Not very ladylike

bought a dress today. This isn't a shocking event for most women, obviously, but anyone that knows me would be bowled over to hear of my purchase. Why? Well, maybe it has something to do with the fact that I have been doing my best to stay out of dresses for going on twenty years. My mom re-tells the story often enough: by first grade, I was fighting her tooth and nail over wearing skirts, dresses, jumpers, stockings and knee-high socks with those atrocious ruffles and bits of lace around the tops. Finally she threw in the towel, figuring it wasn't a battle worth fighting. And so I skipped happily off to school each day, wearing leggings and pants and jeans with t-shirts and sweatshirts and hoodies and sweaters.

And here I am, going on twenty-four years of age, and I'm still like that. Open up my closet and drawers and you'll find lots of jeans, casual tops, and stylish/trendy tops that would barely fit under the umbrella of "business casual". I live in sneakers in the winter, and flip-flops in the summer.

Don't get me wrong, I do have some "business casual" things stowed away in my closet: a few pairs of black pants, a few pairs of pinstripe pants, three pairs of khaki pants, two shirts comprised of red sweaters stitched to a white long-sleeved cuffed and collared shirt (the khaki pants and red shirts were perfect for my Target days, which was my original reason for buying them), and I think a skirt or two. Or three. There's also a dress purchased at Fashion Bug, years ago, on clearance -- $5. It's simple, short-sleeved, v-necked, done in colors of very pale gold, darker gold, with a swirling pattern of leaves and swirls topped with random sprinklings of gold glitter. It's perfect for an outing on a fall day, but not much else.

I am horribly ill-equipped for anything that requires "dressing up". For my grandmother's funeral, I wore a dark, gun metal gray skirt and a thick, black sweater. But I didn't have a slip, or even freaking PANTYHOSE. I had to go out to Wal-mart at 11pm on the night before Christmas Eve for PANTYHOSE. I stood in line for AN HOUR AND A HALF to pay for said pantyhose.

Last week Dan sprung a last minute (as in, I was told that morning) invitation to some sort of gathering for some employees of his company. He mentioned dinner and an open bar at a restaurant that had the word "tavern" in it. Heh. I paired a nice top (one of the ones that barely qualifies as business casual) with dark denim jeans and sneakers (sneakers!) and off we went (he was in dark denim jeans and a green and white striped polo shirt).

We arrive. It's a catering affair. We walk in and we're clearly sticking out like two sore thumbs. Out of the fifty or so people that gathered there that evening, we were two of maybe five or six people that wore anything less than dresses, skirts, suits and high heels. The other underdressed schmucks made a beeline for our table when they saw our very casual attire. So we hung together, clung together, and felt idiotic together.

So today, having that incident in the back of my mind, I decided to buy a dress at Target. I liked it on the hanger, and thought it would be nice to have something a little dressy for spring (it's a spaghetti-strap style dress, but a shrug or cardigan could easily convert it to April-appropriate attire!) and summer. I'm kind of set now... I have that autumnish dress I described earlier, several pairs of black and pinstriped pants, and some business casual tops that go nicely with all of them.

So, will I wear it for no reason whatsoever? Probably not, except to shock the pants off of Dan. But it is pretty, and so in my closet it goes. :)