The Devil Wears a Cami

My friend Linda messaged me the other day.
She had a proposition.
She wondered if I'd be willing to write some blog submissions for a new fashion blog she and two of her friends are starting up based out of L.A.
The message went on to say something about celebrity backing, something about a jet-setter lifestyle, parties, vacations, etc.
I had to re-read it three times before it all sunk in.
I was too shocked she was asking me to even understand anything past the part where she "immediately thought of me."

Let me preface this by telling you about Linda.
Linda should be illegal.
Linda is a knock-out mother to three boys that must have been formed of jello because they did not do one harmful thing to her body with their births.
Linda is the type of mother that, when she posts pictures of herself, makes me want to bang my face firmly on a rock as I wail to the sky about how unfair it is for someone who has even THOUGHT about having kids to look that good.
It's like - Not even normal how hot she is.
It's probably some rare syndrome with some fancy acronym.

So, you can imagine, when getting a message asking for my assistance from THAT person -
That person that God decided to make genetically incapable of weird lumps, or hair in odd places, or even just a slightly lazy eye to make the rest of us feel better,
I was a little stunned.

I read and re-read.
It *might* have been as I drove. That I will never admit.

She went on to tell me that she would be the face of the blog, but that she just wanted a few posts here and there with my spin.

Well that's good because I'm pretty sure that no one wants to take fashion advice when I'M the face.

As it is, I have to force myself to even put on regular clothes during the day.
Those gray star pajama bottoms and spandex sleeping bra are pretty tough to beat.

She gave me some topics and wanted me to submit some stuff as soon as I have time.

And here I am.

Writing this.

Because THIS I KNOW.

Because for at least the last 6 years, when I think about fashion anything, my brain turns to pudding and dribbles out my ears onto my very unfashionable clothing and then blends in with every other stain and mystery splotch.

"You HAVE seen my facebook posts?" I ask her.
"You DO know that my idea of fashion these days is yoga pants and desparation?"

She responds with an LOL.

"No. I mean - I'm really not kidding. You DO know that, right? You realize that my fashion choice every day is whether to wear the shirt with the moth hole or the one with the oil splatter."

"That's the beauty!" She says. Most likely from somewhere in Beverly Hills through her gorgeous white teeth.
"You can write about fashion while sitting at home in your pajamas."

So I start to think about it.
Do I even remember fashion?
Do I, Kerri Green, know one thing that is going on in the World of the Runway?

I can remember a time when a young girl's mother that I knew approached me to tell me that she just wanted me to know that her daughter IDOLIZED my sense of style and wanted to look just like me when she grew up.
It is distant memory.
But it's there.

I blame it all on the kids.
Mostly because that's easiest.
I used to shop at expensive stores and care about things like double stitching and things cut on the bias, but now all I care about is if the pattern of the material will hide a thick toddler sized hand-print made out of what LOOKS LIKE marinara.

Will it show pit-stains from the sweating I'm about to do trying to keep a toddler from boarding an escalator without me?
Or from prying them out of a department store window display?

Do the pants have enough give to stretch my legs into the splits as I reach some beloved miniature plastic animal of some kind that is wedged behind the futon?

It has to be DRY CLEANED? Well then, forget it.

The last item of clothing that I bought that had to be dry cleaned was my wedding dress for a reason.
After that it was all down hill.

I should have taken my strictly sarong wardrobe from my honeymoon as a premonition of things to come.
My honeymoon where they lost our luggage and the only thing I could do was buy clothing aboard the cruise ship we were on.
The cruise ship that sold only sarongs, straw hats, and giant cotton granny panties.
Every honeymooner's dream.
I'm sure it was Justin's.
But I should have seen it as a window to my future.

If it isn't loose, patterned, multi-purposed, and able to be tied on in seconds with one hand - It's not for you anymore, Kerri.

Fashion....
Fashion....
What do I know about fashion?

