The Dress

A blog request! (Love you Gretchen). This is actually an email I sent out to a few friends years ago (Emily was 5 and Vance was 2 at the time). It is the story of finding my favorite black dress...

First, I re-thought telling you the story about Vance being sick. Upon further reflection I realized that I was as grossed out by the scene as I was amazed and that you can take a lot more gross-out from your own kids than hearing about others, and I don't want to put you through that. Let me just say I have a red angora sweater that is toast.

Anyway, about the dress. It is, by the way, THE dress. We were out looking for a couple of new dresses for Emily to wear to church. It seems she's got a closet full of dresses that are now way too short. Sure my grew-up-in-the-Depression Grandma would tack 9 rows of lace around the bottom and call it a new size, but we hit Burlington Coat Factory. We found nothing for Emily (the stores are full of chiffon-y, sleeveless dresses as if its not 40 degrees outside.), but as we were leaving I saw it, the perfect little black dress.

(Cue the music. I think "Tonight" from West Side Story should do the trick. "tonight, tonight, there's only you tonight ....Today all day I had a feeling a miracle would happen. I know now I was right ...)

I'm not a clothes horse, since the perfect outfit for any occasion I might attend is an Old Navy T and jeans, but I've always had in the back of my mind that if I ever found the perfect little black dress I would buy it, even if it wasn't on sale for $6.99. And there it was. Beautiful quality, the perfect length (to the bottom of my knee-cap because, even if I were svelte as a gazelle, I would still have little fat pockets just above my knees. Oh, cruel genetics!), the perfect lines, the perfect silhouette, the perfect fabric, and the perfect cleavage (just the right amount of "Hello, Nurse!" without having to worry about how you're moving or leaning, you know?). And they had a size 8! And its an Anne Klein marked down to $40 (from $198 no less)!

So we bounce off to the dressing room (of course, all 3 of us. Thank Heaven for handicap dressing rooms.) I try it on and it absolutely hangs on me. So, when the saleslady asks I get to say "could I get this in a size 6?" There's no 6, so she brings me the 4. And it fits! OK, I know I'm not a size 4. And you know I'm not a size 4. But the people who pay big bucks to buy clothes from Anne Klein and other more expensive designers pay to call themselves whatever size they want. So I put it on and - you know that scene in Cinderella where she's putting on the first dress and the birds are dancing around her and all of nature is singing? Yeah, it would have been just like that if Vance hadn't been standing between me and the mirror saying "Aarrgh! I a pirate!" over and over.

So the dress and I made a pact that it would come home with me if I did not gain one single pound before I wore it (little does it know that the Double-Stuffed Oreos and I had also made a pact that I would eat them all. The Oreos fought for All-In-One-Sitting, but I held out for 4 or 5 at a time standing at the cabinet with my back to the kitchen door so the kids don't catch me. Plus the Oreos are downstairs in the kitchen cabinet and the dress is upstairs in the closet, so they never have to know about one another, right?)

So, our anniversary is in two weeks (although our wonderful occassional sitter will be out of town, so we're celebrating the following Friday) and we have to go somewhere nicer than Chili's so I can wear THE dress. Oh, and I have told Eric how much I Love this dress so he knows that he had better make a big ol' deal out of it when he sees me in it (no need to let the boy dig a hole for himself by not appropriately recognizing the awesome power of actually finding a dress you feel great in. I Love him more than is mortally possible. In fact I could spend days telling you all the ways in which he is the most wonderful man in all creation. But he is occasionally just a guy, and we can't take a chance of that being one of those times, you know?)

Now, what am I going to do with this hair?

Love to all. - Val