Spanx for Nothing

If I got paid every time someone told me how lucky I am to have a husband that does housework,
I'd be a VERY rich woman.

And I am lucky. I know I am. I've seen the look in they eyes of women whose husbands never help around the house,
and it's a lonely, desperate look.

Every time I describe the dusting, and the vacuuming, and the dish doing he does,
the woman I'm talking to inevitably gets a far distant, dreamy look and I question if they're even actually hearing a word I'm saying,
or if I should actually be finding a cold shower to push them into fully clothed while I call some sort of hotline.

And it IS nice.
Most of the time it does have it's merits.

I actually cannot even remember the last time I washed an entire sink full of dishes.

And he does fold t-shirts in the most perfect little square pouch-like bundles you ever did see.
He should probably do a tutorial.

But there are times it is not so nice.
Like when he finds things men aren't supposed to find.

Take tonight, for example,
when,
at the end of a very long, exhausting day I lay my head back relaxing in a nice hot bath with a good book when in he came holding the laundry basket.

And all was well and good, with me reading and him silently folding until, in my peripheral vision, I saw him dig through and find something that he then held in his hand and turned over again and again.

I saw him glance at me for a second, and then he started towards me.

Oh gosh
I thought.
What is it NOW? He already asked me about Chloe's blue tank top with the baseball sized stain...

"Babe," He began with a slow, questioning tone that I have learned leads to nothing good.

"What ARE these?"

I turned, already annoyed to be having my bath time interrupted by all his LAUNDERING.

And this is when he produced the object of his wonder.

SPANX.

The Spanx I may have just bought for my high school reunion.
The Spanx that at least four other women were grabbing at at the same time in the store because, after all, it IS reunion season.

The Spanx that were actually none of his chore-doing business.

Now, if you ALSO don't know what Spanx are,
They are basically girdles for the 21st century.

POWER PANTIES.

The most gloriously, wonderful thing that you never want any person seeing.

"They're Spanx," I said.
"Just put them with my underwear."
I turned away feigning nonchalance, while I attempted to stop his questions, and move him towards my dresser with my mind.

But he DIDN'T put them with my underwear.

He just stood there.

Turning them over and over in his hand.
Looking at the tag.
Stretching them.
Flicking at the legs.
Holding them up to the light.
A look of true mystery on his face.

It was as if he'd found them on an archaeological dig.

I wanted to tell him to just, for the love of God, put them DOWN and stop trying to even figure them out.

Spanx are not a thing one even NEEDS to figure out, actually.
They just are.
Veritable partners with things like Time, and Space.

You
just
let
them
be.

They're kind of like the butterfly wings of clothing.
They're beautiful.
They're smooth looking.
But you're not supposed to touch them lest they never fly again.

And through all of these thoughts of MINE, he was STILL holding them up.
And not just anywhere, but in the mirror, so that I could see not one, but TWO images of him investigating my woman secret.
It was torture.

I couldn't tell if he was trying to find the right way to fold them, or find the right way to try them on himself.

"They're like bicycle shorts," I offered. "For people who pretty much never actually ride a bike."

"But what are they FOR?" He pressed.

Justin,
I'll tell you what they're NOT for:

They're not for stretching, and flipping, and poking,
and they're DEFINITELY not for you STILL to be holding and asking me about.

*Sigh*

So you see?

Some women wish their husbands would learn to fold a piece of laundry,
Some women wish they'd unlearn it.

Red Rover

July.

What a month for friends.

For the unwavering.
For the steadfast.
For the childhood one.
For the one you just met.
For the one next to you under the pop of the fireworks.


In the last few weeks my calendar has been full with plans, based on my own urgency to really CONNECT.
I've sought out true bond like a bee seeks nectar.
Crucial to life,
Crucial to legacy.
So much is changing these days. So much seems fleeting. I feel like grabbing at the solid things.

So I chose to grab at friends.

I've opened my door to welcome someone in still dressed in my pajamas.
And I've opened my door to go out with someone decked to the nines.

It's been a constant rotating door.

