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Coffee Break: Paula Babies

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leopard print low heels

I'm digging the '60s vibe to these cute heels from Sézane. Something about them feels really right in this moment where tall heels aren't really in, but you might still want a bit of height and a heel.

I love the double strap, as well as the slight hint of toe cleavage.

I feel like black, camel, or leopard (yes, seriously!) will be the most versatile of the color options — but the white/ecru and pale pink ones are also gorgeous.

The shoes are $215, with a 2″ heel.

(I was today years old when I learned that “babies” is a phrase for Mary Jane shoes — huh!)

Sales of note for 10/9

88 Comments

  1. Does anyone have their cloud or file storage organized in a way they like?

    Majority of my photos are housed on the apple icloud, along with plenty of duplicate/triplicates; some of my essential files are also saved to the icloud but fairly disorganized. I pay ~$3 monthly for storage.

    I also have quite a few google drives from various emails with files and backups of personal projects. Most of these files are not categorized or named appropriately in any way.

    Ideally, I’d like to combine all pictures and files onto one drive with an organization system that helps me find what I’m looking for within a few minutes. Any recommendations for getting this done?

    1. Don’t get a good organization system. Get a good search function. Organizational systems require hours and hours of human management. Using a program that can find what you need via OCR or file name takes seconds.

    2. I have my photos in iCloud. Work documents are in my google drive for my work email. Everything else is on my laptop hard drive.

      Here’s what I’d do with your files:
      1. Leave your photos alone for now. If you start with them, you may get bogged down and not get the rest done.
      2. Choose one location for your non-photo files. Or one for work files and one for personal files. It can be the iCloud, one of the google drives, your hard drive, or an external hard drive. But choose one.
      3. Make a folder on that drive for each one of the other locations. Then One by one, go to each one of your file locations and move the files there to that folder on your new drive.
      4. Then you can start organizing if you want. If not, they will at least all be in one, searchable, place.
      5. After you get all those files organized, then you can start tackling your photos. Start by deleting duplicates and bad photos.

    3. My system works OK — I do dropbox but you could just keep using apple icloud. but i mostly keep whatever i want on my phone. as it uploads to the cloud, though, i download it to my PC and store the photos in files. for the most part it’s just one per year, but for a vacation or big family milestone i’ll put stuff in its own folder. once it’s on my computer i know i can delete it if/when i want to from my phone.

      i’d also download those google drives to your hard drive; to start just name each drive something unique. i keep a rough categorization of 2025 bills, general healthcare stuff, general kid stuff, but agree with others that the important thing is being able to search it.

      if you don’t have a PC or have limited space, then i’d get an external hard drive. just came in handy when i needed to find some photos from 23 years ago.

  2. If anyone knows of a dupe for these Sezane Paula shoes, with the mary jane strap similarly placed close to the toe, please share.

      1. I feel like I saw a clone at Belk’s last weekend. Maybe Sam Edelman or one of the typical department store brands?

    2. Anything leopard in a wide width would be amazing. Darn you perfect shoes other than fit!

    3. Dammit I have a longish reply with some links in mod, and I accidentally replied to the post above about organizing cloud storage. Try doing a Google Lens search of the image above, but look at the sponsored links and not the real search results

  3. Help me figure out how to wear pants to work with boots. Winter is coming but my eye seems to think trousers can only be worn stylishly with a heel and I usually skate by with a pointy toe flat. Most of the stylings I see online are with heels. Since I’m going to need warm dry feet, what pants work? Are we still doing wide legs? Do I need to just change shoes at work?

    1. If it’s actively snowing or gross I go with slim pants tucked into boots for the commute, but otherwise, I find Uggs have enough height to keep wide leg hems out of the muck. I have a walking commute though so all of my office shoes just live there, year-round.

    2. Pants are complicated, as what works best in winter depends upon the weather/type of boots you want to wear, and what type of pants work best for your body shape.

      I am pear shaped. In winter, with pants, I wear a lot of booties. I think it looks odd in my snow/very cold winter to have bare legs showing through when you wear pants with booties. So I often wear high shaft snug booties that overlap the pant length with cropped length pants of various lengths. I also will wear a knee length trouser sock or warmer sock to prevent bare skin flash that match the color of my pants or boot. I prefer a slight flair at the cuff if the pant leg is straight/more fitted, boot cut or flare, or very wide pants. Of course I love a higher healed boot or bootie with flowing wide full length pants, but this is just not practical in snowy days if you commute. There are various tricks for hiking up long pants to protect them during the commute, but didn’t work for me.

