriend's jittery instinct to leap out, long and quiet moments in the car as one of us drove the other to airport, lingering kisses and a quick goodbye, texted Emoji teary faces timed for the traveler to receive while waiting in the security line, a reassuring XO message that we landed safely. 

You'd think that, through all of that back and forth, hello and goodbye, I'd be used to the leaving now. But I'm not. I cry less, yes. I bounce back quicker. I no longer stress about "blackout" Guard periods mandated zero communique. And hours into this departure, I had a sticky-note list of things I'd like to get done while I have more time to myself, a purposeful reframing of my man's absence. 

What always happens is that I have a little bit of wah-wahh and boo-hoo, then I plan, and the next thing I know, he's back. I get on with it, my list never gets completed, and then I start and lose another list for the next time he's away.

How it also works is that the Not Boyfriend, who has often been up too many hours in a row, sweating in his uniform and helmet, carrying a rucksack full of of God-only-knows-what, living with snoring, stinking soldiers in sleeping bags or barracks or on buses, and so he, of course, needs time to decompress, cleanse himself of all that has gone on those days or weeks or months away from the rest of his life.

What I always feel is anxious to see him. Like I want him to show up at my door, weary and still uniformed and overcome with excitement to kiss me/rip my clothes off/catch me up/listen attentively while I catch him up. But somewhere in my zippy brain, I inhale and exhale and remember that what is best for him is a long Epsomy bath, a nap, to pay bills and work out and be still. In that little centered space of brain, there is also the reminder that re-entry is good for me, too. I like, and maybe need, all those things too. 

My friend Lulu asked me why, after all this time and this many trips, why it's tough for me. When I explained, she said, "I hear you saying what you're not saying. It's about what he is going to do." Maybe she hit on something. Maybe it's the mystery and guarded circle of the military, maybe it's the part of his life I don't and can't know too much about, maybe it's my challenge to accept the guns and humvees and possible one-day deployment. I like that he has a life -- lives, really -- outside of ours. I love that we go off to our worlds and then connect and talk about them and support each other get better and bigger and happier. Going away for weeks/months/years to drive convoys through IED-ridden territory and shoot shoulder-aching assault rifles, even if it is on a pretend mission (I can hear him laugh at that, "There is no pretend mission. It is all a mission.") or at a range ("Still a mission.") -- this is the weight in the goodbye. More than sending him off with sad-face texts and long kisses to a pastry kitchen in San Francisco, this is heavy. I don't get it. I don't have to. I may not even be meant to. Just live with it. Just love him. 

He texted me the night after he left, tapping out something about how this time it was easier to leave, that he missed me but he felt more settled. I texted back that maybe all that practice paid off. And maybe it has. There's lots less panic about the silence and distance, or rather, more silence and distance. But just because we are closer and we have done this many times already, it doesn't feel easier. It doesn't feel less of a goodbye. 

Leaving is leaving. Sometimes it serves a purpose, other times it serves people. If you're lucky, those people are you two. Sometimes it is good for a relationship, other times it is just a necessity. If you're centered enough, you make both good for you both.

Maybe what makes all that going and coming back and leaving again work is trusting that the other person will miss you, keep loving you, will come back. And if they don't, you will be OK. For a few days or forever. In a blackout period or long-term silence. You will get up, get moving, get on with things. You will not have to understand why he does all that he does, you will just be there when he returns. And in the meantime, you remind yourself: you will be OK standing alone. At least for today. Probably for two weeks. Maybe next time, more.

No, Gwyneth Paltrow, divorce is not easier

I was just beginning to forgive Gwyneth Paltrow of all the eye-rolling privileged things she's said out loud to the press and advocated on GOOP, almost ready to let go of all the far-away judgments I've made of the (I readily admit it) progressive, pulled-together, intellectual, stunning celebrity.

I wanted to relate to her when the 2013 Most Beautiful Woman honoree said it is her family that makes her feel the most beautiful. And I was so close when she admitted, "It's hard being married. You go through great times, you go through terrible times. We're the same as any couple." So, so close.

Until she went on: "And we're still married. We worked through it. I think it's easier to get divorced. But I think the more you can keep at it, the more you end up seeing the value in it. But man, sometimes it is not easy."

