dressing up

On Monday, I found out I needed a dress for Saturday. I hate dress shopping. I have awful t-shirt tan lines, my legs are winter white from wearing jeans all summer and I don't want to wear a dress. So I went dress shopping with a chip on my shoulder. I went to Ross and Marshall's because they are all we have around here and I didn't want to drive an hour to get a dumb dress. There is never anything wearable at either Ross or Marshall's and this was no exception. So I sucked it up, drove the hour and went to Macy's. I eased into the awful evening by trying on a skirt. Skirts are better than dresses. The one I tried on was loose and flowy with ruffly tendrils hanging off of it. On me, it looked like something black that had crawled out of a swamp so I went on to the next one. It was a brown, knee length knit dress with a hoody. I had picked it out for comic relief, and indeed it worked. Standing there in my flip flops, white legs exposed, hood up, I looked like a Ewok. I swear I almost stopped with that one. It would be hilarious to show up to a formal event looking like an Ewok.

Responsibility took over at some point and I went for the next one. It was cute and fit well, but I couldn't get the zipper (located under my arm) to go up all the way. Something about twisting enough to reach it made it impossible to do up. Besides which, I look terrible in black. My reddish skin stands out a lot and I look flustered and morbid all at one. The next several dresses were all black and all had the same effect. Terrible.

So then I went skulking around through the store glaring at dresses as I collected an ever growing array hanging over my arm. Finally a clerk asked me if I was okay and I said "Yes...I mean no. I have to buy a dress and I hate this." She grabbed a few items, ushered me off into a dressing room and then acted like my big sister bringing me piles of clothes and handing them to me in the dressing room. She commented on the colors, the slimming effects, my need for nylons, instant sunless tanner and sexy shoes.

We finally agreed on a purple printed dress with well cut sleeves and a princess waistline. It was the best we were going to do. I brought it home, tried it on with nylons and sexy shoes and found myself asking a very important question which was "Why do dresses always look so much better in a dressing room at a store?" It must be something with the lights. At home, the dress kind of looked like a sack. Which brought me to the second important question which was " Why are all dresses made out of knit fabrics?" It's a terrible idea to do that. They end up looking like sacks.

Despairing, I looked in my closet and found an unexpected coupling of a ruffly skirt and floral top that got hung up next to each other after doing the laundry. I put them on. They looked a million times better than the stupid dress I had on. So I will be returning the dress next time I have two hours to blow driving to and from Modesto.

Note to self: Never buy a dress again...Ever...for any reason.