My old green couch is now sagging heavily in places from all of the sitting, and sharing life.

One friend giving me the feeling that I needed to lower her a life boat.
One friend giving me the feeling that we were rowing a boat together with the current of purpose, and a Greater Plan.

There were conversations about lost love, lost jobs, lost family bond, and lost babies.
Tears, laughter, and way, WAY too much caffeine.

We dove in to life head first with lukewarm coffees in hand, and dried mystery stains on our shoulders.

And as they all cycled through, I started to feel like this week was a turning point in my life.
I stood there slathering peanut butter beside them all,
(Because, somehow, there was ALWAYS peanut butter.)
And as I looked sideways at them,

Somehow it was something MORE than JUST making lunch.

It was LIFE.

Somehow,
it became everything.

Someone who also hears the shrieks, and fills the bowls, and wipes the butts,
but yet is somehow still, behind their eyes, the THEM they always were.

Somewhere beneath a whole lot of under-eye concealer, and a slightly dragged down look was the friend I'd danced with to a car stereo at the beach.
A friend I'd snuck out with.
A friend who knew things about me in a way no one else did.

Who had seen the THEN,
and still chose the NOW.

A co-laborer.
A person with whom to link arms

And RUN.

Red Rover, Red Rover. Send your true self on over.


Even when we weren't really able to talk for all of the pleas for goggles, and cheese-its, and someone to help wipe.

Even without one single word.

There we stood.

Side by side.

And that's something.

Because there's something about locking eyes with someone whose eyes bulge like yours.
Your own mirrored, crazy reflection.
There's a re-fueling that happens in that moment.

There's something about admitting that you don't have it all together.

Something about actually officially naming your couch
"The Couch Where People Don't Have it All Together."
Cross-stitched pillow as a label.

And what a beauty that none of them are the same.

Human snowflakes.

Because I know I need every kind.

I need the one whose face I've seen across from mine through every mountain, and valley of life.
The one who
I'd always call.

I need the wild-eyed one that lets me know I'm not alone.
The one who I count to three, and leap with.

I need the grounded one, that reminds me to breathe.
The one I thank later.

I need the one that lets her kids eat off the floor sometimes because...Well - I need REALITY.
The one I identify with.

I need the one with more kids than me that makes me feel calm.
The one I look up to.

I need the one with no kids that makes me remember myself.
The one that lives at the core of me.


Because then, what I remember is that I was a friend first.

Before all the noise, and goggles, and cheese-its, and wiping.

A friend.

To them.
To my husband.
To myself.

And that is such a beautiful thing to be.

Sand and Fog

We went to the beach tonight.
Spur of the moment.
Shoes, and towels flung quickly into the car.
We hadn't even checked the weather.

And when we got there, it was cold, and windy, and gray.
The fog rolled in, and the tide was out,
and all around smelled of the scent of ocean fish.

The girls looked hesitant as they climbed from the van.
Visibly upset at how it was all turning out.
Why were we here if they couldn't even go in the water?
What good was the beach without putting at least your feet in?

And as Tessa cried about how she just REALLY thought we were going in the water,
I had a chance to talk to her about how life really goes.

That sometimes you take a chance on things.

Sometimes you go into something knowing that maybe there will be sun,
but maybe there will be nothing but gray, thick fog, and foamy waves.

And how, still,
you take a chance.


Because it's all worth experiencing.



The beauty of the sun AND the chill of your entire horizon covered in fog.

The beauty of not being able to see everything clearly.

The beauty of really not always knowing what to expect.

Then, like magic, as we ran down dunes, and walked along the sand together-
As they found sandcastles left behind by other beach goers to dismantle -
As they tossed driftwood, and dug their toes in to the cold, wet world around them,
I could see their view of our adventure begin to shift.

That maybe beaches weren't just for bathing suits, and sunscreen, and wet feet.
Maybe beaches are also for running, and huddling, and for breaths so cold they almost aren't breaths, but that fill your lungs with something more than air if you close your eyes and
Just.
Be.
Still.

