I’ve never been what you would call a “fashion plate,” but more of a “fashion emergency.”

Once I find a shirt or skirt or bottoms I like, I buy them in every color available. My favorite? $4 Old Navy Weekly Specials that wear out before the end of the season. bee tee dub… I’m wearing one right now that’s already pilled and scratching my arms.

Dead sexy.

For nearly every outfit I wear, I can bet you can purchase for less than $30 TOTAL.

Dead classy.

Sure, you can dress me up and take me somewhere pretty every once in a while, but that takes major planning and shoe pile digging and earring dusting.

Dead messy.

The following was picked out of the limited pictures I have of myself.
Same. Same. Same: khaki bottoms, solid shirt.

There are special times when I think I look better than my normal pink hair-dye-stained Obama ’08 t-shirt, shlubby 2-year-old chino shorts missing one of the buttons, and BRAND! NEW! pink! Crocs. Times with I actually fix my hair, put on actual eye makeup, and find actual nice jewelry to slap on.

My wannabe-turned-actual fashion plate sister is consistently nagging on me to “put on more makeup” and “here, wear this necklace” and “OH MY GOH HOW DO YOU LEAVE THE HOUSE LOOKING SO HORRID*?”

I have, what you might describe as, a precocious, opinionated, moody, 4-going-on-13-year-old little girl.

Apparently, she’s caught on to my failures as a fashion victim survivor.

I was dressed up to go to a friend’s birthday dinner in the bathroom putting lipstick on a pig dressing my eyes, when she came in to show me just how cute she looked in her frilly un-Easter, Easter dress.

That’s when it happened: the rest of my life.

“Mama. You need to wear a dress like mine. You look boring.“

Yes, kid. Yes. I do look boring.

And you, my dear child, have made your auntie very proud.

And and, this is my official application to What Not to Wear.

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*actual quotage

Remember way back when a few weeks ago when I accidentally inslutted insulted my dear husband *gag* with a post about his less-than-stellar gift-giving abilites?

He just made up for all of those yeas of weird-ass thoughtful gifts.

Yesterday for Mother’s Day, he surprised me with a brand new Nikon D5000 DSLR.

I KNOW.

I KNOW!

Like, he saved, researched, and put on his very own credit card, a fancy pants camera just for me that he’ll never lay a hand on.

*thud*

Being the mad woman I am, I took over 250 pictures yesterday.

I share with you the best with a few nuggets of Awesome at the end.

Anna reading

Claire & her daddy

The beauty, Claire

Anna jumping

Faiqa‘s tiny  man baby son, Yusef, showing me what’s what

Avitable diving into a tube, thus scarring all the children for life.

Forgive me, for I am a bit emo today.

My sister is taking my nephew 104 miles (I google-mapped that shit) away from me. That’s 90 miles farther away from me than he’s been his whole life.

16 months of having Nolan 30 minutes from me.

Now, I’ll actually have to plan to go see him.

No, “Dinner at Toojay’s tonight,” or “Meet us at the park,” or “Funny seeing you here at Target/Best Buy/Buffalo Wild Wings/the mall.” (It’s freaky how many time, out of the 20,000 people that live in the radius between us, that we just happen to be at the same place at the same time so many times.)

We’ll actually have to plan to take a day trip to see the Best Toddler Baby Jeebus and Oprah Ever Created.

Yes, he’s a better toddler than my own kids.

No, I didn’t say cuter, because as you know, I have the cutest kids on the planet.

bygones

I’ll miss my NoNo.

But I think Claire will miss him most.