      There is a reason why wearing skirts/tights/knee high boots is popular in many parts of the country that deal with winter snow/cold.

    3. I wear ankle boots almost exclusively in the winter, not with heels, and always wear pants big enough to fit over them. They may or may not hit at the top of the boot (I am not that stylish). If the weather is wet, I wear rain or snow boots and change to work flats. I have a transit commute though, so I change shoes a lot even in the summer.

  4. what are your favorite ways to eat oatmeal? i’ve always liked it with a hot cocoa packet, but i’m looking for new ideas

    1. I make an oatmeal mix where I can just add hot water. It’s oats, oat milk powder for creaminess, peanut butter powder, dried apples, and a nut and seed mix. Such a small thing but I spend 2 nights a week in a hotel and being able to have a nice warm breakfast in my room (just add water from the kettle) has dramatically improved my life.

      At home, I make fresh oatmeal with apples or bananas, cinnamon, nuts.

      1. +1 – I make fresh oatmeal at home with steel cut oats and milk instead of water. I like to mix in dried sour cherries and almonds, or diced apples and cinnamon.

    5. My usual is to microwave quick oats, water, and frozen wild blueberries and then add a spoonful of flax, hemp, and chia seeds and some pea milk to thin it out (these both have to be added after cooking or the texture is weird).

    8. I like steel cut oats + whatever fruit is in season/I froze during the harvest + chopped nuts + unflavored protein powder + cream + brown sugar/maple syrup/whatever sweetener.

      Blueberry pecan maple syrup is a great combo, apple walnut cinnamon sugar is great, did a tropical one with mango and cream of coconut a couple of times that was nice variety.

    9. I mix in a TB of ground flax seeds, top with a spoonful of apple butter, then sprinkle with sliced almonds and cinnamon. It’s heavenly! I eat it daily!

    10. Overnight oats. 1/2 cup oats, some maple syrup (not too much), almond milk, splash vanilla, cinnamon, and a tablespoon or so of tahini. Add berries and chopped roasted nuts in the morning. Super good.
      Will probably move back to hot oatmeal with the coming cooler weather.

    11. I do a savory oatmeal, kind of like congee. Make oatmeal with water, a bit on the runny side. Drizzle with soy sauce, sesame oil. Top with grated ginger and scallions and cilantro and eat with a soy marinated egg. If I have it I also throw in cubes of sweet potato.

    13. Coconut milk, ground flax, chia seeds, fresh fruit, really good cinnamon and sometimes other fall baking spices. I’ve made it with pumpkin before and that was really good. I’ve also added dried cranberries or chocolate chips.

  5. If your social media world has evangelicals in it, what are you seeing? If you’re a Christian of another flavor, how are you feeling about what you see?

    The sanctification of Charlie Kirk makes me uncomfortable. He was a man. Who, even if you liked most of what he said, wasn’t perfect and said hurtful things. The rapturous (ha) embrace of him – and Trump – makes me think evangelicals, for all their “our eyes are on heaven,” are desperate for anyone, anywhere they can claim to be a Christian celebrity.

    2. I’m disgusted by the sanctifying and praise being heaped on him by evangelical Christians. I’m so sick of hearing that he “was speaking the truth” and all the associated “martyrdom” that he’s been given. It’s given me such a bad taste for Christianity.

      I would identity as a Christian, but I’m becoming increasingly disheartened by the Christian rhetoric. It feels very much against how Jesus himself acted and against how he spoke.

      1. This rhetoric is not Christian, as you point out yourself. It’s time for real Christians to stop being afraid to speak up for what is right.

    3. I am a mainline Protestant. I have been longing for someone, anyone, to stand up and point out that the evangelicals and Christian nationalists are espousing hatred and other values that are decidedly non-Christian. This Sunday our pastor finally decided it was time to let someone preach openly against authoritarianism, hatred, and violence. It was so refreshing.

    4. I’ve certainly seen a lot of praise for him, but nothing I would call rapturous or sanctification. I’m not sure I’d blame anyone for wanting a Christian celebrity, but I think most of it is just reaction to the horrible way he was killed, and, perhaps cynically, there are a lot of people drawing it out to draw attention to their brand/positions (a very human failing that is definitely not limited to any political or religious “side”). Evangelicals certainly have a style of speaking that can seem over the top (I’m not much a fan myself), but I don’t really know what you’re expecting to gain by this criticism. But maybe you’re just seeing more annoying people than I am.

