Fashionista

I can't believe it's been a week since my last post. I had to go to San Francisco for a couple of days for a business meeting. It went really well; so well in fact that we almost missed our flight! Thankfully we didn't, but on the approach to Kansas City, there was a storm, so we circled the airport for an hour or so, then were diverted to Wichita to refuel and wait for the go ahead to return. To sum up, I got to bed at 3am Tuesday night. Oy. Clearly I was exhausted, which is why I decided to postpone the next installment of Grand"mom"ments until next week.

Because the meeting in San Francisco was with our biggest client, I wanted to get a new outfit. I'm embarrassed to say this, but I pretty much still wear my maternity clothes. I gained all my baby weight back after I went back to work, and I just don't want to buy clothes in my current size. I want to lose weight. Because of that, I look less than wonderful on a daily basis. So I had intended to bite the bullet and go shopping. Then at an internal meeting last Wednesday, our boss told us he wanted all of us who were attending the meeting in SF to look and feel confident, so we should all get new outfits. That put a little stress on my shopping experience. Suddenly I felt all this pressure to get the "right" outfit.

A little background on my "style". I don't have any. I'm very low-maintenance. I've never been into designer clothes. I never read fashion magazines (except for the relationship quizzes and celebrity dish). My sister is the polar opposite. She used her allowance to buy Guess jeans and Swatch watches. She is currently employed by Michael Kors. (If you are on my level of fashion, ie Old Navy, you may not be familiar with him. He is one of the judges on "Project Runway".)

So of course the first thing I did was call my sister for advice on what to wear and where to buy it. One of the many times I've wished we lived in the same city. We looked at some things online, and she suggested Anne Taylor Loft. I had a friend go with me the next day. I ended up getting an ensemble from New York and Co that encompassed some of the elements my sister and I had discussed. The photo montage of the items is in this post. (I'm having issues with inserting photos, so I know it's in a random spot.) Anyway, I chickened out and didn't wear the belt. I just felt like an impostor - a mom in her mid-30's trying to look like one of the cool kids. Maybe I'll wear it for a different event, but I didn't want to go into the meeting looking like an idiot.

The last thing my sister told me was I needed to get new shoes, too. I told her I had some strappy black sandals I was planning to wear. She asked me when I bought them. Ahem, uh, for her wedding (8 years ago). You MUST buy new shoes. Black wedges. Sounded easy enough. Ha! I went to EIGHT stores in search of them. They were either the wrong size, the wrong height or the wrong color. I found some really cute Jessica Simpson ones, but the peeptoe was shaped so that the edge of the hole was against my cuticle and it hurt to walk in them. I finally gave up and wore my old shoes. Which was fine except that running through the airport in 3" heels to catch our flight is NOT something I'm accustomed to. Heck, I don't even know the last time I wore heels of any kind, much less those monsters.

But, as I said, the meeting went well, and now I have at least one nice outfit to wear.