We were able to enjoy it, not for what it was just in that moment,
but for what we knew it to be.
We may not have been able to see out to the edge of the cliffs, or to the boats in the distance,
but we knew they were there, because we have seen them again and again, and if we know anything, we know that just because you cannot see something in the moment you want to see it, does not negate its existence.
Those things lived in our memories, and so - just as we were there - So were they.

When we arrived,
our faces were skeptical.
We wondered if we'd even stay.
THIS is not what we planned.
But by the time we left, our cheeks were red from wind, and laughter.
We stopped for hot chocolate by the kite store.
We ran into a friend.

And Tessa, done crying,
said, "I'm really glad you're my parents," softly to us in the car.

"We love you, too."

A few minutes ago,
kids and husband long in bed,
and house quiet except for the snore of a dog,
I stepped into the bathroom to find the entire floor covered in leftover sand that hitchhiked home in the cuffs of Paige's jeans.
Yet, rather than sweep it up,
I rubbed my feet around in it awhile,
and I smiled.

Because sometimes things are not just as simple as they seem.
Sometimes sand is not just sand.

Sometimes that sand is a lesson that you can miss so many things that are about to come your way,
if all you see

is the fog.

The Duct Tape Derby

Good grief.
Has it been almost a year since I've blogged?
So much has happened, I can't even relay it all.

Therefore, we will start with what was clearly one of the biggest life events in the last several months -
The time Chloe and Tessa entered a pinewood slot car race.

I know.
Life-changing.

Contestants in this race were responsible for showing up to a workshop weeks in advance,
where they would cut and carve their cars from wooden blocks. They would then paint them to their liking, take them home and embellish them, work as a family, and return them several weeks later to be weighed, and checked for rule compliance.


When we showed up for the car-building workshop, it was clear it was going to be all my craft-loving hands could do to keep from completely taking over the car making.
I was thinking sleek, and meticulous.
They were thinking....
Well.....I don't really know WHAT they were thinking.
But like all things lately, they wanted to do it themselves.
*Controlling mom eye roll*

My mind said,
Chloe?! What color even IS that? Don't you want to mix it more?
Tessa?! That's more of a skid mark than a racing stripe. Here. Let me fix it.
But I held back and let them do it.
After all, this was an event "for the kids."

I was capable of sitting on my hands and letting them be in the crafter's driver's seat.
I mean,
I may have needed a brown paper bag to breathe into when Tessa chose to put weird little STICKERS all over hers, but I bit my tongue and just told her she was doing good work.
*bag breathing*
*bag breathing*

After the cars were assembled and the main bodies had been painted,
we were instructed to take them home and work on them more as a family.
I pictured smiling families gathered around the glue gun.
And the intentions were there.
Really, they were.

Cut to two weeks later as those cars sat completely neglected on the kitchen counter by the salt shaker where they had been sitting unmoved the entire time.

The night we were to turn them in and have them weighed, we almost forgot to even bring them.
That's how not tuned in to these chunks of wood we were.
But we took them still.
Covered in dust and coffee grounds, like every OTHER thing we turn in,
we took them.

And immediately upon walking in the door, we regretted it.

As the other cars came into view, our steps toward the check-in desk got slower, and shorter.
From moment one, it was clear that this was SERIOUS business for some people.
These people weren't happily painting cars. There were people still SANDING.
Some had crafted their cars to look like Converse shoes, Coke bottles, Batmobiles.
One guy's looked like it should be in the Smithsonian, it was so amazing.
He said he'd worked for 40 hours on it.

Who even HAS 40 hours?
It would take me 8 months to compile enough free time to equal 40 hours.

I walked to the check-in desk and meekly presented the girls' cars as they stood clinging to my side with big saucer eyes.
We had no idea it would be like THIS.

As the lady took the cars to weigh them, she looked up at me above her glasses and gave me a sheepish pity smile.
And I know those, because it's the same type of smile I get when I tell people I have four kids and they're all girls.

They were grossly underweight. Starving, no doubt for paint and attentive human touch.

