electric mist

barbie's dream skirt

I loathe shopping. I know that one sentence bans me from all of the girly traditions and the cooing over beautiful clothes or designer nail polishes or whatever it is that some grown women coo over (and they do). I love beautiful clothes, I just hate to shop. When I was a teenager, I was worse. Much worse. I would walk to the entrance of a store, scan it, and know immediately that there was nothing in there I wanted. Drove my mother completely around the bend. And she would insist I couldn't possibly know everything in the store from the displays / close racks, so she'd drag me in there and force me to go through each and every possibility. Which never worked, and not just because I was being stubborn. She'd never find anything in those stores, either. Of course, what really burned her cookies was when I would stand in a doorway, scan a room, see exactly what I wanted, walk over to it, check the size and that was it, I was ready to go. There were no such a thing as bonding over shopping for us. It was combat warfare from the moment we entered the mall until I agreed to buy something, damnit, and I don't think we generally spoke to each other on the trip home.

So you can imagine my delight in online shopping. I would buy everything online, if I could. Unfortunately, there is a party I must attend, and I very literally had nothing appropriate to wear and was having no luck last week with the online gig, so I thought I'd brave the mall.

There are not enough numbers in the heavens to count the ways I hate the mall.

I expected complete disaster. I cannot remember, and I'm searching all of the way back to pre-giving-birth days, when I went into a store and found something on the first try and it fit and worked for the occasion and didn't require me selling my first born to purchase it. But it happened today, which fried my brain. Totally fried it, which is the only explanation I can find for my deciding that, "Hey, that was cool, I wonder what's in the next store?"

I plead insanity.

I wandered through the mall and came to the conclusion that most of the rest of the stores had stocked their shelves and hangers according to this general breakdown:

1) Cheap slut
2) Expensive slut
3) Matronly crone

Why is there nothing fun, sexy, that isn't all about being see-through (hello, it's going to be in the 30s, I don't believe I'll be wearing see-through to a group party where my mom and dad will be, thank you). I am all about wearing stuff that looks sexy, but I really don't want to look like I charge by the hour, especially not a cheap hour. (Hey, I have standards.)

I did, however, wander into a larger store that had gorgeous things. And I found a flirty leather skirt there with a ruffle, and when I touched the leather, it was buttery soft and flouncy in just the right way and I was already imagining the cute little top I could pair with it and then I looked at the price and it was $350.00. For a skirt. And even though we make decent money, my brain instantly parsed that into a car payment and I didn't even think about taking it back to the dressing room.

That is just more depressing than not finding anything. I think I liked shopping better back when I hated it and refused to go. Because now, I keep thinking about that Barbie dream skirt.

Posted by toni at December 17, 2004 01:33 AM