If I could have wished upon that weeks-old People mag I was flipping through at my grandmother's house a few days ago, my whisper would have been that Gwyneth Paltrow's determination that "it's easier to get divorced" had not ever passed my ears before. I would have crossed my fingers and squeezed my eyes shut and wished to all of the fairies of divorce and separation and single parenthood that no mom on the playground or stranger who has read something I have read or friend of a friend of a lady I have seen a couple of times at church would have ever said those same words directly to me. Then maybe with a wave of those fairies' wands, years' worth of attorneys fees, a file box full of legal parenting agreements and child support pay stubs and too many therapy co-pays to count would POOF! disappear into a brilliant cloud of magical, twinkling starlight.

But I didn't make that wish. And as much as I'd never like to pay my lawyer $300 an hour again, I would never wish away my divorce. I would never wave away the hours I've spent negotiating parenting agreement details that I thought (and still think) are in the very best interest of my boy. I wouldn't take any of it back. Even though it was (and still is) very, very hard.

No, Gwyneth, divorce is not easier.

It is expensive and painful and at times, felt to me like my limbs were being torn from my body. And as a divorced parent, it is a process of negotiating and renegotiating and giving energy to someone I would have very much liked to have walked away from for good. It is worrying about the health and happiness of two houses, not one. It is creating normalcy around split-time holidays and jammed-up calendars and cramming one celebration into a few hours and then tending to the ache of having an absent child during other big moments. It is having an attorney on speed-dial and hearing too many people's advice and criticism about how you handle divorce/dating/money/your feelings about your ex. None of that falls in the category of "easier" to me, even five years out of a marriage.

I will give you this, Gwyneth: I am not sure it would have been less costly to stay in my marriage, a good and solid and very happy relationship where a fissure of infidelity caused our whole family to fall apart. In no way would it have been easy to stay in a home where someone was yelling, coming undone, lying and spending money that wasn't there. It would have been awful, which is why, after just more than a month of the height of "terrible times," the best way to protect my son and myself was to leave. The next best thing was to file for divorce.

Easy? Absolutely not. Necessary? Yes. It took 18 months to finalize my divorce, twice as long as it took to grow the small human being in my care. It took money I didn't have and it took strength I had to dig very deep every day to muster. 

I wouldn't take any of it back. I wouldn't cast a spell on myself to forget the heartache and in and out of courtrooms and times I sat on my front steps sobbing so my son could sleep in peace, because all of that was me fighting for us. I think it could be the hardest fight of my life, Gwyneth. And also the most important.

My experience is not everyone's, this I know. My own boyfriend's divorce was tied up within a few months. Other friends have shared with me their awe at how quickly they were able to legally and emotionally undo a relationship that lasted for decades. But no one I know who has kids has experienced the drive-by divorce that people love to refer to when they need to feel valiant about the fight for their marriage.

I do believe in marriage. And I do commend people who duke it out with each other and self-care and faith and all that it takes to keep a partnership going, particularly through those toughest of times. In fact, my journey through divorce is startlingly similar to my good friend's journey to forgive her husband's unfaithfulness. She stayed married while I signed dissolution papers, but we felt and said and argued and battled with many of the same issues. I think it is pretty amazing that she is still married to the love of her life, especially after all of that. And I feel pretty blessed that I chose differently, and that she and I relate even more now. 

She has not had it easier, and I am quite sure she'd say the same about me. So why is this point made so often, and most often by people who are married in this moment? 

I wish Gwyneth a long and happy and healthy and fulfilling marriage, I really do. I wouldn't wish divorce upon anyone, a celebrity or a friend or even an ex of mine. But having been in, fought for and then fought my way out of both a marriage and a divorce, I'm never going to point a finger at one as being easier than the other. 

I might not get GOOP and I may have been the only person in America who thought her pale pink ballet Oscars dress needed a good hike up on her chest and I definitely will not nod in agreement with her proclamation about divorce, but there is something Gwyneth and I do agree on: We both think our families make us beautiful.

Her family's London home is lined with awards and luxe decor, they have access to pretty much anything and their time together is full of Coldplay dedications and barbecues with Jay-Z and Bey and Baby Blue. They are two kids with a mom and dad who, aside from filming and touring and red-carpeting, are all in the same house. My family is one boy and a mama, in an apartment down the street from grandparents and a few minutes away from a boyfriend. Is one easier than the other? Maybe not. But it's all beautiful.