"Did you maybe want to take them home real quick and add some weight somehow?" She asked.
"How would we do that?" I asked her.
"Well some people have inserted lead into the wood..." she offered.
Lead?
Where does one get molten LEAD to insert?
They're lucky ours even had wheels.

"Could I, like, glue some QUARTERS ON or something?" I asked.
"Sure," she replied, shifty-eyed.
I might be paranoid, but I *think* she *may* have hit "record" on something.
"I guess that could work."

She didn't look like a believer.

So I did take those suckers home. That very minute. I bit my lip, and I gathered my change, and I searched high and low for the flipping glue gun, with which to attach said quarters.
Of course it was nowhere.
Justin was no help when I asked, either. He just kissed me goodnight, shrugged his shoulders and went to bed.
This was it.
The weight of their slot car fate rested on me now.
So what did I do, you ask?
I did what anyone wise does in a pinch.

I duck taped those puppies.

I duck taped six quarters to the bottom side of each of their cars, and I wrote their names over top in black sharpie like a boss.
Names that looked like an ape wrote them.

Then I returned to the check in location.

This time their weight was perfect.
The only problem was, with the quarters attached to the undersides, the cars wouldn't clear the slots. They wouldn't even roll.
Not one inch.
Awesome.

NOW what?
The deadline for check in was three minutes away.
Without time for another option,
Without wanting to chuck the whole idea and just leave with two downtrodden girls,
With Alena gape-mouthed by my side,
I ripped that duck tape off of the bottoms of the cars with all the quarters attached and reattached that monkey scratch duck tape to the tops of their cars,
transforming them both completely.
And not for the better.

As if they weren't ghetto enough.

"You're not REALLY doing that, are you?!" Alena hissed.
"Yes. Yes I am," I answered.


Now, not only were they barely sanded, and very oddly painted, but they were literally COVERED completely in lumpy quarter bearing duct tape.
And to make it worse, they couldn't even discreetly enter these beauties, because that duct tape bore their names so boldly, you could have seen them from space.

ChLOe GREen

TEsSa GReEN

Start.
Your.
Engines.

We checked those cars in, and slunk away in shame with our faces covered like we thought we were the Jackson kids.

Chloe tugged at my arm and asked,
"Mama, Why don't anyone ELSE'S cars have their names over the whole outside?"

OMG.

"Just KEEP WALKING, Chloe !"

Don't look back lest you turn into a pillar of salt.

And,
Today was the race.

But rather than do what seems like the obvious choice -
To not show up ever ever again in case someone realized the horror we'd created;

We went.

We went,
and we raced,
and would you EVEN believe it -

Tessa's truck -
That weird green truck with the yellow smears barely peeking out under quarters and duct tape with her name like a billboard TIED FOR FIRST in her division.

That duct tape car was faster than the four she raced against combined.

You should have seen our faces.

Joy.
Cheering.
Utter disbelief.

Next year, I think we will probably do things a little bit differently,
But for now we will hold onto our duct tape derby cars,

And we'll hold them up high.

FAMINALLY

I heard the wailing from a long way off.
It was coming towards me.
Of COURSE it was coming towards me.
I held my breath, waiting to see what it was going to be THIS time.

Tessa materialized.
Face splotchy.
Look of devastation.

I was actually surprised it was her. It wasn't usually her.
She is usually more of a Tear Causer than a Tear Haver.

"Honey, What's the matter?" I asked.

"Chloe *choke* called me.............. *sob*'FAMINALLY," she sobbed.

Had I heard her right?
What had she said?
I must not have made it out correctly.

"She called you WHAT?" I asked again.
"FAMINALLY," she said.
"She called me 'FAMINALLY"
*shaking sobs with hands covering face*

At this exact moment,
a large bid swept down and swooped me up in its talons, carrying me over hills and oceans to its nest on a rocky cliff,
where I helped raise it's giant babies as if I were one of them, and I learned to ride them with saddles that I made myself out of woven blades of grass.

OK.
Not really.

But that's the exact type of thing I imagine happening sometimes after something like that is said.

Something so confusing and absurd that nothing that followed could ever surprise me.

