August 20th, 2019

Behold!  A veritable rainbow of polo shirts!  

The wedding that we attended over the weekend necessitated a perusal of our closets.  The dress code (if you read yesterday's blog post) was "beachy".  And in fact, it specified, shorts, flipflops and sundresses.  Well that is beachy indeed!  How fun!

Personally I cannot bring myself to wear shorts to church.  I know that it's okay to do nowadays, but I just cannot do it.  Tim felt the same way.  But he felt that he would be perfectly okay with khaki's and a polo shirt.  Being well aware of the contents of his closet (I am after all the house laundress) I asked him which shirt he had in mind. I was not at all surprised when he told me which shirt he was thinking of wearing.  It's his favourite polo shirt.  And for a very good reason too!

It is a great colour on him, it fits very well and has great drape and best of all it's comfortable.  Whatever the magic fabric is, it seems to breathe better than most.  The collar never curls, and nothing is ever stretched out weirdly. In short, it is a Good shirt.  The problem is, it's also an old shirt. And it's starting to show it's age.    Since the local Beall's was having a 50% off sale, what would it hurt to just look and see if they have other polo shirts like his favourite only newer.  Tim agreed.

Off we went and the instant we stepped into the men's section of the store, the search began.  See here is the thing I have learned.  Not all Polo shirts are created equally and it isn't always about the price tag.  That was the part the fooled me.  I assumed (though one should never) that a better quality shirt would naturally be more expensive.  Well, it ain't necessarily so.  Some of the most expensive shirts there just did not suit at all.  Of course the cheapest ones weren't going to cut it either.  So it lands mostly in the middle.

It turns out that the most comfortable shirts, the ones that breathe a bit, the shirts whose collars do not requiring ironing, threats and duct tape to lay flat, the ones that sit so nicely on the shoulders are not polo shirts at all but, rather,  golf shirts. Who knew?  Not me.  Obviously Tim knew because that's where he headed.  

Luckily a lot of people play golf here so there were loads to choose from .  It really was just a matter of picking size and colour and that is exactly what we did.  Once Tim had an armload, I pointed to the nearest fitting rooms and he looked at me as if I had lost my mind.  "I know what size I wear" he said with a smile, shook his head and I followed him to the checkout line.    And that is the biggest difference between men's clothes and women's clothes.  Apparently men do not need to try them on.  As long as it's the correct size, it fits. The end.  I'm so jealous.

So Tim was all set for the wedding.  He had a cornucopia of new lovely golf shirts just awaiting his decision.  Any of them would look great with his khaki pants.  Done!  

Me on the other hand?  More of an issue.  I took myself earlier in the day to the outlet store hoping to find some cute little sundress to wear to this beachy wedding.  I usually have very good luck there. They have racks and racks and RACKS of clothes after all.

Imagine my surprise to find that while yes, they still have an amazing array of clothes they had exactly one very short rack of dresses. One.  And in my size there were 4 options. 1,2,3,4.    But I'm game. I tried them.  It was not good:

As bad as these three photos are, I opted to not show you the 4th photo.  It truly was THAT much worse.  Because I was apparently built out of spare parts, dresses in particular are difficult for me.  I am especially short through the body, but long of arm and leg and I am, hmmmm, how shall I say this? I am not dainty.  In truth, my body kind of looks like a box balanced on sticks. Hey it's a fact.  I try to not blame me when I don't look good in clothes but it really kind of is my fault. Oh well.  Gotta dress the body ya got.

The floral dress is a terrible colour for me,  the pink thing was just hideous and the animal print was laughable.  I looked ridiculous.  So obviously I bought none of them and assumed that I would just manage to find something in my closet that would "do".  When I got home and Tim asked what I bought I showed him these photos and he agreed.  Bad, very bad.  And then offered to take me to Beall's that evening after work.  (which is how we ended up there in the first place)

What a difference.  First of all that had a lot of dresses to choose from.   Tim selected some, I grabbed a few and I headed off to the dressing room.  A few of them had me laughing out loud.  Some of them were gigantic and ridiculous.   A couple were perfectly fine but kind of meh. And two were contenders.

The first thing I was looking for was something that suited the theme. The second was comfort. I refuse to wear anything that isn't comfortable and I have felt that way for years! It's not a new thing.  Third was the price of course.  And lastly, I was hoping to find a cute little sundress that I could also wear other times, to work at the museum in summer, out to dinner,  to the theatre. Multi-purpose clothes rock!

Anything that I thought was a possibility I showed Tim who had found a comfy place to sit while he waited.  A few of them garnered wrinkled noses  and a shake of the head.  But the two I already liked the best got smiles.

I narrowed it down to these two.  Tim asked which was my favourite. Obviously I said the flowered one with the asymetrical hem.  It is just so fun!  Then he asked which was my second favourite. I pointed to the stripey one and he picked them both up and said, "let's go"!  I got to get two dresses  Woohoo!  The 50% thing applied to my dresses also basically the price of the two together was the same as the original price of just one.  I love when that happens.

So lucky me, I now have two adorable sundresses.  I did indeed wear the floral one to the wedding with red sandals and a sheer white wrap (air conditioning makes me cold!) with hoop earrings, a long necklace and silver bangle bracelets. Tim wore his khaki pants and one of his new golf shirts.  We looked awesome and appropriate to the occasion.  

I am still surprised that my usual outlet store let me down but I am delighted with what we both bought!  We are now all set for just about anything.  Bring on the occasion.  We are ready!