Nothing to wear

Last night I attended a function for Bill's work. Now, generally speaking, I dislike any event involving "networking." Everybody just seems so disingenuous.

Bill said it would be okay to bring Nathan, and although I was skeptical, I felt like it was one of those events where bringing a little kid might ease my awkwardness. A kid keeps you occupied so you don't have to try to make conversation, and the constant interruption from kids means that you never get trapped by some boring weirdo. "Hmm, you're right, that does seem like a gross misinterpretation of the Uniform Commercial Code ... oh shoot, I have to go, my kid just stuck his finger in the ranch dip!"

Anyway, as it turns out, bringing Nathan was not a good idea. The gathering was in a small space at a winery-based restaurant (read: a lot of breakable glasses), and there weren't enough tables to sit at. Also, there were no other kids there. So now we were The Jerks Who Brought Their Kid. I soooo used to judge The Jerks Who Brought Their Kid when I was childless. Like, "What?! These idiots just assume we all want to hang out with their kid?"

Additionally, we were dressed totally inappropriately. Which brings me to the title of this post. I never have the right thing to wear.

I feel like having the right outfit to wear is one of those things that everybody else in the world has figured out and I haven't. You go somewhere and it's like, how did everybody just know the right thing to wear? I feel like no matter what the occasion, everything I own is either too dressy, or too casual, or the wrong color for the season, wrong for the weather, or inappropriate for the time of day/venue.

Or else it doesn't fit.

Many of my "business casual" items from my working days fall into the "doesn't fit" category. I keep them in my closet in the hopes that I will fit into them as a result of my current diet/exercise program. But in actuality, I never have any occasion to wear them anyway. On any given day, I'm either at home, which means I could wear my pajamas/sweats; or I'm at the gym, which means I'm wearing bleach-stained track pants and some free giveaway t-shirt; or I'm at some housewife errand-based locale, which means I can wear jeans. It feels ridiculous to even try to dress nicely to go to, say, the library.

And so, in the two years since I have worked in an office, my wardrobe has evolved to lower and lower levels of sclubbery. And now it's like I have two pairs of jeans that I like, and I just wear one pair several times before it needs to be washed, at which point I switch to the other pair.

So, last night I arrived dressed in what I thought was an acceptable "I'm actually trying to look presentable" outfit. I still had on my same jeans, but I put on a collared shirt with a cardigan. I wore boots instead of tennis shoes. I straightened my hair and put on more makeup than I usually wear, and used perfume. Bill had jeans and a dress shirt. Nathan was wearing khakis and a button-up shirt that clearly indicated that his mother never uses an iron. But I figured, these days everybody is more casual, so nobody is going to be more dressed up than we are, right?

Wrong.

Everybody there looked like they were going to a job interview. In fact, the only thing in my entire wardrobe that I could have worn to fit in with these people would have been my job interview suit, which is an outfit I feel ridiculous in (and probably doesn't fit). There was this one woman there, she had on the absolutely most immaculate-looking coral suit. It looked like she stole it from the traveling Jacqueline Kennedy clothing exhibit. Or else that she was an extra on Mad Men.

So, here I was, chasing a kid around wearing a schlubby-looking mom outfit, and unable to figure out what to talk to anybody else about. Like, "Oh really, so you're in-house council for the Hawkington Corporation. That's cool. Do you enjoy Crock-Pot cooking?"

The only redeeming factor about that outing was the food. They had a tray labeled "Assorted domestic and imported cheeses." Domestic and imported are my two favorite kinds of cheeses! And, and they had lobster-stuffed potato skins. Potato skins stuffed with lobster. I know, I just blew your mind. Or else you have a shellfish allergy and you need to go get your Epi-Pen.

But even the food couldn't keep me going when it neared 8:00 and Bill was still having a conversation with a man who, at one point, mentioned that when he was in high school they swam naked in phys ed. And so toward the end of the evening I went and asked the bartender for a glass of water, and to please shoot me in the head. As an employee at a pretentious wine restaurant that probably hosts a lot of awkward corporate events, she probably gets a lot of requests to shoot people.

On the way home we went through the drive-thru at Portillo's Hot Dogs, because Bill and Nathan were still hungry and I wanted a hot dog despite my mass consumption of cheese and lobster. Then Nathan didn't get to bed until 10 p.m., but woke up at 6:30 this morning, so ... yay.