Frumpy

               My daughter called me frumpy today. Well, it was a little more cryptic and inadvertent than that but I got the general gist of it. It all started a few days ago with a purse. A very nice purse that my husband had given to me for our third anniversary. A year later when Adrienne arrived, I decided that the purse was too nice to be toting around with a baby who will likely poop and pee and throw up on it. So I stored the purse away in my closet to be resurrected at some unknown time in the future when it wouldn't be filled with wet wipes and half eaten boxes of raisins nor decorated with cartoon stickers and errant crayola marker markings. I suppose I should mention here that 'stored' means tossed the purse onto the top shelf of my closet. I am from Idaho, remember? Where the humidity is zero on most days. So when my mom was packing her suitcase to return to the USA on Monday and offered to take back anything we might want to keep, this purse popped into my mind (since I obviously won't be needing it in the next, say, five years or so). I went to get the purse from my closet and pulled out--I kid you not--the moldiest lump of leather you can imagine. It looked like a moldy block of cheese you would pull from the back of your refrigerator. No, worse than that because you probably would notice the cheese getting moldy and throw it out long before it was as bad as my purse. It is hard for me to put into words how disgusting it was. If I was smart, I would have taken a picture so you could share in my disgust. Instead, I held it at arm's length with two fingers, dropped it into a shopping bag, and made my husband throw it in the dumpster. That was the fateful end of my nice purse and both she (yes, I assume my purse was a she) and I wished that her death had gone the route of dirty children's fingers and spilled coffees rather than being eaten alive. 

            Now you might be wondering how this moldy purse and my daughter calling me a slob are related. Yes, well, since I pulled a moldy purse out of my closet on Monday, I have been leery of my closet and what is lurking in there. In general, the items in my closet fall into one of three categories: Items that I hate, items that I love, and items that I wear. Some things may fall into multiple categories, for example I may have a shirt that I hate but wear it anyway. (Call me crazy, I know, but why do I have clothes that I hate? Well, I have a hard time parting with things sometimes because I think there may be an opportunity in the future to use some of it. Lets not get into this bag of crazy now, OK?) The least worn category is the items that I love. I don't want to wear those clothes on a regular day while holding my bouncy five month old who has frequent yet surprising spit up sessions nor with my two year old who has started pretending that she is giving me a hug wherein she really wipes her nose and/or mouth on my shoulder. But after pulling that moldy sack from the top of my closet, I figured, to hell with it, everything in there must be ruined already so I might as well use my nice clothes as a wearable spit-up rag/napkin/kleenex. So this morning I pulled out a nice top to put on. And since I had a nice top, I figured I should put on a skirt too. Plus I happened to have showered that morning thanks to an extra long sleep-in by Nate and a working sling box application on my iPad playing Little Einsteins from my parents. When I walked into the living room, Adrienne glanced up (amazingly) from her Einsteins and started whinning, "No! No, Mommy! No!". "What, Adrienne? Whats wrong?" I asked. "No Mommy go to work today!". And hence her inadvertent message that I normally dress like a slob. Noted. I maybe should step up the beauty routine a notch or ten. On the plus side, my daughter apparently still likes hanging out with me after my fifth month at home even if I dress like a frumpy mummy. I have said it before and I'll say it again: I take my compliments anywhere I can get them! 

For the record, we are getting ready for bed here so my pajamas should be excused. Because most days I do change into normal clothes. Really, I do.