      1. I wouldn’t call him a Chrisitan celebrity. He was an evangelical celebrity.

      2. Cardinal Dolan called him a “modern day St Paul”, which is basically sanctification. And there was a rush to proclaim him already in heaven, which is another weird take from Catholic leaders, since we believe in praying for souls and purgatory and all that (that’s the point of a funeral Mass – to offer prayers to help a soul get to heaven because we can’t be sure!).

        Obviously I am Catholic and run in those circles online, and it’s pretty split…the social justice, Jesus Catholics believe he held a lot of problematic views, though any murder is a tragedy. The MAGA Catholics are claiming persecution and martyrdom

        1. The Catholic takes are particularly interesting since Kirk had some pretty terrible things to say about Catholics.
          He was a gifted speaker, and at any point he could have chosen to use those gifts to make the world a better, kinder place. He never did. He chose money and proximity to power instead while punching down at the most vulnerable.

    5. I’ve seen two posts in the past 24 hours. One is basically about how killing someone for their beliefs is wrong. Can’t say I disagree with that. The other was amplifying his wife’s message of grace and forgiveness as an example of what Christ calls all of us to do. Can’t say I disagree with that, either. Both posts are from folks who don’t like Trump (and probably didn’t like Kirk much either), though. Not liberals, but people who think bombast and cheating on your wife are inconsistent with Christianity.

      1. I realize rereading this that it kind of sounds like I was saying Kirk cheated on his wife. Obviously, I meant that part only to apply to Trump.

    6. I’m seeing a lot of videos of his interactions with people in college campuses.

      I don’t see sanctification; I see a lot of people who find his love for Jesus, his wife, and his kids to be admirable. There are men who are writing love notes to their wives because they found Charlie’s habit of weekly love letters to be worth emulating.

      Huge numbers of people are going to church for the first time in years for Charlie.

      Lots of vigils in other countries – South Korea, Germany, Canada, England.

      A lot of parents are talking about how distraught their kids (teens, college, that age are. They were avid listeners of his podcast.

      We are all human. Everyone is flawed. That doesn’t mean that it’s wrong to mourn someone’s assassination.

      1. Whether or not someone mourns him is not at stake. It is outrageous to me that his overt calls to violence and overt hatred is being sanitized, but really, that’s not really at stake, either. Think what you want of Charlie Kirk. I don’t think telling people that empathy is fake, that gun violence is acceptable, and that trans folks are less than human is outweighed by getting people to write love letters to their spouses, but YMMV.

        What’s at stake is the state-sanctioned deification of him. Nancy Mace and others want him to lay in state. People with powerful voices are sanctifying him. That’s not mourning someone. That’s deploying a death in the service of a religious ideology on behalf of a nation that is, at least in name, not an ethnoreligious state.

        1. Please cite his overt calls to violence or where he said that gun violence is acceptable.

          Just find where he said that tr*ns people are less than human and pop that YouTube link right into the comments.

          Hint: he didn’t. You are rewording someone else’s interpretation of a snippet of a remark that makes perfect sense in context and actually says the opposite of what you’re saying.

        2. My comment disappeared.

          Please pop a link to the YouTube videos into the comments where he said that empathy is fake, gun violence is acceptance, or queer people are less than human.

          You won’t, because Charlie Kirk never said those things. He was relentlessly civil and kind. He always told his supporters to give his opponents their time at the microphone, to not boo them, to take them seriously.

          You are taking someone else’s interpretation of a snippet of his words, then mangling that even further.

          Those discussions are literally thirty seconds long. It takes no time at all to see that the gun question is where he’s basically echoing the Kozinski dissent in Silveira v. Lockyer, that he says that he prefers the terms sympathy and compassion to the concept of empathy, and, well, I don’t know where you came up with the tr*ns one.

          1. Here you go. This “it’s out of context!” line is a well-used talking point circulated to sanitize his bs. He was relentlessly racist and sexist, but if that’s your “civil and kind,” then fine.

            That said, I don’t really care about Kirk per se. Gun control now, for everyone, including those some of us find odious. Debating whether he’s a “real” or a “good” Christian is immaterial.

            https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/11/us/charlie-kirk-views-guns-gender-climate.html
            https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2025-09-16/charlie-kirk-railed-against-transgender-rights-his-killing-has-further-fueled-the-fight
            https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/11/charlie-kirk-quotes-beliefs

    7. The reactions to Charlie Kirk in contrast to the Minnesota lawmakers is quite stark and tells me those who are deifying Kirk don’t really value life generally, they only value those they agree with.

