December Challenge Day 30

I committed one of the 7 deadly dressing sins this morning and have been mostly ashamed all day. I wore basic dungarees with my cowboy boots. I know this may not sound like a big deal to most of you, particularly anyone north of I-40, East of Slidell and West of Albuquerque, but it’s one of my many clothing pet peeves. It’s more offensive to me than “skinny jeans” on men. I can always tell when attorneys from New York or D.C. are visiting the office because they always come into town and stop by Cavenders to pick up a pair of “authentic ostrich skin cowboy boots” (cuz NOTHING says Western like OSTRICH) and they wear them with a standard pair of 501’s. For those not in the know, it is AGREGIOUS to wear cowboy boots with any jean that is NOT specifically boot cut. DO NOT wear, especially, PLEATED jeans (or khaki slacks) with cowboy boots in my presence or I will ridicule you, for real.

This morning I got up UBER early…which means I got the kids up uber early. Which means they had me rushing around at to get them out of the house before they drove me crazy. I KNEW, when reaching into the closet, I had grabbed a standard pair of dungarees, but I didn’t have time to look for MY pants (Jed don’t wear boots, only (F)reddy)…cuz Jed had been doing laundry and when Jed does laundry there’s one of 50 places my pants can end up. So I put on A) a pair of dungarees and B) a pair of LOW RISE dungarees at that (DIS-GUSTING). The top 2/3 of my ass crack was hanging out of the back of my jeans all day and to top it off I looked like I was wearing MC Hammer pants with my cowboy boots. I looked like those visiting attorneys from the north MYSELF today and I deserved every disapproving glance I got.

I mentioned I got a new dining room table from Ikea the other day. I also purchased an “occasional table”. Those damn Swedes are so funny. Here in Texas we call it a buffet. Nonetheless, I put the occasional table together and placed it in my dining “room”. I should explain that my technical dining area of my house is a 4 foot by 8 foot space off my living “room” (which is also tiny, but that’s a whole nother story…just one of the joys of living in a 1940’s era “bungalow”). For the last 10 years I’ve had my previous dining table (which was a wedding present for my grandparents 80 years ago) along the length of my 4 foot wall in my dining space. Every night at dinner we’d pull it out from the wall so the two wall seats could be seated (Jed and Nathan) and then Adrian and I would take the two non-walled spots.

Our new dining room table is actually a slight bit longer than our previous 4 foot table (6 with the leafs). But it occurred to me to position it horizontally against the four foot wall leaving it off the back of the other four foot wall. Thus creating an adequate sitting space on the back side of the table for two chairs and two seats directly across with the backs of the chairs facing the living “room”. This way we don’t have to constantly move the table back and forth betwixt meals. AND, if we ever have more people over, we can just flip it back the way it was to add the leaf to give us more space. So the new configuration, though it has more furniture IN it actually gives us not only the APPEARANCE of more space, but it’s more user friendly as well. I couldn’t be more pleased with the new layout of my space.

I got a HUGE package from my sister’s husband today. He drew my name for the holiday gift exchange. He went BALLS OUT for me. He’s really an awesome bro-in-law. I got a new watch (honestly, my VERY FIRST WATCH that I’ve worn in 19 years!); Oz Seasons 4 and 5; The last Pirates of the Caribbean movie; NEW UNDIES; and an official White House souvenir Christmas Tree Ornament. NOT TO MENTION, the kids got a HUGE (and I mean HUGE) assortment of musical instruments (an accordion; a triangle, a tambourine; and some mariachis and some other things. They went ape shit crazy with the instruments and we’ve been singing since we got home. Seriously, my bro-in-law rocks socks.

I’m off for the next 5 days again. Tomorrow I’m going to spend the day with my kids making party wands filled with confetti and some noise makers too for an early NYE evening with them. I’m so looking forward to spending quality daddy time with them tomorrow. We may even go to Chick-A-Fil for lunch!