Fancy-Free

Because I’ve totally been procrastinating on the laundry* I’ve cycled through all of the skirts I usually wear and have had to resort to “Where did this skirt even COME FROM?”** and “Oh hey, this fits and it’s CLEAN."

Which is how I came to be wearing a skirt – from WalMart, left over from my teaching days – and a silk Isaac Mizrahi top.

Let me tell you something about this top:

I got it as a HUGE bargain.

It’s silk (did I mention that it’s silk? Delicious, glorious, cool silk?)

It’s orange and magenta.

And I’ve never worn it.

I’ve had this stupid shirt for … let’s pause for some math … SIX YEARS. In that time, Isaac Mizrahi has taken over QVC, eaten 9487987987 meals on Iron Chef, and probably done some other things. I love the shirt. It’s beautiful. It’s well crafted.

And I’m a little afraid of it.

Because this shirt is fancy? But I’m NOT fancy. Which is why I own a 100% polyester skirt from WalMart (or, likely, more than one such skirt), why most of my furniture is also from WalMart (or, you know, Target, WalMart’s slightly more wealthy cousin), why most of the “art” in my apartment is comprised of photos I took and then framed myself. I’m not fancy. Other people are fancy.

I’m faking it.

I’m … faux fancy.

I’m comfortable with my faux fanciness. I know too many people who are ashamed to be the kid who bought her back-to-school clothes on layaway – at Kmart. I’m not that person. The chairs in my living room (the super comfy, fabulous ones) are third hand, I think, and I’ve been carting them around since 1999 … they were not new then (but they probably had less cat hair on them when I got them), but I still love them. What I’m trying to say is this: I’m REALLY not fancy.

But this shirt is kind of fancy.  So I’ve kept it, hanging very orange-ly in the closet. Sometimes I take it out and hold it against me and then think, Um, maybe … no.

Today, though, after digging out my pretty “House of WalMart” skirt, I thought “My fancy shirt would match that", and then immediately thought “I don’t WEAR the fancy shirt.”

“But it’s ORANGE,” whined the part of my brain that acts like a seven year old. “And we LOVE orange. And it’s so sofffffffttttt and pretttttty we wanna wear it!”

I put it on.

It is soft, I thought. And pretty.

That was kind of when I realized that the above are why I’ve avoided the shirt – it’s fancy, and soft, and pretty, and I don’t think of myself as any of those things.  (Well, occasionally I do think of myself as being bright orange, but not in a Jersey Shore way.) I felt like I didn’t deserve the fancy shirt.

“SCREW THAT,” I said out loud, and then began to laugh.

So: WalMart skirt. Fancy shirt. Bare feet, of course.

I might never be fancy.

But I have fabulous down. 

*Laundry blindness. IT’S A THING.

** WalMart.