      2. That’s such a deeply cynical take. I can’t imagine it’s serving you well.

          1. Pretty easily, actually. People didn’t see the videos of the Minnesota lawmakers getting shot. People also mostly didn’t know who they were before they were assassinated. They had no recognition outside of Minnesota and limited recognition inside it. Both of those factors make it so it’s understandable that someone might be reacting with more emotional force to the CK death than those deaths.

            Those are just two possible factors. They didn’t require much imagination for me to come up with them. I’m sure there are others.

          2. So what if they didn’t see the video? Were the published details not enough to paint a picture? The fact that he shot the golden retriever, too? Where’s all the whimpering and crying about the fact that the Hoffmans’s daughter was at the door with her parents when they were shot? What about the trauma she endured?

            Look, I’ll buy that a bunch of conservative, Christian, straight white men finally experienced empathy for the first time because *someone like them* died, but this is not laudable and does not explain the vast disparity in grief and reactions, generally. These people identify with Kirk (see above) and look up to him because he has a pretty wife and gets to own the libs, what a great life. He’s their brand of hatred, in a “successful” package. It’s not that deep. But we’re talking about more than just initial emotional gut reactions here–the sanctification, the venomous and dehumanizing way Trump, Miller & Co. are talking about “the left,” the threats to use the full force of the federal government to go after “the left,” targeting people not grieving properly by getting them fired, etc., etc. — and that’s the problem.

          3. It is truly wild to call other people “sanctimonious and dehumanizing” while writing a comment that is sanctimonious and dehumanizing. I’m a liberal, and dang, you are displaying the sort of unempathetic reductionist tribalism I’d like to think we’re better than.

          4. Do you actually disagree that Trump and Miller’s rhetoric was sanctimonious and dehumanizing? I doubt it. You’re just tone policing, which is useless and inappropriate. I also didn’t call anyone sanctimonious and dehumanizing – perhaps you need to read more closely before you chastise someone for something they didn’t do, hmm? Or just stop concern tr0lling.

            I don’t need to bend over backwards to be polite and sweet to the likes of Stephen Miller and Donald Trump. If you haven’t heard what they’ve been saying lately about you, me, and everyone else who isn’t them, then you need to wake up, and fast. You’re confusing calling out reductionist tribalism with reductionist tribalism.

          5. “It is truly wild to call other people “sanctimonious and dehumanizing” while writing a comment that is sanctimonious and dehumanizing. I’m a liberal, and dang, you are displaying the sort of unempathetic reductionist tribalism I’d like to think we’re better than.”

            Seriously. Also liberal here.

          6. Because the Minnesota lawmakers were unknown outside of their state and probably also unknown inside of it, while Kirk was literally one of the most influential and popular Millennial political activists?

          7. I’m not confused about anything, @5:59. I meant what I said. You wrote a bad post that reflects illiberal values. It’s most important for people who claim to be on the side of goodness to act like it. And you were not acting like it. Your post stunk.

            I’m sure when Stephen Miller shows up in the comment section here, I’ll also tell him his posts stink.

        4. I also agree completely. I don’t know why I’m shocked, but I am. I expect better from people and hard core conservatives/MAGAs always disappoint.

      4. Yeah. As a non Christian new testament morality is mostly, from what I understand, consistent with my own personal moral and ethical values. But “Christianity” as it is used popularly is often an in group signifier used to exclude and vilify non-Christians or supposed non-Christians (meaning members of a sect you don’t like.) It feels like “Christian”
        is used interchangeably with “trump supporter” in ways that make me uncomfortable even if it’s not my battle to fight.

      6. Yes…the number of people I’ve seen post or say things like “I’m going to teach my child never to celebrate a person’s death, no matter what side of the aisle.” And yet those people were cheering for alligators to eat migrants and saying all manner of things about George Floyd and other murdered black men.

        It is stunning hypocrisy, but I am not surprised.

        (And no I do not celebrate CK’s death, that was despicable. Gun control now.)

        1. But that exactly what left did with George Floyd. The martyrdom and sanctification were quite present. At this time no cities burned.

          1. Jesus is closer to the poor, broken and marginalized than the rich and powerful. So if we were picking a person to sanctify….

