I don't deserve nice pants. It's a fact and I've had to learn that the hard way. Last year my sister, Lori, got me Ann Taylor pants... and they were pink. At first I wondered what I would wear with pink pants and then I discovered a world of brown and white tops that coordinated perfectly especially when paired with a delicate scarf that tied all of the colors together. Sigh. I was in love.
See, we don't often get nice things for ourselves, now do we. You can spend top dollar on a new dining room table but... in a few months it's going to be all scratched up. Clothes are even more subject to wear and tear and there is just no avoiding it.
After I got my pink pants I became inspired to keep shopping. So 8 months later I went out to spend my left over Christmas money (4 months after Christmas). This time I was spending my own money so I stuck to the discount stores but quickly became frustrated. Then I discovered... Target. Oooh. The clothes were super cool and they looked so much like those designer clothes. What I loved the most was the fact that I didn't have to go searching through racks and racks of clothes with a crazy variety of incorrectly labeled pants. I mean, Target is super fancy. The slacks are hanging with the slacks, capris with the capris and jeans with the jeans. Different colors were even hanging separately. This was terrific news because I was running low on time for my mommy-shopping-night. On a side note- I hear these stories about kids getting lost in clothing racks, I've been there- both as the kid inside the rack and as a mom trying to pull the kid out. Based on actual experiences I've come to the conclusion that there is no way I will leave the store with the right pair of jeans if I am shopping with children... so it's best to leave them at home in front of a television set (just kidding, Bill plans enriching activities for them while I'm gone). I left Target with a cute t-shirt, a pair of capris and a new pair of black ballet flats. They had a distinctively cheap black plastic finish on them but they were very cute. So what if they didn't come with a shoe box and they were instead held together by an elastic band.
It didn't take long for me to see the error in my ways. The hem came loose immediately on my new capris so that they kind of could pass as pirate pants. By mid-summer I realized the shoes were embarrasingly cheap. The plastic actually started peeling off of the shoe. Here's the thing about the shoes though- they actually cost $20. Now this is cheap if you're comparing the cost to real fancy shoes but I'm used to shopping at those discount stores where $20 can actually buy you a pair of last season's fancy shoes. I'm actually a fairly smart shopper, I do keep a look out for good deals on specific brands so imagine my frustration when I try to save time by spending only slightly less on a pair of trendy Target shoes and... peeling pleather.
I put my Target shopping experience aside and moved on to summer garage sales :) I will not disclose what I actually purchased at garage sales but next time you see me in a nice sweater think... could that be the sweater she picked up for a buck or was it the one she wore yesterday (or both?). The beginning of the school year started and with it, every teacher's favorite part of starting the school year: chalk, dry erase markers and trying to get glue out of the glue containers.
I don't know how it happened. I don't know why it had to be the blue marker and I certainly don't know why I had chosen to wear the pink pants to school that day, but somehow I ended up with a small dot of dry erase marker on my pink Ann Taylor pants. They weren't the Target capris, mind you. They were the pink Ann Taylor pants. I tried to apply and reapply water and soap throughout the day hoping to coax the stain out but apparently (a) dry erase markers are unwashable and (b) everyone at work thought I looked funny with a big water spot on my pants all day.
"Oh,"said my sympathetic sister, "those were probably the only pants you owned that were bought at full price." Well, to be fair, I did pay full price for the Target capris.
It wasn't long after that Bill and I went out to fancy Chinese restaurant... you know, those places that actually give you plates have soy sauce in a glass pitcher at the table. Real fancy- I had a coupon. After dinner we had a little bit of time to kill since the kids were happy at home without us, with their grandmother & great-grandmother. It was then that I discovered... the outlet store. I've been to outlet stores... but this outlet store was having a super sale (it said so in the window). "Maybe they'll have pink pants!" I said to Bill. And, because Bill would like nothing more than to go shopping with me on our regularly scheduled (once-every-two-and-a-half-month-date-night), he agreed.
I walked out 45 minutes later with a bag containing 3 pairs of pants. I had spent $33. The total value of all pants (based on original prices) was over $250. Perhaps most importantly, one of the pairs of pants was a lovely lavendar color. Perfect with brown and white and, miraculously, still able to be worn with that delicate scarf to tie all of the colors together. And while I did love those full price Ann Taylor pants, I couldn't help but love my new lavendar pants just as much... and maybe more because they only cost $3.40 (originally $79.99).
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