Mondays

I look hideous today. I woke up in the middle of the night with what felt like a horrible hangover, which is weird, since I had hardly anything to drink last night and then I couldn't go back to sleep and then when I finally woke up for the day I still felt hungover and exhausted and miserable. I suppose this is what happens when instead of my usual healthy regimen of drinking too much at least one weekend night and lying around eating too much through both Saturday and Sunday, I get more or less enough sleep and go to work every day. Great.

No weekend = no laundry. Hangover (undeserved though it is) = not caring about clothes. Which all adds up to = I'm wearing a black skirt with an uneven ruffly hem and the Ugliest Shirt in the World. This is a little poly/cotton number I got at Wal Mart on a horrible crazed whim. It's black with a giant technicolor vaguely psychedelic pattern on it in various pinks and teals and yellows and it doesn't, somehow, hang quite right and the poly is more prevalent than the cotton, so it kind of slides around on my skin unhealthily. The neckline is unbecoming and it makes me look fat. Also, insane, but that pales in comparison with the fat factor. Why am I wearing it? I don't know; maybe I'm bewitched. Maybe because my children are gone: the only other times I've ever worn this shirt my children have kindly pointed out to me that it is eye searingly ugly and I should burn it immediately, because they will not be seen with me wearing it. I put my skirt on inside out too but I figured that out before I left the house, thank god. In an hour I have to go do a photo shoot in public and I'm dreading it. I think I need a sign that says "Ha ha! I am wearing this hideous shirt IRONICALLY! See my total hipness!?" While I was thinking about this sign it occurred to me that signs would be helpful in general and perhaps I should patent and market little head mounted plexiglass sign holders so that everyone could wear one explaining their bad fashion choices and/or their sexual availability or lack thereof. Like, I could also have one that says "Despite my atrocious taste in garments and appearing (okay, not just appearing - french fry and beer created) gigantic fatness factor, I am actually very attractive and, hey, single!" That would draw in some quality guys, no doubt.

So, uh, if you happen to see me wandering around today with a camera trying to look anonymous, which is hard in a shirt as ugly as this one, remember that I'm wearing it IRONICALLY. As a statement about the post modern service economy and the price of rice in China or something. I don't care what. Something terrifyingly intellectual, left wing and opaque. You figure it out. I would never just put on a shirt like this and go out the door in a miserable state of lost my keys I don't give a shit what the fuck I'm wearing god I hate Mondays-ness. I mean, really.

A Brief Poem of Woe About Tights

Why are there no tights for tall people?
Why do they lie so blatantly on labels, where they say
One size fits all
Because it does not
Unless I am not one of all
Which is possible but depressing.
And the labels say these tights will fit women up to 5'10" and 150 pounds
I am 5'10.5" and 160 pounds or okay, a little more, but who's counting?
Woe!

Woe to the tights manufacturers
And also unto the manufacturers of leggings
Particularly the cheap pair I tried to wear today
That had a butt built in
of all peculiar things
But were tight around the thighs, making me walk funny
And They Fell Down All Day.
Woe!

Woe to the small skinny short girls with their tights
Argyle and plum and striped, with skulls and paisleys and fun polka dots
Sneering short girls with groovy tights
that I will never have
If I am lucky I can find tights, maybe
Off black, a horrid misnomer for a strange and moldy grey, with control top
Oh control tops which should be regulated by the Geneva conventions
For they are cruel and unusual and make
The fat rise up to your neck
It has to go somewhere.
Woe!

Dog Walking Fashionista

The good people at Project Runway have been bugging me to reveal my dog walking fashion secrets. It's not surprising, really - I look so amazing at 7:00 am when I set out into the cold with the dogs. So here, for the first time ever, I will dissect my dogwalking wardrobe for the good of humanity.

The key ingredient is a pair of. . overalls. And not just any overalls. In the summer, I wear denim overalls that are not only a little too short but with (this is vital) a couple of missing buttons on the side, so that I achieve that really, seriously Appalachian local look. Usually, these overalls are combined with a giant plaid flannel shirt. Or two.

