Long time- no me.

You might have noticed my lengthy absence from the blogosphere and generously thought that I must be hard at work writing my thesis instead of blogging. I have been working on the thesis... and refinancing the house... and adopting a new rescue kitty... and getting ready for our upcoming vacation to Hawaii, but I haven't made the kind of progress towards any of these things that would merit bragging about how I haven't been blogging but I've gotten soooo much accomplished while I've been gone. I just somehow got out of the habit of posting (how does that happen so quickly?) even though I was often wearing outfits I would have been pleased to share. At least that means that I have a couple of spare blog-worthy outfits in my back pocket for those days I can't figure out what to wear. And I have a few new things to share because I hit the thrift store sales with my mother on President's Day. Exhibit A is provided for your consideration below: The two dollar green wrap skirt.

Here I am, considering it myself.

I normally prefer my skirts to be at least to the knee, if not over the knee. This may have something to do with the fact that when I look at my knees I see my dad, whom I adore, but who doesn't have the sexiest knees in the world, even on a man, much less on a woman. I also see the puckered scars acquired during a brief flirtation with skateboarding in the eighties. However, I've been thinking that I needed some shorter, but by no means 'mini', skirts to wear with tights and boots in the winter. I was attracted to the decorative exposed snaps and the unfinished edges of this skirt.

I had about a fifty percent success rate in my skirt purchases on this thrifting trip. The Goodwill had a slow moving checkout line, literally around the store, and that line was completely obstructing access to the skirt racks. Shopping for skirts would have required squeezing in alongside patrons who had been standing in line for an inordinate amount of time with their arms heavily laden with their own half price treasures. I didn't want to risk it, as the expressions many of these waiting shoppers were wearing indicated that they were getting more than a little testy about the wait without being jostled by me pushing my way in to peruse the skirts. Then later, when I found myself stuck in the interminable line myself, I had plenty of time to shop, but there was no way I was going to get out of line again to try on my selections, so I used the old hold-it-up-to-you-and-guess technique because, heck, the stuff was half off. And, coincidentally, I guessed right about half the time. And it turns out I must have a pretty generous, positive, self-image because I did not buy a single skirt that was too big, but half of the skirts I thought would probably fit are too small. Not ridiculously too small, but too small to wear comfortably or modestly. But since I've lost about twelve pounds on Weight Watchers this year I think I can feel okay about expecting to fit into the too small skirts sometime, and I think I can pat myself on the back for not being one of those women who believes she's a lot bigger than she actually is.

While we did get a whole lot of stuff for next to nothing at the two thrift stores we visited on Monday (my haul was 6 skirts, a top and a pair of shoes for less than $20) both my mom and I have decided that we'd much rather pay full price (it's charity after all, and neither of us is really hurting for money) than ever stand in line for an hour again. My arms are still sore from holding all my purchases while waiting in line- although that is more of an indication that I should probably be doing some sort of strength training than an indictment of thrift store sales. I need a training program for sale shopping.