Last night I spoke to the PTO at Caroline’s school and it was officially my last speaking event of 2013. And there is something so nerve-wracking about standing in front of people that are part of your every day life because you know you have to see them again.
But I did it and everyone was so nice. I love our little neighborhood.
I hesitate to share this next bit of news because I don’t want to cause envy. But today I have both an eyebrow wax and a mammogram scheduled. It’s really everything I dreamed of when I was a little girl. Between that and my shoulder pain, the early 40’s are shaping up to be awesome.
Speaking of my shoulder pain, it’s so much better. It’s almost as if I had to speak it out loud for it to get better. Or maybe y’all just scared me straight with your stories of frozen shoulders and years of physical therapy and multiple steroid shots. I’ve decided that maybe I really did just sleep on it wrong.
I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned this, but Gulley and I eat lunch together almost every Tuesday. It’s a standing date and we hardly ever have to reschedule. Usually we meet at a restaurant in the neighborhood, but she’d asked me if I’d come over and help her clean out her closet so I picked up Popeye’s chicken for us and headed to her house.
(I feel that you might be interested to know that Popeye’s Chicken has a special two-piece Tuesday. Two pieces of chicken for ninety-nine cents. And that’s a deal because Popeye’s is the best of all the chicken.)
Anyway, we ate our chicken and caught up on current events and our thoughts on Olivia Pope and then went into Gulley’s bedroom to evaluate the state of her closet beginning with fall and winter clothes. And I got so tickled because it’s safe to say that I’ve seen her wear the majority of clothes she owns, but she would pull out various items, hold them close to her chest and say, “Before I show you this I need you to know that it’s really soft and I like this color.”
It was like clothes’ therapy. And apparently I’d be a terribly unsympathetic psychologist because I’d give it a once over, tell her I hadn’t seen her wear it in three years in spite of the fact that we see each other almost every day and move it towards the Goodwill pile.
We also discovered that I’m not the only one holding on to a Texas A&M sweatshirt from days of yore when people felt that a real sleeve needed to be at least ten inches wide.
What were we doing in the mid-90’s that required that level of sleeve girth? I don’t understand. Maybe it’s because that was back when we were young enough to move our shoulders around with wild abandon.
And then she brought out something that I can only describe as a tragedy.
This is a sweater I featured on Fashion Friday about a year ago.
Here’s the problem. I liked it because in the picture on the website it appeared to be tunic-length. Like you could wear it with leggings.
I think we can all see that no one should wear this sweater with leggings. It’s like one of those cropped sweaters we wore with our high-waisted jeans back in 1992.
After I finished laughing, I confirmed with Gulley that she had not inadvertently washed and then dried this sweater causing it to shrink beyond all decent knitwear. And she hadn’t. This is what it looked like when she took it out of the package.
So the question becomes why on earth did she keep it?
I’ll tell you her reason.
Because it was too hard to return it.
I don’t even understand.
Naturally I’ve now insisted that she run all new purchases by me and in the unfortunate event that she orders something else off the internet that comes in the size of a dust rag, I will help her pack it up and ship it back.
It’s just too bad we couldn’t take a little of the extra material from the sweatshirt sleeves and add it to the bottom of that sweater.
Except what it would gain in practicality, it would totally lose in any type of fashion appeal.