          2. It is not exactly what left (sic) did with George Floyd. I cannot stand how dishonest conservatives are, truly. The whitewashing of Kirk is reprehensible and if you’re oblivious to how the man has been literally described as a Christian martyr then you really shouldn’t be participating in this conversation (I mean, you’re not offering anything beyond the average brain dead comment you’d find at the bottom of a fox news article, but you get the point.) You can miss me with “nO cItIeS buRneD” dog whistle, which not only is a dramatic misrepresentation of the amount of damage caused by the protests, but also overlooks the reason that there WERE protests, which is not present in Kirk’s killing. In case you forgot, Floyd was killed by the state, against the backdrop of decades of entrenched and protected discriminatory conduct in policing (to put it gently), which is why you saw protests. Who exactly is the right going to protest because a private citizen shot another private citizen? Does that make any sense? No. No it does not.

          3. No one called for him to lay in state, suggesting that he was a political figure who should receive official rituals. No church official actually sanctified him.

            Those are meaningful differences. The outrage, rallying cry, and protests that developed around George Floyd can be metaphorically called sanctification but the official sanctification (secular, as in a political figure, as well as evangelical) are different here. And that is a really vital difference.

    8. I grew up in evangelical Christianity in the Bible belt, and I have a lot of family and childhood acquaintances who love Charlie Kirk and love Donald Trump.

      And yes, the sanctification is disconcerting. There’s a hashtag going around Facebook, livelikecharlie, and finally one person who was posting it a lot realized that in fact, they shouldn’t “live like Charlie”, they should “love like Jesus”. EXACTLY.

      I saw another video of a bunch of kids saying, “I am Charlie Kirk”, and again… why? Why are you telling your kids to “follow” and “be” Kirk vs. following and being Christ?

      The same hashtag-happy person also posted that Kirk’s death feels different because “it’s the first time a Christian was murdered in America for their faith”. Um, I suppose we aren’t counting the church shootings and bombings in our history?

      Basically, they are going over the top with praise, exaltation, etc., and it’s super weird to see them turning him into a saint when evangelicals don’t even really believe in sainthood. They wouldn’t say it that way, but when you see the rhetoric, it’s similar to how other religions talk about saints and how multiple religions (including Christianity) talk about prophets.

      1. Why does it bother you? So people mourn someone’s death more than you think they should and in ways that aren’t inherently bad, but you do not like.

        Move on.

        1. Because it’s playing into societal division and extremism, presumably. I do not like to see politicians making a martyr out of a private citizen who has been murdered.

        2. Are you completely oblivious to how the right, including in particular the Trump Administration, is trying to use his death to further erode our civil liberties and divide this country?

          That’s why it bothers me. That, and I dislike dishonestly in general. I also dislike seeing racist, sexist, homophobic bigots white-washed and elevated as if their beliefs are something to be admired.

      2. It sounds like you follow one person who isn’t very smart but posts a lot. Maybe it’s time for you to mute that person.

    9. I am going to call it as it is. The Kirks are not Christians. Evangelicals are not Christians. None of these people are Christians. They are imposters who give actual Christianity, the Christianity defined by the words and actions of Jesus Christ as described in the New Testament, a bad name.

      1. More to the point — the U.S. is not a Christian nation. So whether the Kirks are good or bad Christians isn’t important (to me, at least). It’s using them as a shorthand for a vision of an evagelical/Christian (and White) America that’s the problem.

        1. It is important, though, because it causes prejudice against actual Christians. I have to hide my faith to avoid being branded as a conservative bigot. Members of other religions do not.

          2. Why not try speaking out against it? Then you wouldn’t have to hide your fate, and people wouldn’t brand you as a conservative bigot. But if the persecution complex is more fun for you, then keep it up.

          3. Being “branded” by people as a conservative bigot is not the same as structural racism. The claim that members of other religions don’t have to hide their faith is offensive in its ignorance. Moreover, even if you just want to think about intra-religous prejudices, there are ongoing conflicts among Jews around Zionism that are having similar difficulties about what “counts” as real Judaism.

            And again, maybe it’s important for *Christians* to decide who is and who isn’t a good Christian, but America is not a Christian nation. As an American non-Christian, I do not give a crap whether or not Charlie Kirk followed those tenets. What I do care about is the dangerous overlap of evangelicalism, Christianity, and nationalism, and its coalescing here.

        1. The apostles warned people about the anti-christ nearly from the start. It is part of the faith tradition that there are wolves among the sheep, and it’s a Christian responsibility to watch out for them. Meanwhile Americanism is a heresy.

      3. You presume to know the state of Charlie Kirk’s soul and his belief in Christ?

        That itself is un-Christian, because you are assuming powers and judgements that only our Lord has.

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