fairjennet (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
fairjennet) wrote2009-01-19 08:40 am
fairjennet) wrote2009-01-19 08:40 am
New clothes, Still Not Homeless, and Sam Vimes' Theory About Rich People...
...in another one of those impossibly long posts. It's behind an lj cut because
Years of living on the road pretty much destroyed my wardrobe. It meant that I rarely had money to buy clothes, and it meant that the everyday clothes I already had or managed to buy at thrift stores got worn, worn hard, and then worn out. What's left? Besides a very few thrift store/dollar store finds, there are only gifts from well meaning family (who for some reason think I should always wear pink, yuck), and all of the clothes I left in storage at my Dad's house back in 1999. These are the remnants of a nice southern girl's high school wardrobe. That means I have something like ten black skirts of varying lengths, about thirty more skirts in other conservative colors and lengths, enough shoes that I could wear a different pair every day for six months, the kind of winter coats that people buy with the expectation of getting twenty years of use out of them, the kind of ugly sweaters that you put in a box every spring and take out every fall, and no less than fifteen formal and semi-formal dresses. In other words, most of this year I've had more clothes than I knew what to do with, and nothing decent to wear to the grocery store. It's been bugging me, to say the least. I'm trying really hard to be a real person with a real job and a real place to live. It's harder to play that part when I still look like a grubby hippie.
So, I bought some new clothes. I bought four t-shirts on sale at Wal-Mart for four dollars each. They're actually pretty non-sucky for Wal-mart clothes. Their sparkly rainbow girly-ness sets off an inner voice proclaiming that middle-aged women should not dress like teenagers, but whatever. It's not like I'm wearing mini-skirts and bling. I also have new jeans. I actually own five pairs of jeans that fit now, hallelujah.
For some reason, I have this terrible feeling that this modest shopping trip is somehow spitting in the face of the gods. Any moment now, boom!, homeless girl. Yeah, calm down Lori.
In other clothes related news, A trip to my grandma's attic in search of the Christmas books turned into the find of the century. Up there in the darkness, I bumped into one of those hanging bags for storing clothes. It was torn, so I brought the whole thing downstairs to save the contents from the damp. Inside were a bunch of the dresses my grandmother had made for my aunts during their teenage years.
Oh boy, she was some dress designer. I knew this already--she dressed me in smocking and satin ribbons when I was a little girl, and she made all my dance dresses in high school--but these dresses just surpassed them all. I swear, it was like looking at some famous designer collection. Of course, some of them were pretty out there. Hot pink polyester? Um, no. There was a sailor suit right out of cosplay and also a green velvet bell-bottomed pantsuit. Yeah, um, also no. But most were very, very classic and tasteful.
As I lifted dress after dress out of the bag, I was suddenly reminded of a Terry Prachett book. I don't remember the title, but it was the one where Sam Vimes realized why rich people were rich. After meeting one of Lady Ramkin's friends, a woman dressed in an old coat and boots who turned out to be the duchess of something or other, he started to wonder if there was a point where rich people were so rich that they could afford to be poor (or to look poor, anyway). He considered his own cheap boots, the ones that leaked when it rained. He couldn't afford good boots. The ones he wore had cardboard soles, and he had to replace them periodically with a new pair. He figured he spent more money on boots over time than Lady Ramkin's grandfather had spent on one good pair--a pair that was still good enough for the lady to wear to protect her feet while mucking out dragon stalls. Sam realized that it actually cost more money to be poor. Even worse, not only did his boots cost more than the lady's inherited boots, but his feet still got wet.
Well, these clothes are like Lady Ramkin's grandfather's boots, meant for generations of use. They're made of expensive fabrics, exquisitely tailored, and destined to either be in style for the next few hundred years (at the very least, they're worth altering to be made so). I couldn't help laughing as I looked at them. Who knew I was a rich chick? Ha, I guess it explains the inability to throw out some of those black skirts despite the fact that I'll probably never even wear half of them. Maybe my future granddaughter will want to wear the things. *snerk*
I tried on all the dresses, of course. The ones she made for my elder aunt didn't fit. (Don't even ask me how she could have such a tiny waist with such apparently enormous boobs; it defies logic and probably gravity, too.) The ones for my younger aunt, however, fit perfectly. My grandmother let me have three of them to take home. Two are cocktail dresses. One is basic black, and goodness is that a boobtastic dress (maybe envy of the elder sister?). The other is traffic stopping red satin, all classic lines with a small tasteful bow at the waist. God, it's gorgeous. Either one them looks like it needs to be worn to a snooty charity ball or the Oscars or something. The other is bright red linen--real linen, mind you, none of those yicky poly blends--hemline just above the knee, perfectly tailored waist and bust, and sleeveless. It was made in the 1960s, but you could wear the thing to the office today with no comment beyond an, "Oh wow, nice dress!" I probably won't get a chance to wear any of them anywhere, but I don't care if I only wear them in the house. I wish she'd let me have all of them. If nothing else, my future granddaughter could have her choice of prom dresses.
