Casual Chic

I have two sets of relatives. My father's side lives in Toledo, Ohio.  They are all either dead or in jail. I know because I paid some internet site $20 to let me look up their arrest records.  We haven't seen them since childhood.  My mother's side lives in Philadelphia, so we see them a little more often.  They are the wealthy side of the family.  My cousins are big-time lawyers and very important in their fields. I know because they attended a garden party in London hosted  by Her Majesty the Queen and her son. (Prince Charles and my cousin made small talk about their similar-in-age sons.) My cousins' sons are also highly educated and very successful. The younger son is CEO of his own clothing company. And he's the reason for this blog.  We were invited to a party to congratulate him and his wife-to-be, a well-known actress/singer whose first name rhymes with the Spanish word for day and who shares the second part of her name with a much beloved First Lady.  I can't wait to see the relatives again and meet my famous cousin-to-be, but there is a dress code for this event and I don't know if I can meet it.

Casual chic.  What the hell does that mean?  I know what it means for those who travel in my cousins' circle.  Expensive pants, most likely jeans. Fancy and very expensive blouse or sweater of some kind.  Maybe a very expensive jacket.  The kinds of clothes my cousin sells where one piece of casual chic costs anywhere between $200 - $1000+.  All of this is topped off by high heels, preferably the kind with bright red soles. The impression given by a casual chic outfit should be expensive, slim, fashionable, slim, carefree, slim.  Yes, that's casual chic for the Philadelphia crowd, but what about me?

I mostly shop the clearance racks.  I look at the price before I decide to try something on. Then I look above the rack to see if there's a sign indicating a further discount. I've purchased some very nice pieces that way.  In fact, I found a number of things in my closet that I considered wearing to the party. I have a beautiful gold blouse with a mandarin collar. I love it and wear it on special occasions. In fact, I've worn it for the past fifteen years of special occasions. I have it on in the picture for this blog.  I have a few other beautiful seldom worn blouses that might have fit the bill if they weren't  between ten and twenty years old. I recognized that I would need something new for this event.  But what? My clothing style is "small town teacher."  Most of you are familiar with that style; recognizing it helps you pick the teachers out of the crowd. That can be a fun game to play while people watching. But I digress; today I went shopping.

At my favorite store for finding something chichi and elegant, I was beyond disappointed.  They've gone the casual route, but not the casual chic route.  I did find some pants, and that's a major achievement for me since I am only 5' tall and probably about as round as I am tall.   I treated myself to a sweater with cardinals decorating it, and I paid full price (oh what a spendthrift desperation turns me into).  I debated a particular blouse for the evening event.  I couldn't tell if it was pretty on me or something pretty a ninety year old would wear.  It was on sale, so I bought it of course.  I'll ask my niece what she thinks of it. She's brutally honest about my ugly  clothes.

Deciding to step up my game, I went to Macy's.  I tried on all the sale items that might have worked.  They didn't.  Then I found it, a 2-piece shell and jacket the color of birch trees in the sparkling snow.  It too was on sale, $160 reduced to $xxx.  I can't remember the last time I spent that kind of money on a shirt.  So I scoured the store, determined to find something spectacular for 2/3 the cost.  I learned that spectacular doesn't come at 2/3 the cost and I was lucky to have found what I did.  For fifteen minutes, I debated buying it because not only was it too expensive, but it had shoulder pads.  (I had nixed anything in my closet with shoulder pads as giving away their time period, the days of TV's Dynasty.)  Here was something brand new and it had those damn shoulder pads.  I bought it.  I will take them out and hopefully not destroy the lines of the jacket.  And while I won't be a 2018 version of the girls from Sex in the City, I'm hoping I'll be chic enough not to look like the county bumpkin I am.

I doubt we'll be invited to the wedding.  That will be a Hollywood extravaganza filling a few pages in People magazine.  The stress to find something to wear in People magazine would probably require me to hire a stylist. And that is definitely not in my clothing budget.

My Old Dog

When my little Lucy Dogge died, I didn't ever think I could have another dog. The pain of putting her down was agonizing.  However, three months later I adopted Trixie.  We've had a wonderful fifteen years together, but I am girding myself for the inevitable.  My old girl is just that, old.

She's  had quite a few health scares.  One night she got drunk on my airline sized liquor samples.  Back in the old days, you were given (for free) more booze than you could drink. So, I would bring them home to drink later. Later never happened, and  Trixie had a one-dog party during a PTA night. Then I had a night of running her outside every time I heard that earping sound.  Another time, her love of anything peppermint caused her to devour my dental floss. The first time it happened, I got home (from another PTA night) to hear her choking.  Just in time, I was able to pull the floss out of her.  It was similar to how a magician pulls a string of handkerchiefs from his pocket.  I thought that line of floss would never end! Since neither of us learned our lesson the first time, Trixie once again had access to my dental floss. This time she ate it, container and all, resulting in surgery and thousands of dollars in medical bills.  Since then she's had Cushings disease diagnosed and she also lives with congestive heart failure.  Neither of those conditions seemed to slow her down, but old age is a different story.

Dogs get skinny when they get old.  Trixie eats, and she eats well.  I buy her a roasted chicken once a week.  But, she doesn't put on an ounce.  My girl should weigh between twenty and twenty-two pounds; she barely weighs in at thirteen. Getting her groomed turns her into a walking skeleton.  She is arthritic and those old bones hurt her.  When she shows me her pain, I give her the pain pills the vet has provided. They bring her relief. I hope.

She seems to have dementia.  I have actually watched her walk into a corner and be unable to turn herself around.  She will sit motionless and stare into the hall at nothing. Well, nothing that I can see. She will pace endlessly until eventually she settles down, only to get up and pace some more.  It is annoying.  It is unnerving.  But it is really heartbreaking when I go to pick her up, and she is confused as to who I am.  She tries to bite me.  She struggles to escape my hug.  She is confused. She winces when I approach her to pet her head.  I think that's because she can't see. Or hear. I hope it's not because her head hurts.

She sleeps in the bed snuggled up to me.  I've had to put pillows in the gap between my bed and the wall because she falls off and can't get herself out of there. And she cries when she falls, so the pillows soften the blow.  I think she takes up more of the bed than I do, but she hasn't fallen lately. In the morning, I've started carrying her outside as soon as she wakes up because the old girl doesn't always find her way to the door in time. 

I am no longer able to board her. She's so frail, the confusion could/would kill her.  So Trixie and I will be spending Thanksgiving together here in Maryland while the rest of the family goes to the Poconos.  I'm sure she'll enjoy some turkey (or cashew butter and jelly) as much as she does her chicken. 

Yes, she's old, 105 in human years. But, she still gets excited when I come in the back door.  I could be gone for as long as it takes to get the mail, and she greets me as if I'm returning from a long journey.  She knows when I'm yelling at the television, and she sits at my feet to calm me down.  She actually jumps for joy because she loves me that much, well, me or the morsel of food in my hand.   Nobody else loves me that much. She still has spurts of energy when she runs across the lawn like a puppy.  She's still happy to greet visitors to the house.  Yes, she's still happy.  Lucy taught me how to be a loving mom when the pup is no longer happy.  The day's coming, I know that.  But it's not today. And I know that too.