Shopping for THE Dress......

Okay, yesterday I decided to make a stab at looking for the dress for Cecile's party. We've got a month.....surely....surely....I can find something by the time we have to leave for France. Yikes.

Keeping in mind the advice of my two daughters.....the younger who warned me away from "hooker" clothes and then the fashionista who put my mind at ease by telling me to "just get something age-appropriate" (??!!*%#*)......I headed into H&M.

Now I'm a certified fashion-bumpkin and a shopaphobic. This stuff is hard for me. So I go to H&M because I know that at least the stuff there is "trendy".

But still and all, it's so hard to find anything I like....good grief! BUT, ha, I end up taking 13!....13 things into the dressing room. This must be some kind of a record..

Trying on clothes.....flubba, flubba, flubba-lip....I always wish I was 4 inches taller and many inches skinnier in the middle....HA....neither of those things is ever gonna happen.

OK, I have no idea what size I am anymore now that there's the vanity sizing thing. I once bought a size 4 skirt and went "Wow!" Only later I realized that the size 4 fit me around the waist so well, because, actually, the size 4 was supposed to fit down around the hips....hahaha, that's how the girls that shop at American Eagle wear their skirts. And I once bought a size 0.....size 0? for one of my daughters....pbffft! There were no 0s when I was growing up.....I don't even want to be a zero....ever....of any kind.

OK, none the less, I have found that at these trendy stores (if you call Old Navy "trendy"....at least it's not "dowdy"....I'm avoiding "dowdy' like the plague...kind of like I'm avoiding "hooker").....at these trendy stores, in order for shirts and sweaters to fit around the middle, I have to get a "large" unless I want to "suck it in" all night long. But if I get "large" and there are long sleeves, I'd need the arms of a baboon to fill the sleeves to the end.

So the shirts....uh, blouses I guess...fancy, you know...the shirts I tried on would have meant too much of the "suck-in" thing....bleah!

Now here's the one that was the killer. I tried to try on this dress. I swear, they need hidden cameras in the dressing rooms. Then the employees wouldn't be so bored. Honestly this would've been hilarious for someone watching from the outside.

I didn't even like the dress all that much....it looked kind of school-marmish (sorry teachers) for me. But hey, if it's at H&M it isn't frumpy, it's trendy, right? I'll at least try it on, ya never know.

This dress was shear....see-through....with a black slip-thingy underneath. Tiny straps were what held the slip-thingy thing up. Also, there were these teeny-tiny clear plastic straps that were used to keep the dress from falling off the hanger.

Well, YOU try getting into that dress properly and see how it works for you. Haha, we could have a race. Trying to put on all those layers and have the dress come out in the right place is IMPOSSIBLE! My first effort ended up with the dress being backwards....I kid you not! I was laughing myself. I tried to turn it around in place, but forget that! What with the multiple layers and multiple strappy things, there was absolutely NO way.

Whew, OK, try again. Fresh start, deep breath, line everything up exactly right......OK.....oh MAN! One of the tags got stuck up in one of the layers, or somehow got bunched up with one of the strappy things, I don't know, but some of the fabric got hung up and wouldn't come down into place. And it was in the back....no matter how I tried, I couldn't reach it. O good grief!

One more go at it. I don't even like this dress at all anymore, but by this point I'd invested so much effort in trying to put this thing on....

The third attempt did NOT work either. My fingers got strung up in strappy things going up through the middle. It was impossible. I threw the dress on the floor in a ball. Forget that.

I did, however, manage to buy something. But actually I don't think it'll work at all for the party. I went into this store called "Deb". This store specializes in "skanky" I think...probably "hooker" is what they have in mind. The skirt I bought isn't skanky or hooker, but it IS too big. I like the lines and the way it flows, but they only had them in sizes 2X and 3X and like that. I found one 1X. 1X what? What does this mean? I looked for the size 1/2 X x 3A (I swear the sizes are getting algebreic) but no luck, so yeah, I'll have to take a tuck or two in this skirt if I want to wear it.

And the shirt....uh, blouse....that I got to go with it came from another store...it really doesn't go with that skanky skirt at all. I was only hoping and praying that it would all work out. Nope. Back to square 1 or 2 or 2X or 0 or......

I need help!