Weekly Column: What Not to Wear

©Stephenie Freeman

When I went to bed last night, I knew that today was going to be busy. I had lots to do and had everything scheduled back to back, leaving little room for error. There was no time to waste, so of course that’s exactly what I did.

The day didn’t start well. I couldn’t even make it out of my own closet. I wasted a good thirty minutes, thirty minutes that I didn’t have to waste, on staring at my clothes. Not trying on, not sifting through, just…staring.

Yes, you know that it’s going to be a bad day when you decide to spend the day in your granny panties since your underwear looks better than anything else hanging in your closet.

On a typical morning I walk into my closet and throw something on within a matter of minutes, and every day I look like I walked into my closet and threw something on within a matter of minutes.

Oh, but not today. I was bound and determined to find something cute to put on. I hemmed and hawed over what I should wear. I haven’t hemmed and hawed over anything for years, but I felt that perhaps a little hemming and hawing might do both me and my wardrobe some good. Sadly, the longer I looked at my clothes, the more miserable I became.

Nothing’s grumpier than a mama who suddenly realizes that she is the perfect candidate for the reality show “What Not to Wear.”

You see, usually when I wake up in the mornings, I turn off the alarm and turn on my mama auto pilot. I am a robotic mama machine. I move through the morning toasting Eggos, dressing boys, and making lunches never actually having to think about what I am doing. My morning routine is mindless and I find comfort in the fact that it doesn’t require any actual thought.

When I’m in robotic mama mode, I certainly don’t waste any time or brain cells on what to wear. I grab my flip flops, my workout shorts, and my T-shirt that says, “I love cupcakes!” and I am off to conquer the world. The last time I checked, world conquering didn’t require anything fashionable. Besides, who doesn’t love cupcakes?

Then today, for reasons only God understands, I decided to break the routine and re-discover, re-introduce myself to the “real” clothes hiding deep in my closet. Clearly it did not go well. After all of that staring and all of that time wasting, I ended up in a pair of baggie boyfriend jeans and a T-shirt that read, “Housework is Evil” because, of course, it is.

To top it off, my hemming and hawing, my sudden, unwarranted need to feel fashionable made me run incredibly late, throwing off the delicate balance of our entire morning. I barely got the boys to school on time, and as I was dropping them off realized that in my vain attempt to look nice, I hadn’t spent one measly minute on my children’s appearance. Both of them had a horrible case of bed head, the Monkey was wearing his favorite Star Wars T-shirt that he had fished out of the bottom of the dirty clothes hamper, and neither of them was wearing socks.

And what’s really sad is with all of that extra effort, all of that extra time spent being re-introducing to my closet, they looked a whole lot better than I did.