I freely admit that clothes shopping is not my forte. In fact, I had no idea until my daughter hit adulthood and started giving me clothes advice, that I really sucked at dressing myself. Who knew?? It’s not like anyone told me…….to my face. I’m pretty sure most people looked forward to the day when their mother quit choosing their clothes and they were able to dress themselves. Me? I hint, cajole and beg my mother to buy my clothes and spare me the whole experience.
It’s not that I don’t want to look nice, I just don’t place a lot of importance in it. I rarely take time to put together a nice outfit, let alone shop for one. When you add in the fact that I am also incredibly cheap, well it takes the torture of shopping to a whole new level. The amount stores charge for things that I consider cheaply made and God awful ugly, to boot….well, it should be a crime and I have a hard time making myself part with hard earned cash for what their selling at the local stores. Occasionally someone in the family takes pity on me and sends me a gift card to a clothing store with the hint that maybe I should consider buying something that isn’t stained, faded, ripped or torn. Thank God for my family or I would run around most the year in threadbare rags. This would be fine if I could just work on the farm all the time. Unfortunately I also work off the farm and my co-workers and supervisor have some strange belief that I should be able to show up to the office looking like a professional. Weirdoes!!!
For years my SIL, who actually has phenomenal taste in clothes and enjoys shopping, would send me her clothes when she got tired of them. Those giant boxes of clothes sent once a year or so were a God send and made me look like I actually knew what I was doing in the fashion world. And then the unfortunate happened….I outgrew her, meaning, I grew rounder and she didn’t.
Today, was apparently another instance of me not dressing myself well for work. After I got to work I noticed that jeans were way too short (I took the term ‘high waters’ all the way to ‘flood plains’) and my top had stains on it. Lots of stains!! I’m really not sure how I missed seeing them all, expect for the fact I rarely look as I grab something out of the closet and there wasn’t much to chose from in there anyway. So I wore my jacket all day and accepted my fate. This meant I was going to go shopping in the near future.
Since I had to stop at the local store on the way home to pick up a few things for dinner I thought I would run through the clearance clothing section and see if I could find a new shirt there and be done with the dreaded task quickly and fairly painlessly. (Isn’t it cute that I had such optimism…..totally misplaced optimism, as it turns out, but cute nonetheless.) Instead I found that once again I am totally out of sync with the rest of society. What apparently passes for the current fashion fade is not something that I would ever consider wearing….even if it were given to me free! Granted the long flowing embroidered tops could be pretty….if you are tall (I’m not), willowy (I’m more round) and like that flow-y flower child kind of look (which I don’t).
I left the store pretty bummed to think that another shopping trip was in order, until I walked outside and noticed that the sun was shining, it was a balmy 45 degrees and I was able to be outside without a jacket. It made me giddy to think spring is on the way and I might have even done a little dance right there in the parking lot, because it doesn’t take much to make me happy. So I headed home to play with my goats in the sunshine and they don’t even care that my clothes are stained. Goats are good like that. <3 my goats!
