I love dresses. I like pretty, girly dresses with gauzy, flowy skirts. Fortunately for me, Joey likes to buy me dresses too. (Muahahaha) After college there was definitely a several year time period where I flatly refused to wear dresses, stockings, or anything even remotely associated with them. I have since, however, grown out of that and appreciate a good dress or skirt on a regular basis. I think they’re fun.
If I could pick an era to transplant myself into, it would either be 1875 (on the Iowa prairie…I used to be a historical interpreter at Living History Farms in DSM and it was awesome) or the 1950s. I would kick June Cleaver’s butt.
Seriously, I love the 50s. I think it sounds positively delightful to wear cutie little dresses and heels while vacuuming my carpet, baking cookies, and wearing a girly apron. I would totally be That Mom.
But back to 2008.
Joey and I rode our bikes to NorthPark, locked them up outside of Dillard’s and went in to the Gap. I told him how Laura first thought I took Thunder into the mall last time I rode over, and we both had a good laugh envisioning ourselves wheeling our bikes past the Clinique counter and through the mall.
Surprisingly, we ran into Danny and Laura while in the Gap. We blocked traffic for a few minutes while we chatted. (This lady pushing a double stroller gave me the filthiest look, although I’m not sure why she thought that if she pushed her stroller right up behind us – we were not facing her, mind you — that we’d somehow sense her presence and move. In any case, I let this one roll.)
I then showed Joey the dress that I remembered being very cute when I tried it on. He looked at it kind of uncertainly.
“Trust me,” I told him.
“Okfine,” he replied.
On the way to the dressing room, he got sidetracked. “Who cares about that dress, I want to buy you this dress!” He pulled this gray, billowy, strapless dress off the rack. It was super cute. And not on sale.
“You cannot buy me that dress, now come see what these look like.” I pulled him into the dressing room, but not before we had snagged the gray dress to try on “just in case”.
The original green dress looked horrible.
Like a sack of potatoes.
“You, um…it doesn’t really…I can’t….” he fumbled.
“I know,” I said. “It looks like…well, it looks bad.” I turned around and looked at it from a different angle, “I don’t really remember it looking so shapeless,” I mumbled.
“Yeah, try on the other size,” Joey suggested.
The other size was worse, if you can believe it.
“OK, now try the gray one,” he prompted.
I tried the gray one. It was irritatingly pretty and flowy, and girly, and just about everything that is right with a summer dress. It even had several flowers on it. Not floral print, mind you, but several flowers. This is important – Jenna does not wear floral print dresses.
“I want to buy you that dress,” Joey said, proudly.
“Why are we always buying me clothes?” I wailed. I mean, I like it but I get seminary-wife-guilt whenever we spend money. It’s annoying.
Joey explained his rationale, which seemed questionable, but we exited the dressing rooms carrying the gray dress and the cardie. The cardie was way too big and they didn’t have my size anywhere in the store. Except…
“Can you pull that mannequin down?” Joey asked a salesdude.
The one on the mannequin was the correct size. AND it had a hole in it. A hole which was easily fixable.
“Thirty percent off, but you can’t return,” said salesdude.
Done.
We walked up to the register, paid for the dress and cardie, and exited the Gap. I went home and fixed the hole in my discounted cardie, Joey finished memorizing his verse (which he said spot-on last night before we went to bed – yay honey!) and we took Henry for a walk.
I have been talking in my sleep lately. Three times in the last two nights. Last evening I said:
“I can’t wait to wake up because then I can wear my new dress”
and sometime after 2:00 I said, frantically,
“No one will go to your websites, Joey, because no one knows their addresses!”
(But I’ll post about his Web Dominance later. There’s really nothing to say about it yet because it is as you have just read: two websites purchased with nothing yet on them. Boring. Lame.)
The dress is just a little bit bland, but since the tulle is delicate whatever I choose to go with it I want to also feel light and not bulky. Also there’s the added pressure of Analie looking back in 15 years and being all, MOM WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?! when she looks at this picture.