With that and my closet full of useless good shoes, it's entirely probable that her feet won't even get wet. ;)
Years of living on the road pretty much destroyed my wardrobe. It meant that I rarely had money to buy clothes, and it meant that the everyday clothes I already had or managed to buy at thrift stores got worn, worn hard, and then worn out. What's left? Besides a very few thrift store/dollar store finds, there are only gifts from well meaning family (who for some reason think I should always wear pink, yuck), and all of the clothes I left in storage at my Dad's house back in 1999. These are the remnants of a nice southern girl's high school wardrobe. That means I have something like ten black skirts of varying lengths, about thirty more skirts in other conservative colors and lengths, enough shoes that I could wear a different pair every day for six months, the kind of winter coats that people buy with the expectation of getting twenty years of use out of them, the kind of ugly sweaters that you put in a box every spring and take out every fall, and no less than fifteen formal and semi-formal dresses. In other words, most of this year I've had more clothes than I knew what to do with, and nothing decent to wear to the grocery store. It's been bugging me, to say the least. I'm trying really hard to be a real person with a real job and a real place to live. It's harder to play that part when I still look like a grubby hippie.
So, I bought some new clothes. I bought four t-shirts on sale at Wal-Mart for four dollars each. They're actually pretty non-sucky for Wal-mart clothes. Their sparkly rainbow girly-ness sets off an inner voice proclaiming that middle-aged women should not dress like teenagers, but whatever. It's not like I'm wearing mini-skirts and bling. I also have new jeans. I actually own five pairs of jeans that fit now, hallelujah.
In other clothes related news, A trip to my grandma's attic in search of the Christmas books turned into the find of the century. Up there in the darkness, I bumped into one of those hanging bags for storing clothes. It was torn, so I brought the whole thing downstairs to save the contents from the damp. Inside were a bunch of the dresses my grandmother had made for my aunts during their teenage years.
Oh boy, she was some dress designer. I knew this already--she dressed me in smocking and satin ribbons when I was a little girl, and she made all my dance dresses in high school--but these dresses just surpassed them all. I swear, it was like looking at some famous designer collection. Of course, some of them were pretty out there. Hot pink polyester? Um, no. There was a sailor suit right out of cosplay and also a green velvet bell-bottomed pantsuit. Yeah, um, also no. But most were very, very classic and tasteful.
As I lifted dress after dress out of the bag, I was suddenly reminded of a Terry Prachett book. I don't remember the title, but it was the one where Sam Vimes realized why rich people were rich. After meeting one of Lady Ramkin's friends, a woman dressed in an old coat and boots who turned out to be the duchess of something or other, he started to wonder if there was a point where rich people were so rich that they could afford to be poor (or to look poor, anyway). He considered his own cheap boots, the ones that leaked when it rained. He couldn't afford good boots. The ones he wore had cardboard soles, and he had to replace them periodically with a new pair. He figured he spent more money on boots over time than Lady Ramkin's grandfather had spent on one good pair--a pair that was still good enough for the lady to wear to protect her feet while mucking out dragon stalls. Sam realized that it actually cost more money to be poor. Even worse, not only did his boots cost more than the lady's inherited boots, but his feet still got wet.
Well, these clothes are like Lady Ramkin's grandfather's boots, meant for generations of use. They're made of expensive fabrics, exquisitely tailored, and destined to either be in style for the next few hundred years (at the very least, they're worth altering to be made so). I couldn't help laughing as I looked at them. Who knew I was a rich chick? Ha, I guess it explains the inability to throw out some of those black skirts despite the fact that I'll probably never even wear half of them. Maybe my future granddaughter will want to wear the things. *snerk*
I tried on all the dresses, of course. The ones she made for my elder aunt didn't fit. (Don't even ask me how she could have such a tiny waist with such apparently enormous boobs; it defies logic and probably gravity, too.) The ones for my younger aunt, however, fit perfectly. My grandmother let me have three of them to take home. Two are cocktail dresses. One is basic black, and goodness is that a boobtastic dress (maybe envy of the elder sister?). The other is traffic stopping red satin, all classic lines with a small tasteful bow at the waist. God, it's gorgeous. Either one them looks like it needs to be worn to a snooty charity ball or the Oscars or something. The other is bright red linen--real linen, mind you, none of those yicky poly blends--hemline just above the knee, perfectly tailored waist and bust, and sleeveless. It was made in the 1960s, but you could wear the thing to the office today with no comment beyond an, "Oh wow, nice dress!" I probably won't get a chance to wear any of them anywhere, but I don't care if I only wear them in the house. I wish she'd let me have all of them. If nothing else, my future granddaughter could have her choice of prom dresses.
With that and my closet full of useless good shoes, it's entirely probable that her feet won't even get wet. ;)