Parental Guidance Required

I was in Target with Anna the other day (no, I don't know why I repeatedly subject myself to this sort of torture), waiting while she tried on assorted garments in the dressing room. I was wandering around the juniors section in a sort of existential state of despair over the porn star look for teens when - miracle of miracles - I spotted it! A skirt, a full skirt, that went below the knees! Complete with an attractive smocked waistband and ruffled hem! I rushed over to check out the price, and there on the tag were the disappointing words - tube dress. As in, most emphatically not a mid-length skirt. (I would like to note here that, in the store, this garment appears much shorter than it does in the picture in that link. I think they had a midget model it.)

Crushed, I returned to the dressing room, where I held a scintillating conversation with my teen daughter (formerly known as "Beloved") that went like this:

"Why can't I buy this shirt?"
"Because it makes you look slutty. You want to look slutty?" (note: do not ask your teen daughter a rhetorical question)
"Yes." Only she said it "Ye-eh-es", the extra syllables subbing in for what she really wanted to say, which was "Yes, of course I do, anything not to dress like you. Duh."

She tries again:
"Well, how about this shirt?"
"How about we go home and I make you some clothes out of our curtains?"

Oh, poor Anna. Don't worry, honey - in a few short years you will be away at college and free to prance around in your underwear, if that is what your heart desires. In the meantime, your loving parents will make sure you at least give a good impression of being a young girl who respects herself enough not to be shoving her boobs and upper thighs in people's faces. We're sort of old-fashioned that way.

Nightmare in Target

I went with Anna to Target today (whoa! big surprise there!), because her very existence depended on her finding something new to wear and my very existence depended on my tracking down a certain skirt I spotted on Big Mama's Fashion Friday - a skirt that would actually reach almost mid-calf. I don't know about the rest of you, but I don't think most women in their forties look too good in skirts that show their knees, or that wrinkled skin above the knees, or (heaven forbid) their thighs. Just sayin'...

So, anyway, I found the skirt (miracles never cease, and if you go looking for it, please note that the sizes are way off - size down) and headed for the dressing room, where the old ladies in charge look at me suspiciously every single time I walk in there with (gasp!) clothing to try on. Entering my little cubicle (it's time to start the scary music now), I did not realize, as I prepared to try on the Skirt of Wonders, that there were 2 (count them, 2) full-length mirrors in the room, facing each other. (Crescendo)

Folks, I believe this room would be perfect for concerned relatives to hold Weight Watchers interventions for family fatties. I was treated to a full, uncensored view of the backs of my legs and butt (and boy, am I grateful for this blog's "no-photo" policy); 6 pregnancies have not been kind to the veins in my legs (to put it very mildly), and apparently, no one has notified the backs of my thighs that I am near my goal weight. In desperation (and avoidance), I moved my eyes upward for relief and saw the backs of my arms - only, they weren't my arms, they were some old lady's arms. If I hadn't been half-naked, I would have run out of there screaming at that point.

Where did all those folds of skin above my elbows come from? Was there some sort of exercise I was supposed to be doing all these years to prevent those? Why didn't somebody tell me?

The skirt looked nice, though. Thank goodness for clothes - it is beyond me why anyone would want to live in a nudist colony. Oh, and you ladies know that trick where you sort of pull the skin up on your thighs to see if you'd look better with a little liposuction? It makes the veins stand out more.

At that point, if I hadn't had my new haircut to save some tattered shreds of my self-esteem, impaling myself on one of those cheap plastic hangers would probably have seemed like a good idea....

I would like to stop discussing this now. Instead, I will wonder why, when David and I finally visited our (grossly neglected) community garden plot yesterday evening and discovered a veritable jungle of weeds, the words "poison ivy" never popped into my head. Because I am certainly thinking them now, as I sit up at 4 AM, blogging and trying to ignore the way my forearms are itching. I'm not sure weeding that plot by hand will be the way to go this year. I'm thinking a flamethrower may be a reasonable alternative. That is, after we subdue the growth a bit with a (long-handled) machete. And some napalm...

Bad Timing

We made it back home. The trip was fairly easy, if you don't mind a sleepy 2-year-old screaming for her bed the last 50 miles or so.

I went out for a couple of hours this afternoon with my daughter Anna to argue over clothing choices. When we got back, we found Larry halfway through ripping up my kitchen floor. Apparently it slipped his mind that I had promised to hold a Pampered Chef fund raiser in our house 2 days from now (and I had told him this morning). A Pampered Chef fund raiser - you know, the kind where someone comes over and cooks a meal in your kitchen, a kitchen presumably not cluttered with chunks of torn-up linoleum and particle board. A kitchen, let's say, that has a floor. This is a problem, and I am not sure how to solve it, other than making Larry stay up all night until he finishes whatever project he has in mind.

It's not as if there were no other projects to work on in this house, you know.

I bought Anna 2 outfits that aren't too slutty. That was the best I could do. I wanted to get her 3 outfits, but there weren't any more items in the juniors department that would be deemed acceptable from my middle-aged, conservative, "shouldn't that only be seen by your husband?" perspective. I thought I was being generous in labeling the 2 outfits we got "barely decent." And Anna showed remarkable restraint by not calling me a "stupid old lady," as she has done in the past at this particular clothing establishment. Progress, folks; we're making progress.

I have to go to bed early - my morning walking companion has threatened to drag me bodily out of bed if I don't meet her outside tomorrow at 6:30 AM (I've been slacking off, I admit). I think she means well, but it sure doesn't feel like it.