I’ve been trying to channel my inner Stacy & Clinton lately. You know – the hosts of What Not to Wear? I love that show. They take some poor unsuspecting woman and, without her knowledge, video tape her wearing her yoga pants and holey jeans and then bring her to New York City to show her how to shop for more attractive clothes. They even give her $500 to shop with. Dang – I need to get on that show!

It’s not unusual for them to have some poor bedraggled, stay-at-home mom on the show. She still wears her maternity pants because they are comfortable. She doesn’t own a shirt without a stain on it. The only dressy clothes in her closet are from some cousin’s wedding a few years back and they don’t even come close to a flattering fit.

I’m not in that bad of shape. BUT the common theme you hear from Stacy & Clinton is that you don’t have to dress like no one is going to see you. Comfort doesn’t have to mean slouchy/dumpy/ugly. And then they dress her up in fantastic jeans, pointy toe shoes and send her on her way.

To ruin her clothes when her kids spill paint on them or splash mud on them.

I’ve been making a decent effort in the past few months to try to dress… well not like I’m just working from home all day. I even bought some jewelry people. And I wear it! Just yesterday I wore a cute layered top (with a v-neck because it’s more flattering), some boyfriend jeans and a long funky necklace. (but no pointy toe shoes) But here’s my dilemma. There are some days, yes Stacy & Clinton even days where I leave the house, when I have to wear kind of slouchy clothes.

Take today for example. I’m going to help in K’s classroom. Now normally when I’m working in the school I do indeed try to dress with some tiny bit of style (still no pointy toe shoes, those things hurt). But today… well today I’m going to be chopping pumpkins and scooping out pumpkin guts and I’m going to be doing it in a room of 5th graders… some of whom are boys.

I could wear my orange long sleeve shirt with my new cream colored scarf. Maybe some long earrings. It would be both cute and Halloween festive. BUT seriously… pumpkin guts!! So I’m wearing my old levis and a long sleeve IU t-shirt. I’ll probably even wear gym shoes.

Stacy & Clinton would be soooo disappointed.

This might actually have to become a new section, as this is not the first time I have had to confess to making a fashion statement when I wasn’t wanting to…

In the vein of trying new things, I have decided to give acupuncture a whirl – why not? I have jumped out of a perfectly good plane and lived to tell about it, why not stick a few needles in for good measure?

When I went on Saturday for my first session, I thought I was being smart by wearing a tank top sundress. For some reason, I thought they only did outer areas of your body and every mental image I had of people getting acupuncture showed them in clothes (yes, I realize now that my mental image library is not to be relied on!). It wasn’t until the doctor told me to lift my dress up to my chin that I realized I had on black cotton panties with pink doggies embroidered on them – very appropriate for a five year old… not so cool on a 37 year old. Oops.

Sometimes I buy clothes in the little Girls department and cut the tags out so no one will know.

Am I secretly afraid that I’m going to show up somewhere wearing the same thing as someone’s eight year old daughter? Yes. Of course I am.

But before you go judging me, let me just say that I’m short, I have a short torso, narrow shoulders, and most women’s clothes just don’t fit. I usually shop in the Juniors department since it‘s less embarrassing. But, Girls clothes are cheaper than Women‘s or Juniors, and thanks to the childhood obesity epidemic, I’ve found that a size large in Girls is usually bigger than a size small in Juniors. So, sometimes I buy my clothes from Limited Too or Toys R Us. Suck it. You would do it too if you were me. (or maybe you already do…)

I’ve been looking for a new dress for Easter with no luck. So, the other day, I left Sam home with daddy and went to yet another store to see if I could find anything. The baby came along with me.

I’m beginning to think that little girls are the only demographic that the stores cater to at Easter. The women’s/juniors department only had 3 dresses. One was a polyester floral grandma uniform. And the other two were a tragic, identical pair of man-made-fiber wrap dresses– one in black and the other in red. They were hideous and not very Easter-y.

So, I checked out the girls dept. and there were dresses galore. Some too juvenile and frilly, and some too short and geared for prosti-tots. Not much there that I could see myself in. Then I found a dress that I didn’t particularly love, but I also didn’t hate it and it looked like something an adult would wear. It had a fitted halter bodice, a full, A-symmetric skirt, and was a dark dusty pink in a nice, heavy cotton. (Maybe you’ve seen it. Perhaps your daughter is wearing it right now.)

I decided to try it on. I wheeled my sleeping baby into the fitting room with me, and squeezed the fitted bodice over my slightly enlarged nursing-mama breasts.

BLECH! I held my arm against my forehead to shield the glare coming from my pasty white legs. My breasts became one in the tight bodice…a smothered uni-boob compressed in a pretty pink wrapper. The hem hit just below my knee in the front and back, and tapered mid-calf on the sides, making my colorless calves look swollen and ugly. As if that weren’t bad enough, I learned that a full skirt does not hide widened hips and a little extra junk in the trunk like I thought it would …it accentuates it.

Why didn’t I just order something online? I love online shopping. It’s quick and easy, and you don’t have to wear pants if you don‘t want to. I’ve taken hours and hours to look in several stores, just to find there’s nothing out there. I could’ve done that at home on my computer in 45 minutes.

I untied the halter straps behind my neck and began to pull the top down. Hmm, too tight…won’t come down. I tugged and pulled. Trying to lift it up or pull it down. It wouldn’t budge.

Crap, it’s stuck.

I try again and again to peel the top half of the dress from my womanly figure.

CRAP. Crap, crap crap. It’s really stuck. Apparently, little girls’ dresses weren’t made for nursing mothers, who knew? I never tried on Girls sizes with my current breast volume.

Maybe I should have thought this out a little more.

• The baby starts to cry *

Ohhh, crrraappp. Please don’t let his crying cause my milk to come down and my breasts to swell even more.

That’s it. They’ll have to cut me out of this thing. I’m going to have to call the store clerk in here to cut it off of me. There’s no other way it’s coming off.

I divided my attention between consoling the baby and trying to get myself out of this pink nightmare of a dress. And after some circus-worthy contortion on my part, I finally got it off.

So, I went home defeated and looked online. I found a dress that I LOVE and that is unmistakably adult. I’ll leave the tag attached and I won’t have to worry that anyone’s daughter will be hunting Easter eggs in this little number.

…I just hope it fits.