A Girl...

Coming of Age

On the spectrum of interesting developments, this might be the least interesting of all, but in this time of great confusion I really need for you to share in my confoundedness. While Simon was away for three whole hours last Sunday,* what activity did I choose to fill my rare and precious free time? I Swiffered the floor. This is apparently what counts as leisure in my early middle age. (Note: Clean Pergo is the result of not just dry Swiffering but wet Swiffering, sweeping, and vacuuming. Please use the doormat! And the coasters! And stay off my lawn!) I fear dementia is imminent.

And then do you know what I did after I cleaned the floors? Do you? I flossed. And there wasn't even a hunk of gristle caught between my incisors or anything. I did it just because I knew it was the right thing to do. Crazy. Mama said there'd be days like this, there'd be days like this, my mama said.**

In other shocking news, you might have caught on Flickr last week that during the housewarming party I made my grand debut as a person who can open a bottle of wine (although they cut me off at opening champagne by myself; apparently I need more training). Finally, to square off the list of Daring Feats of Maturity (aka Things Other People Have Been Doing Since They Were Fourteen Years Old), last Saturday was my first time in Sephora, and you know what? it wasn't that bad at all, save the twee fourteen-year-olds spraying glitter on each other--and everything else--who made me simultaneously want to throttle and bodysnatch them, the former because they were unbearably annoying and the latter because they looked really good in those teeny-tiny skirts. Overall, though, it wasn't the scary makeup-counter experience I'd imagined based on a lifetime of fleeting brushes with the vampires at department store makeup and perfume and jewelry counters. Am I the only one who feels like a shell of a woman, an imposter even, among the perfectly styled mavens behind the glass? Does anyone else fear being forced to leave the store, either by way of bouncer or oversized vaudevillean stage hook? I always just feel so...inadequate. Like I need to put on my best clothes to go clothes shopping, my heaviest makeup to go makeup shopping, have the perfect hairstyle before I go to the salon, have a fit enough body before I'll show my face at the gym. All of which is stupid, obviously, and I certainly never let imperfection stop me from doing whatever it is that I need to do, but that doesn't mean I don't feel awkward a lot of the time.

Anyway, at Sephora, aside from the woman who greeted us at the door in a tone so perky it just about scared Simon out of his pants, no one in the store harrassed me or made me feel like I didn't belong, instead leaving me free to stealthily shadow the fourteen-year-olds and learn from them firsthand the secret ways of the Try Me testers. Also worth noting is that I think Simon had more fun trying on samples than even I did. He was all over the place, slicking himself with moisturizer and lip gloss; it was all fun and games until he had an unfortunate run-in with a bottle of cologne, dousing one of his favorite shirts and spending the rest of the shopping trip looking like he could have used a drool cloth. He's complained in the past about the indignity of standing outside the ladies' dressing room holding my purse while I try something on, but now that I know I can set him loose in Sephora, we might make it a regular in our routine.

*Simon was babysitting a six-year-old, who, did you know?, is a fairy, a fairy princess, a pretty fairy princess. (It's understandable if you'd never noticed, being that her wings are invisible and also intangible.) I'd contemplated going babysitting with him this time since he'd done me the favor before, but then I had so many things to do, so very much Swiffering, that I decided to stay home. "Good thing you didn't come along," Simon said when I called him in the middle of it. "You'd be going 'awwwww' every five seconds, thinking we are SO CUTE."

"I don't doubt it. I was actually thinking--"

"Hold on...*mufffled*Okay, one, two, three, JUMP! *back to me*We are jumping."

"I can tell."

They read a book, went to the playground, gathered leaves and rocks, and then flew home, using their pretty fairy princess wings, of course. Perhaps next time they will try on lip gloss. He's giving "ladies' man" a whole new spin.

**Another thing my mama said was that there'd come a day when I'd wear dresses because I wanted to and not because it was required. This blew my mind. In elementary and middle school, I used to get bent out of shape in a thousand and one ways whenever I'd be instructed to wear a dress for a school function. (Actually, the phrase used was always "Sunday best," which was a source of endless amusement to my family, who spent Sundays not at church in skirts and slacks but on the living room floor in p.j.s and underwear. "I'll show you 'Sunday best,' we'd say and then laugh at the thought of showing up to a regional band concert in our tidiest Fruit of the Looms.) Anyway, my mom said that older girls--high school girls--sometimes wore dresses and skirts for the fun of it, to which I rolled my eyes and sighed the bershonest of sighs because I would never be like that. Fast-forward to high school and I remember the first day I wore a skirt for the fun of it, nervous all the while that someone would ask me what I was so dressed up for. Eventually I got over it and people stopped asking what the special occasion was and many happy years of unselfconscious dress- and skirt-wearing followed. Memory of this golden era made me realize this week that that period of my life, while well-established, was also shortlived, as people are once again looking me up and down and asking where I'm going "dressed like that" whenever I deviate from my standard T-shirt, jeans, tennis shoes uniform. I wear a pair of kitten heels and a top with *gasp* buttons and people are all up in my face, for crying out loud, all of which makes me want to either run home and cry to my mommy or else pull everyone's hair and hide their lunchboxes, neither of which behaviors is appropriate for a woman of my age, a woman who Swiffers and flosses of her own accord.

On that note, I've decided to participate at least marginally in the Working Closet thing Susan's doing on Flickr through Work It, Mom, mostly because it will hold me accountable to some standard of fashion and, uh, textile hygeine, as there are some weeks when I wear the same pair of jeans four days in a row because it's easy and I know no one will notice so long as I am also wearing a T-shirt and tennis shoes and absolutely nothing fancy. Anyway, here's me today. And already I can thank the Working Closet for showing me that these jeans are about three inches too short to wear in the absence of severe flooding or a beachfront clambake. Viva la wardrobe revolutión.