I know what I DON'T like:

1) Pants with tight ankles that take a shoe-horn to get over my heel
2) Anything that makes me look like a block letter "P" from the side
3) Anything drawing even more attention to....well...any part of my body other than my eyes.
and
4) Shirts with a sewn in camisole underneath.

Who in the SAM HILL thought of the sewn-in cami?
Trying to figure out what goes where and which way to twist it to get your arms in both holes for both arms successfully takes the skill of a neurosurgeon.
I have spent HOURS of my life in dressing rooms trying to just get through phase one of trying on a shirt with a sewn in cami.
I have tried and failed and come out needing a chiropractic adjustment.
On the rare chance that I can get it on properly without having only one arm in but the other one stuck elbow first through the outer shirt like a chicken wing while the cami strap sticks out the neck hole, I almost always buy it, just because I can hardly believe what just happened.
That moment is TRIUMPHANT.
It becomes less of a cami and more of a Victory Shirt.
But good luck ever getting it on again.
You'd better wear that sucker out and have the cashier clip the tags on the way because you can bet MONEY that's never ever happening again.
Especially after you WASH IT.
The post dryer shirt with sewn-in cami makes the dressing room shirt with sewn-in cami look like child's play.

If mockery had a shape......


A few weeks ago, contemplating my lack of updated knowledge on what was even OUT THERE fashion wise, I took to my bath tub with an InStyle magazine in hand.
For 45 minutes I poured over it's pages, trying to soak up trends and make sense of hair styles.
The realization I came to is this:
Those people are crazy if they think I'm doing that.

Let's take this for example:

I've seen that dress before.
It was on a scary torso-only Barbie covering my grandma's spare toilet paper roll.

Or these:

Gorgeous on the GO NOWHERE, more like it.
If I wore heels like that, the only place I'd be going was careening to my untimely death.

Or this shirt:

I'm pretty sure I've seen that shirt before.
In Sears next to the elastic waist polyester pants.
It's just not cute.
And I'm *pretty* sure the girl wearing it has been turned.
I may not know what to best pair with a pencil skirt, but I know how to recognize a Walker.

I soaked and I looked and I came out of it all feeling like the page I identified most with was this one:

Maybe it isn't acne they're looking at, but it's something.
The used Hello Kitty band-aid stuck to the inside of my pants leg.
The booger that's not even MINE smeared on my shin.
The winter shoes that I'm wearing with capris because I just didn't want to go back upstairs
one
more
time to get proper ones.
The egg that's been stuck to my chin since breakfast - which was almost an hour and a half ago.

Something.

I mulled over it all so long I got pruny.
I stepped out and looked in the mirror and this is what I saw:

Clearly I know at least SOMETHING about fashion.

I rock a wicked smokey eye.

Wake Up Call Barbie

This morning it came to me.

I wonder if I could use the same technology they use in race horse gates to build a bedroom door for the girls that won't allow them out until the buzzer sounds.
They'd be in there pawing at the ground - eyes on the prize - until it was at LEAST past 7:00 before theyd be released.
How in the WORLD do they have so much energy?!

They wake up at 6:00 giggling and within five minutes they've dressed up in costumes, built something out of foam blocks, logged on to the computer dismantled 2 rooms and gotten in a fist fight.

I've been wondering the last three days why I'm so tired.
Like
eighty year old, supportive shoes and soft foods tired.

But then I realized that's just how one FEELS with four kids.
I seem to keep forgetting I'm not 20 anymore.
The WORD twenty feels like a foreign language when I say it, actually.

I still feel the same inside.
In my mind.
It's my body that isn't keeping up so well any more.

I mean, I WAKE UP tired.

That's just wrong.

And it doesn't help me ease into my day when the first thing I see with my sleepy eyes is a naked Barbie that just has to be dressed this very second.
Who cares that it's still dark out?
This, apparently, is Nocturnal Barbie.
Haven't you heard of her?

