Whine and Roses

Shopping for a Mother of the Groom dress has turned out to be one of the silliest and biggest challenges I have faced in a long time.

That says some pretty pointed things about the quality of my life, I know, but there ya go. You don't always get to pick the things that are stressing you out.

I found a really lovely champagne (retailese for "we can charge more if we don't call it beige") three piece suit yesterday. I wasn't thrilled with it, but I took it by Mama's to show her. I put it on and she and Daddy both just loved it, and then Mama started going through all her wonderful old jewelry to find exactly the right earrings and, well, I was sorta jazzed by the time I left their house.

When I brought it home, Henry said he liked it fine. Thomas and Luke (who just happened to be home for a brief visit) thought it was just fine.

And Jackie thought it was fine, too.

But there is that word -- FINE. I woulda DIED for that word as it regards how I look in anything just a few years ago, but I was hoping for something more than FINE. I was hoping I'd have to look for smelling salts because I looked so drop-dead in it that folks passed out.

Yes, ME. The one who rarely bothers with makeup. The one who doesn't care 99% of the time what she looks like -- just hand me clean clothes that zip that I can sit down in and I am good to go.

But this VAIN THING has come over me, and I am truly hating it, for lots of reasons.

First -- WHO CARES??? It's not ME getting married. I did my part 25 years ago by pushing when instructed.

Second -- FRIENDS OF MINE ARE HURTING FOR LOTS OF REAL REASONS, and this obsession of mine makes me feel silly and stupid and inane and childish. These are not the traits of a Woman Who Matters.

Third -- Shopping today for a dress (which was a pluperfect disaster), I saw so many women who (there is no un-self-centered way to say this, so excuse me) might very well have been looking at me thinking, "I wish I were her size. Everything in my life would be better if I were."

I mean, I saw one woman who had to have weighed close to 400 pounds. She had a little girl with her who was misbehaving, and the little girl ran off to hide from her mother and taunted her, because she KNEW her mother couldn't catch her.

It was the saddest damn thing, and I just ached for that woman.

So -- I came home and griped to my friends and had my little pity party, and it's done with.

Remind me of that when I try to find the perfect haircut. Until them, I'm gonna settle in with a glass of something that's fermented.