Dusted

It's been cold in the office. I reported it at work, but the people who sit around me would rather wear a jacket than get the heat fixed, so I'm freezing. And then I saw this sweater online. Duster length.

Perfect! It'll keep my legs warm, too.

You know in the back of my head, I remembered that models are tall and that I am not tall. But for some reason I was sure the duster length would be just fine on me since it wasn't too long on the model. I know, I know.

Well, the duster came today and I excitedly put it on. It's different than my usual style and that was part of the excitement. And as you might have guessed, it was too long for me, almost reaching my ankles. Dusters are supposed to hit, what? Mid-calf?

Okay, I thought, this is still okay. I'm not tripping over anything. And then I looked in the mirror. My super cool duster sweater looks like a bathrobe. In no small part because of the length.

Crushing disappointment.

And of course, because it's a sweater, there's no way to cut it down to make it shorter. I've decided not to return it. I need something warm for at home, too. I just never expected to have a knit bathrobe.

Old T-Shirts

As I'm writing this, I'm wearing a long-sleeve T-shirt that is so old, it's threadbare in places and has holes on the sleeves from the elbow down. I have new long-sleeve Tees, but I never wear them.

It's a similar situation with my short sleeve T-shirts. I have two really old ones that are thin and one has holes under the arms that I keep accidentally sticking my arm through when I pull it on. I do have newer Tees, and while I wear these when I go to the gym, when I'm at home, it's my old favorites. I can't wear these in public, though.

I know why I love the old Tees so much--they're so soft and the necklines sag. I can't stand anything against my throat and tug at anything that feels close until it droops.

Do T-shirts get softer the more they're washed? If I throw my new ones in the laundry every week for a month or two, will they become as soft as my old, holey ones? Or do I have to wear them to make them soft? Is there something about the human body that makes the fabric become so buttery? And why the heck aren't T-shirts soft from the minute you buy them?

Until I can figure out the answers to these questions, I'm going to wear my not-in-public Tees around the house.

The Dress Shirt Saga

My dad hasn't attended many dress up occasions since moving to Georgia, but with one looming on the horizon, he discovered he couldn't button the necks on his existing dress shirts. He'd need to buy a new one.

We went to a store's website and I found him exactly what he wanted--a short-sleeved, button-down shirt in white. It was $29.99 and he was all like I've never spent that much money for a shirt. And so he wouldn't buy it. We found another shirt that was on clearance for $17.77 and he decided he wanted that one.

Only when it arrives, they sent a long-sleeve version (which we definitely didn't order. I double checked) and it had no collar at all. In our defense, it was impossible to see that on the website and I only saw that was indeed what we ordered when I blew the picture up to a huge size.

Now we have to make a trip up to the store to return it and my dad has to pick out a shirt he likes in person. While I'm on a tight deadline. Awesome.

I left him in the men's department and went to grab a couple of other things I needed while we were there. When I come back, he's complaining that they have no button-down shirts in his size in either long sleeve or short sleeve and now we have to go to another store. Gah! But as we're headed for the registers, I spot a rack of button-down long sleeve dress shirts and all was right in the world.

And then I washed the shirt for him.

It came out of the dryer wrinkled even though it was immediately taken out and hung up. It's cotton. Cotton wrinkles. Now it needs to be ironed.

The good thing is that my mom stopped ironing my dad's shirts when I was in high school and he had to learn to iron his own then. Thank you, Mom! The bad news is that he hasn't had to iron a shirt since he moved to Atlanta and now he's asking me questions. I'm like, I don't buy clothes that need to be ironed. Don't ask me. For real. I've put shirts back that I love because I will not iron.

He's just lucky I own an iron. And the only reason I do is that I bought curtains for my house and needed to iron them before I could put them up. Otherwise we'd be shopping for an iron now, too. I hope we can find the iron because we've moved since I bought it and I can only guess that it's upstairs. Somewhere.

Color is in the Eye of the Beholder

Because of our office move at work, I'm sitting near a new department--one I have to walk through every time I want to use the restroom. One morning while I was walking past their cubes, I noticed one of the women was wearing cute shoes. A second later, I shrugged and thought, Too bad they're brown. Then I noticed she was wearing a brown shirt and light brown slacks.

Being a goofball writer, I immediately started running down the color path. I realized that I never wear brown. I remember once upon a time I owned a super cute brown shirt, but I think that was donated years ago.

That got me thinking some more about how I don't wear pastels either. I do own a few shirts that fit this niche, but they're buried in my closet. I also have some taupe shoes hiding somewhere and some brown ones (unless I donated those before I moved from Minnesota), but I usually wear black shoes or tennis shoes. On the sneakers, the brighter the better.

Actually, almost all my clothes are super bright or black. Fuchsia--my personal most favorite color ever--dominates my wardrobe (and my knitting); aqua holds a close second. I also have bright green, violet, other shades of bright pink (again, totally my fave!). Seriously, the brighter my clothes are, the happier I am. I wear my brightest of brights either on Monday to cheer myself up or on Friday to celebrate the upcoming weekend. I tend not to wear it in the middle of the week.

I can even manage a few jewel tones, especially purple, but I don't love it the way I love the bright, happy colors.