"Honey. 'Faminally' isn't even a THING. It doesn't mean anything. If it doesn't exist, then being it can't be offensive." I weakly soothed.

"But....But....It SOUNDS mean and I don't like being called things that sound mean."

"OK," I said, "I'll talk to her about not calling you 'Faminally' ever ever again."

At this moment Chloe appeared from behind the wall.
Apparently she'd been there listening the whole time.
Her one eyeball discreetly peeking out from behind the baby gate as it tended often to do.

She, too, looked distraught.

"Chloe, Did you call Tessa 'Faminally?"
I could hardly believe I'd uttered the words.
I did all I could do to keep my tone as stern and serious as one can when probing their child about if they called their sibling a made up thing that sounded mean.

"I only called her that because she threw a lego at my ear. It hit me, and it hurt, and I called her 'Faminally.' I tried to say I was sorry, but she was already running down here to tell on me."

"Tessa," I asked, "Why did you throw a lego at Chloe's ear in the first place?"

"Because," she responded, "She told me that she hoped that one day I went completely bald because I'd look so funny if I was bald and she'd laugh and laugh and be happy forever, so I threw a lego at her head."

At this point I was really almost at a loss for where to go with the whole thing.
For one minute I felt it strangely appropriate to make them wear hats made of foil and perform in a Dressage competition.
It would have made about as much sense as anything else going on.

They were both in tears, clearly tormented by jabs about baldness and made up names.
I had to stay strong. I was already committed.

These are the moments in parenthood they never tell you about.
I'd love to see a chapter on FAMINALLY in a Dr. Spock book.
I had to be the solid ground,
even though what I REALLY wanted to do was call them BOTH "Faminally" and rock in the corner by the Calico Critter houses.

Chloe chimed in.
"I only told her that because she was telling me that she's happy when I feel anxious."
"No!" Tessa said.
"I meant that I am usually happy, and she's usually anxious. I'm not happy ABOUT her being anxious. I'm just happy WHILE she's anxious."

OK.
This was going nowhere.
Time to bring it to a close, no matter how amusing.

Sometimes I really wish I had a gavel.

"Alright, Girls. I want you to turn and face each other."

*Tessa faces Chloe*
*Chloe faces the dog*

"Chloe. You need to face TESSA."

*Chloe faces a SHOULDER towards Tessa*

"Chloe....."

Now we have full facing,
although neither one will look at the other directly.
It's as if their eyeballs literally REPELL each other.

The crimes have been too severe for LOOKING.

Tessa is now rubbing her eyes so hard that I am positive that when she removes her hands from them,
there will be nothing left but big deep weeping holes above her nose.

Chloe's mouth is open slightly and sort of oddly.

"I want you two to look at each other now and to realize the hurt that you have caused each other by your words. Words hurt. Sometimes even more than hitting does. You don't want to cause pain to your sister, do you? You don't want to be the one to make her cry...."

This is when I notice that Chloe has gone from just PLAIN open mouthed staring to slightly wall-eyed staring that is aimed at somewhere over Tessa's left shoulder.
She basically looks exactly like THIS:

"Chloe? You're not even looking at Tessa's face. I want you to look at each other. Why are you staring off into the ozone?"

"I'm not! I tried to look, but you were talking so long and when I stare for a long time like that, my eyes go all funny and I can't make it stop."

*giggles from Tessa*

*Look of forgiveness and also admiration for being funny*

I gave up.
I think even *I* went slightly wall-eyed.

"Oh for Heaven's sake. Hug each other, go play, and both of you -
STOP BEING so darned......FAMINALLY."

No Cereal

At one point today, I found myself sitting dead center on the living room floor almost in awe of the chaos.
The dog spun by,
Toys were everywhere,
And Paige was busy dunking our brand new home phone into the pool;
An act that has us down one handset.


I was focusing on the carpet asking myself what the 10 pieces of plastic shrapnel were from, and was that BLOOD on them,
when from the front room I heard Tessa gruffly whisper,
"I don't know. I guess we have to do it back there. Go ask Mama."

In came Chloe.