In the winter, I wear an outfit that some might say is a little too young for me. To them I say, phooey! If it's good enough for all the best dressed 6 month olds then it's good enough for me. In short, black fleece overalls. Baggy black fleece overalls. Baggy black fleece overalls that lack only a TV screen over the tummy to make the wearer look exactly like a goth teletubby. Or possibly Mindy. The first time I ever wore them (the only time I ever wore them to do anything besides walk dogs) my brother fell into hysterics. "Mindy!" he cried, "Mindy, where's Mork?" The overalls get even baggier around the middle if you wear them, as I did this morning, over gnome pajamas. The combination of the pajamas, the overalls and the many plastic bags in my pockets all work to give me that special diaper butt toddler look that is so hard to achieve for most adults. But who can tell? Because over all this must go a giant black sweater and, given weather like this morning, a 30 year old Army coat that has never been washed, a fur hat and mismatched mittens. And, oh yes, mismatched socks and white sneakers with shiny stripes.

I look special. Proud. As special and proud as anyone can be who is holding a bag of shit and being dragged down the street by two dogs. That's pretty damn special. And yes, I know, this post is useless without pictures. But there are no pictures, and if the gods are kind, there will never be pictures. Never, ever, ever.

Comfort Clothes

I just got home from work and a couple of post work birthday beers for a friend and then, ah, I got home and pulled off my work clothes and put on lovely, lovely sweatpants and giant ancient purple T-shirt and cozy hoodie. Ahhhhhhhh. There is nothing better than comfort clothes. I like my job, which makes me lucky and one of the few, even if after a month the novelty is beginning to wear off and I'm kind of back to that "working for a living sucks; jobs, meh" thing. Probably, though, I'd still be totally enthusiastic if it wasn't for the bra factor. When you work, if you are female, you must wear a bra. This is the law, and if you don't obey it the bra police will come and take you away to bra jail, or your kids will taunt you and frankly I'm not sure which is worse. At any rate, I went through a joyous braless year of unemployment, during which I sometimes looked at my laundromat pile of sweat pants and giant hideous antique T-shirts and thought "Uh oh. I have kind of let things go, haven't I?" but nonetheless kept right on wearing my lovely, cozy, repulsively grotesque clothing because, you know, what the fuck? I wasn't working and the special torture which is the brassiere is reserved for the gainfully employed - just a little thorn in their sides, bless their hearts.

Now, though, I'm back in that 9-5 world about which Dolly Parton and Loni Anderson in their glory have sung and acted so eloquently. (Huh. According to IMDB I'm misremembering Loni Anderson as having anything to do with the 9 - 5 franchise. Well, go figure. I had this large breasted vision in my head - kind of terrifying, actually.) Now, Dolly needs a bra; I grant you that. I could see where support might be vital there. But I, who am artistically under endowed, as once semi-affectionately explained by my evil ex: "You know. Artist tits. All you artsy intellectual girls got them tiny titties," I, unlike Dolly, do not in actual fact need a bra for anything but camouflage. Yet I must wear one, because you just have to when you work, or else it's wrong, and against the American way, or something evil whose depths I have never plumbed, because I give in and put the damn thing on every fucking morning. And it's the fastest thing to leave my body as soon as I get home again.

Alas, My Underwear

All day I had to struggle with a terrible truth: my underwear were about to fall down around my ankles. Yes, like the unfortunate models in the work of the immortal Art Frahm, I was in imminent danger, all day, of having my underwear drop around my ankles while I was struggling with my bag of celery. Except for the celery part. I skipped the celery part. It's a terrible feeling to be a properly dressed semi career woman: running properly late in the morning, clutching your proper plastic cup of coffee and large purse and your properly plastic grocery bagged low calorie lunch and then, suddenly, realizing that your undies are heedlessly headed southward. There's a sinking feeling that accompanies that sensation and it says: oh shit, I'm going to have to be pulling up my panties all goddamn day. This is going to suck.

Through a miracle or perhaps that utter heedlessness of proper public behavior which leads me to be completely able to stop and hitch up my undies in the middle of a public street, though, the ultimate Art Frahm sad fate did not befall me. For one thing, I avoided the post office, because you know that would have been tempting fate. I'm still sad, though, because I loved these underwear, my shiny Wal Mart pale purple with red ladybugs and improbably green vines bikini panties, and now, alas, alack, they are dead. They are no more. They are ex, departed, late, pining for the fjords and metaphorically nailed to the perch (give it up. There's no joke you can make there that I haven't already thought of and rejected.)

So raise a glass to the dearly departed, y'all, as I plan to dump them unceremoniously in the trash. Bid them farewell. And join me in my glee as I realize that this totally means I can go and buy new underwear without the slightest shred of guilt.