And have you ever tried dressing a Barbie?
It requires the focus and skill of a vascular surgeon to get their arms in those sleeves.
Every single Barbie outfit we own is shredded by the cuffs because those blasted hard, pokey thumbs just
Won't.
Go.
Through.

I am completely convinced that whoever designed them actually hated women.
They wanted not only to give them messed up body images, but they wanted to completely infuriate every sleep deprived mother who'd ever have to help dress them.
Doing it without contacts just by feel while your kids laugh at how funny your hair looks is not exactly top o' the day material.

And my body aches now.
All the time.
I thought I'd be at least 50 before that started, but boy was I wrong.
I've had a stiff neck for so long now I'm forgetting what good mobility feels like, and that has me turning around to look at things like my spine has been fused.

It's made backing up the van pretty hard.
I just pray a lot and try to do it fast so that my window of possible time I could spend backing over someone is a smaller window.

I'm basically completely falling apart.

Yawning.
Limping.
Unable to look behind me.

And the kids.
They're so ENERGETIC.
And unappreciative of all that energy, too.
The things they have to complain about are that their hair band is too tight or their sock seam is funny.
They don't even know how good they have it.

I used to ride my bike miles a day to visit my friend Katie across town.
Now that much riding would put me in traction.
I used to think the cereal pieces in Lucky Charms were just there to make the bright colored pieces you REALLY eat stand out more in the bowl.
Now I have to think about fiber intake and if I ate that much suger my heart would jump out of my chest.

In the last few days alone the girls have run and climbed and swam and jumped and chased and spun and all they have to show for it is some sun on their noses.
Me?
I almost need Hospice tonight.

Chloe acts like her growing pains are enough to earn her an AARP card.
Just wait till she's my age and she realizes she's spent over 85% of her day daydreaming about a foot rub.

The mental space that used to be taken up by thoughts of My Little Ponies and coloring pages will be replaced by fantasies of deep tissue massage and a well fitting Dr. Scholl's gel insert.
And SLEEP.

Oh. Sleep.....

Life just GOES FAST.

You never really understand that when you're younger.
Summers stretch out forever.
Time stands still.
I have childhood memories that, in my mind, were 40 hours long, but I know now were probably mere moments.

Maybe realizing this is what has made me really want to just spend time with the kids this summer.
Crafting, baking, creating.
Living vicariously through them. Remembering what it's like to stay out as long as the mosquitos will let you.

And good thing I have Pinterest.

I have prepped crafts like a crazy person.
I've used so much food coloring there's probably some sort of government surveillance on me.

I guess there's my answer to why I'm so tired lately.
It's probably some sort of food coloring toxemia.
It's probably some rare thing that nobody ever gets, but with my luck, I would.

I mean really - What person in ONE YEAR gets Lyme's, a rare serious reaction to a medication, pre-eclampsia, high blood pressure, a life threatening blood clot and goes into A-fib?
Now a day when I get sick I just assume it's probably the most rare random thing. That way, when it's not, I'm pleasantly surprised.

I've learned to push on, though.
To try harder to enjoy each day as it comes, because there are no guarantees.
See your friends and tell them they're important to you.
Hug your kids even if earlier in the day you used those same hugging hands to pull out clumps of your own hair.
Be kind to your family even if it's easier to take them for granted.

I guess I shouldn't complain that the girls wake me up at 6:00.
At least I have them to wake me up.

One day they'll be gone and I'll get to sleep as late as I want.
Or as late as Justin's Hoover powered snoring will let me.
Instead of buying 4 pairs of new tennis shoes, I'll be able to buy that deep tissue massage and I'm sure
while I'm laying there in perfect peace I'll miss it all.

I'll miss Barbie's dagger hands.
I'll miss wiping down the ENTIRE bathroom after their bath because there was so much splashing.
I'll miss cleaning up the ice cream bar that got left on the coffee table for a half hour and melted all over the shag rug.

OK.
Maybe not that.

I just want to enjoy every day as it comes.

Even if it comes at 6.