When Chloe comes in
especially with this particular look,
it usually means one of two things:
She's either about to ask if she can sleep in your bed that night because of some sudden-onset malady,
or about to tell some egregious act that Tessa committed and continue looking at you that exact way until you do something about it.
And that something had better be good and punish-y.

I was relieved when I was predicting wrong, because frankly, I'm tired of her in my bed,
but that happy feeling only lasted a moment.


CHLOE: "Mama, how do you spell 'CEREAL?"

My brain drifted before I answered.

Hmmmm. Cereal. Could we just do THAT for dinner? I HATE having to think of what we're having for dinner. We could, like, do a cereal BUFFET...
Tacos? No. We had that a couple nights ago....
I'm so tired of chicken...

CHLOE: "Mama? CEREAL?"
ME: "Oh. It's C.E.R.E.A.L."

She looked confused.

ME: "Why? Why are you asking?" I questioned.

CHLOE: "Because on the table in the front room it says 'No Cereal,' and I'm wondering about it."

ME: "What do you mean on the table it says 'No Cereal?' You mean, like a NOTE is on the table?"

CHLOE: "No. And we didn't write it. I promise. We didn't."

From the front room a panicked sounding Tessa, ever the self-defender yelled,
"We did NOT write this. Really. Really we did NOT do it. I didn't do it. I know I did NOT do THIS!"

The only thing I could think was that Justin, in his recent prescription steroid induced cleaning/organizing frenzy had written some sort of psychotic Dad Note demanding that no more cereal be eaten in the front room ever ever again.

And I was no stranger to the Dad Note.
Growing up, ours was always taped to the television before sunrise with packaging tape. (Why did we never have NORMAL tape?)
It was always some list of things to do that day that always included some bizarre sounding task like "Mend the hole the Emu made."
Bizarre if you didn't grow up in my house.

I wouldn't put it past Justin, either. He was as prone to a weird Dad Note as the rest of them.

He was always declaring that no more food was ever ever ever to be eaten in the van/bedroom/front room/back yard/garage ever ever ever again.
Ever.
He declared these types of things at the end of an hour of freeing See's lollipops from car interior,
or after an hour of being elbow deep in some dark crevasse that housed shells or husks or pits.
He declared,
then the eating resumed within a max of two days.

Strange I hadn't seen any note.

He had definitely looked at me sideways when I allowed the girls to eat fudgecicles in there the other day as they jumped couch to couch like tribesmen.

It caused beads of sweat to congregate on his upper lip if anyone took milk ANYWHERE without a lid besides three steps from the refrigerator.

Milk in the CAR?!
You might as well just disembowel him Braveheart style.

Maybe he'd just had enough of soggy mystery items stuck to various armrests, and had written Rules for the Front Room and posted them.

Strange that he hadn't mentioned it, though...
He loves mentioning rules...

"Where is the note laying?" I asked.

CHLOE: "It's not LAYING anywhere, Mama. There's no note on paper. It's actually written ON the table. On the actual table someone wrote it."

Even in a crevasse digging rage, Justin would not have written on the furniture. Unless it was the roids. I was a little worried about the roids...

"In, like, PEN?!" I asked.
Oh man.
This was NOT going to go over well.
Now there was writing on the furniture?!
Justin would need cognitive therapy.

Paige had written on the back of the couch with a sharpie a few months ago and that had caused him to try to ban the very color the ink was made of.
No amount of strategic vase placement was going to cover up the words "NO CEREAL" written on our coffee table forever.

ME: "Did one of you guys do it? Did you guys write on the table?!"

CHLOE: "Mama! No. It's written on the bottom of the table. Tessa turned the table over (We won't even ask why THAT happened)
and that's when we saw the note.
There's also another part about 'No style.'
Tessa says we can't do our Barbie's hair on the table anymore."

ME: "No STYLE?......."

*lightbulb*


OMG.



ME: "Chloe........ Does it say 'S-E-R-I-A-L NO.' and 'STYLE NO."

CHLOE: "Yeah. That's what I said. No Cereal."

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.