After I thought through this, I wondered if I was unusual and realized that I probably was. A lot of people must like beige and brown and taupe. I find those colors absolutely boring. I'm sure people who enjoy the earth tones probably find my clothing choices garish. I guess what colors are considered exciting are in the eye of the beholder.

Closet Cleanup

There are a few things that are really hard for me to get rid of including books, shoes, and clothes. When I moved from Minnesota, I did donate a ton of books--over 2500--and a pretty good amount of clothes, although not too many shoes. I didn't donate enough clothes, however, and my closet here in Georgia was bursting at the seams.

Oh, I meant to get rid of clothes. I have stuff that's frayed, stuff that has holes in it, stuff I bought and ended up never liking enough to wear. I even had clothes with tags still on them that I'd never worn and the odds were I was never going to wear them.

Clearly, it was time to tackle the closet and part with some clothes.

The items that had holes or were worn were easy to discard. Barely a hesitation. You're probably wondering why I didn't get rid of them immediately. Four of the shirts were total favorites of mine back before they'd become frayed. I wore them constantly and I'd developed an attachment to them. I kept them with the thought that I could wear them around the house on the weekends. I never did. The ones with the holes? I have no clue.

With the easy choices finished, I moved into trying things on. Did I like the color? Did I like the style? Would I ever wear it? If the answer to any of those questions was no, it went in the donation pile. Right now I have two of the super large black trash bags full of clothes to go to charity.

I'm embarrassed to admit that I discovered clothes I'd forgotten I owned and that I found new things I could wear. It was almost like buying new stuff. ;-) It's also embarrassing to admit that even with the large amount of clothes I got rid of, my closet is still full. I didn't quite get through everything, though. I basically did one half of my closet plus a little on the other side. I need to go back in on some other weekend and tackle the other side.

Also in the future is pruning the clothes out of my dressers and getting rid of some of the shoe collection, although I will admit that very few shoes will be leaving my house. :-) And with the new clothes I've discovered, I need to rearrange my closet. Sigh. That doesn't sound even remotely fun.

I think I'll bask in my accomplishment a little longer and ignore the future projects for now.

Dealing With a Glamor Girl

There's nothing like starting out the day by oversleeping. I know I heard the alarm, but I must have hit the off button instead of the snooze. I woke up at 4:40 and had to run. Then, as if that wasn't enough, I go to the computer in my office while I'm waiting for coffee and a spider crawls down the center of my screen! Ugh! I hate spiders!

I looked around, found something to kill him with, and squished him--or I tried to anyway. I kind of missed and then I worried that he was on me, like maybe he got on my sleeve or something. I stand up and I'm shaking out my clothes, trying to find him. Then I slid the keyboard forward on the tray and there he was. He didn't stay there long. :-)

I think I would have been more panicked if I'd been awake, but I was still pretty groggy at that point. That spider was some weird color, though, and moving pretty sluggishly. I wonder what was up with that?

This--fortunately--is only the second spider I've had to kill in my house since I moved in. Or maybe the third. They've been few and far between, though, and that's a good thing. :-) The office is one of two rooms I haven't had a chance to finish unpacking yet, but now I want to. I'm sure if everything were put away, there'd be no spiders.

BTW, I did make it to work on time--barely--and now I'm counting the minutes till I can go home again.

Now that that's out of the way, I can talk about what I'd planned to blog on this morning. My heroine, Maia, is into clothes. Sigh. I should have had an inkling from the first scene I wrote, but I didn't figure it out that fast.

Despite what Stacy and Clinton say on What Not To Wear, I firmly believe that comfort is more important than style and I've been fortunate enough to have heroines who really didn't focus on their clothes. Until now.

Maia is one of those casually elegant women, someone who could put on shorts and a T-shirt and still look as if she could attend the opera. One of my cousins is like this. When I was in my early teens, I tried to emulate her, but unfortunately, I'm one of those people who can take forever getting dressed up for some fancy do and ten minutes later look as if I'm going to a baseball game. I've learned to accept this, it's just who I am, but now I need a crash course on clothes.

Last night, I went searching online for Maia's next outfit. I need pictures! Not just of the clothes, but of someone wearing the clothes, and that's where the difficulty comes in. A lot of the websites I visited--Land's End, LL Bean, Gap, Talbot, etc--show the clothes, but most of the pictures don't have anyone wearing them. Or if they showed a model wearing an outfit, I'd click on the picture to see the whole look in a bigger .jpg and it would zero in on only the shorts. I need to see the top with the shorts, darn it!

This story takes place during a hot, humid August time frame and that's also playing into the type of clothes. I figure dressy shorts and casual tops that still manage to look dressy on her. Maia would never wear the short-shorts that so many of the sites were showing, not in front of another person, and since Creed has invaded her home, that rules that style out. Maia prefers classic styles, timeless, nothing that's a fad or too trendy. She also isn't much for bright colors, she prefers neutral, earth tones. Sigh. I like bright, so I'd see something I'd like, but she'd be unenthused.

So does anyone have any good sites to see clothes? With women wearing them? I'm sure I'll be doing more searches for outfits as I move forward and I need resources.