Dress Up

What do you call a person who makes simple challenges either ridiculously complicated or completely uncomplicated?  Never mind, I don’t want to know.  I fall behind and I catch up.  Or not.  It’s what I do and I am accepting that today.  Tomorrow will take care of itself.  If anything changes I will let you know.

I used to dress up long ago when there were things to get dressed up for, like church and weddings and New Years Eve parties.  Now I dress mostly to be inconspicuous and not naked.  And comfortable and warm.  And hopefully not too embarrassing to my children.  I must admit I sometimes catch a glimpse of myself in a mirror and wonder what I was thinking and whether or not a monkey might have more fashion sense than I do.  But, you know, what good does it do to dwell on monkey brains stuff like that?

Let’s dwell on this for a moment instead.

“I think everything in life is art. What you do. How you dress. The way you love someone, and how you talk. Your smile and your personality. What you believe in, and all your dreams. The way you drink your tea. How you decorate your home. Or party. Your grocery list. The food you make. How your writing looks. And the way you feel. Life is art.”
―     Helena Bonham Carter

 

An early childhood trauma may be the cause of my aversion to getting all dressed up, and if that’s not really why I have such a reluctance to do it, at least it gives us something to blame it on.

When I was in grade five or six our school went on some kind of a bus ride/field trip to the big city (probably Toronto) which might have involved some kind of science fair.  Yes, the historical details elude me, but that’s not what’s important here.  What’s important is that I decided to dress up for this excursion in a flouncey pink dress with poofy sleeves and a real honest to goodness crinoline.  If you don’t know what a crinoline is, count yourself lucky.  I remember my mother suggesting I was a tad over dressed, but I would not change my mind.

This is a picture of an educational ‘ride’ similar to the one we all went on, although it’s a lot more fancy. What I remember is a round wood panelled room where we all stood in a circle against the walls.  The room began to spin and once it got going fast enough the floor dropped out from under us leaving us pinned to the wall by centrifugal force.  There was a lot of screaming.  It was very exciting.  However, I felt like Alice falling down the rabbit hole with an uncooperative dress when the spinning slowed down and we started to slip towards the rising floor.  I went down, the dress and the crinoline went up. There were boys there.  Staring at me while smugly wearing their sensible pants.  Stupid boys.  Stupid dress.  And yeah, my hair was pretty much exactly like that.  Growing up is such a distressing experience.

This scatterbrained post was written in response to

Cin’s Feb Challenge Days 17, 18 and 19:  dress up/create/photo walk.

Today it is a balmy minus 5 degrees Celsius here, but it’s still February with bare trees and snow everywhere so I’m not feeling any photo walk motivation.  I am however completely dressed, except for socks. I have created an incredibly awesome picture to teach you all about centrifugal force.

Huh. There you go – challenge met.