Soup Is Not A Finger Food

What happens at Vegas Night...

STAYS AT VEGAS NIGHT!

Except I'm a blogger, which means I'm prone to oversharing, so I didn't think it was appropriate to blather on about what I was wearing without providing a full recap of the evening.

I had good luck shopping on Wednesday evening - I ended up finding a perfect Little Black Dress (if anything I ever wear can be described as "little") at Lord & Taylor. Of course, ladies, you know what that meant: I also needed what we euphemistically refer to as "Shapewear" so that the dress would "hang right" without any unsightly bulges. I am of the belief that "shapewear" was invented by men, the same as high-heeled shoes must have been. Makes you looks great, but sofa king uncomfortable. Yes, I know that a woman invented Spanx, and now she is crazy-rich (you're welcome, Sara!), because we willingly pay obscene amounts of money to wear something no one will ever see have a smooth silhouette, but all she really did was improve upon a product that already existed. Don't you remember your mom wearing girdles when you were a kid? And the contraption I wore under my wedding gown was positively Medieval!

And after I shelled out for a "shaper", then I decided I needed a new bra, too, and then I found out what Victoria's "Secret" really is: She charges half a hundo for a good bra! GAH. I usually buy my bras while running through Target to buy underwear for the boys, laundry detergent and a gallon of milk. I had no idea anyone paid more than $11.99 for a bra! Until I did.

I finished my shopping spree at Claire's, where the helpful clerk kindly said that no, I was not too old to be shopping there, even as she rang up purchases by giggling gangs of teenage girls. Blingy fake-gold jewelry, procured.

I scrubbed and shaved and  polished and primped and curled and sprayed. I won a bravely-fought battle while trying to pour myself into put on the shapewear. I zipped up my little black dress.  All of that took 90 minutes. Whereas, Curt rolled in from work, unloaded the dishwasher, picked up the Peezer from aftercare, then pulled clothes from his closet, threw 'em on, and within 7 minutes he looked like a million bucks, just like I predicted he would in Tuesday's post. 

The Las Vegas night was held at the at the National Museum of Women in the Arts and it was an elegant venue:

We's Fancy!

Since we weren't gambling with "real" money, I decided I would take advantage of the opportunity to learn some casino games. So I approached the guys manning the craps table (what are they called? Not dealers... Crapmasters, maybe? Men of Dice??) and said, "Are you patient? Because I'd like to learn the basics of this game so that I don't get myself thrown out of a real casino one day." And they taught me how it works! The 100-level version, anyway. And I might remember some of it.  it was definitely fun! Till that one man kept crapping out (apparently, that's where the expression comes from!) and I lost an obscene amount of Monopoly Money.

Then I played some mindless roulette game and won back some of my losses... then we played Blackjack, which was also educational because the dealer gave us a little bit of coaching. Which they'll never do in Vegas. All they do in Vegas is give you the stink-eye if you take a hit on 13. I think. They will say things like, if you hadn't taken that card, then you would have had that next card and you would have won. And I'm all yeah, but you can't know that! It's called gambling for a reason. Am I right?

I think the husband and I clean up pretty nice:

And sadly, that is the only photo of us together. Sorry, kids. After all that fussin' about what I was going to wear, this is it. You can't even really see the dress. 

Anyway - we had a great time! Even if we didn't win any of the raffle prizes or silent auction items. It was a fun night out. We didn't embarass ourselves. Much. But I can't talk about that, because what happens in Vegas...

What to wear

LET'S SAY YOU ARE a 40-something, somewhat pudgy, suburban-dwelling working mother of three. And your husband has scored tickets to a casino night event in DC, for which the requested dress code is "cocktail attire." And that your current, seasonal leaving-the-zip-code wardrobe consists of boring but comfortable, conservative dark neutral pants (always pants, never skirts), with which you most often pair with a cotton twinset and Sensible Shoes, and that your current, seasonal not-leaving-the-zip-code wardrobe consists entirely of cotton capris and T-shirts, none of which you ever bother to tuck in, and flip flops. Because they don't hurt your hammertoe. And let's say that your fashion sense tends more towards Frumpy Conservative than Fashionable Cocktail.

Let's say the event in question is scheduled for this Friday Night - as in THREE NIGHTS FROM NOW. This does not give you nearly enough time to lose the 40 25 pounds it would take in order to fit into anything you already own that could remotely be considered "cocktail attire." And it barely gives you time to do anything other than Emergency Shopping, the kind you wedge into your schedule during the 25 minutes between the when you get off the commuter train and you have to shuttle one of your kids to taekwondo. But, shop you must! 

Let us further say that - forget the current state of your body - you have longstanding issues with dressing appropriately. That you are still, amazingly, dragging around BAGGAGE from 7th or 8th grade, from that one time when you begged your dad to take you to a sports award banquet, because hey, you played junior high girls' basketball, where "played" equals "wore a uniform like all the other girls", and doesn't that make you an athlete?, and that in selecting attire for said banquet, your logic was, these are athletes, no one will be wearing dresses, only when you arrived - late - you weren't and THEY ALL WERE (the girls were, anyway) and you immediately, tearfully, asked your dad to take you home where you could bury your mortified head in your pillow and figure out how you were going to show your pathetic, underdressed, preteen face at school the next day.

Let's just say that's you. What do you do, given this set of circumstances?

Naturally, you turn to Facebook! You ask your friends if they were you, where would you shop for sassy, stylish cocktail attire that is age-appropriate and flattering, yet won't break the bank, owing to your recent cash outlay for a new refrigerator and near-future ones for some electrical work, repairs to a vehicle, and the possible replacement of two of your stove burners (since buying a new stove is financially out of the question right now)?

Your friends, bless 'em, will provide all kinds of helpful suggestions. Dress Barn. (Why is it still called a "Barn"?) Lord & Taylor. Chico's. (Chicos??) Coldwater Creek. Go the off-price route - Marshall's, TJ Maxx, Ross. Or try Ann Taylor or Talbott's.  This is helpful stuff! And you live in the suburbs of a major metropolitan area, so you have access to all of these stores! The only thing you barely have enough of - besides money - is time.

Some of your fabulous Facebook friends will make style suggestions, too. They'll say, why don't you dress up a sexy blouse with some chunky costume jewelry and wear it with your favorite black skirt or dressy pants and fabulous shoes? Which sounds like a good approach, until you remember that your bunions and hammertoe preclude fabulous shoes and mandate comfortable ones. 

And while you are considering The Shoe Dilemma, another quirky hang-up rears its ugly head: Whenever you wear chunky costume jewelry, you feel like Wilma Fintstone:

Or Marge Simpson.

Clothing and accessories are only part of this equation. We haven't even discussed the fact that your hairdresser is out of town for another three weeks. When she told you in March about her trip, you decided it would be a good time to let your hair grow out, but now it just seems like you'll resign yourself to arranging your shaggy in-between quasi-bangs into something resembling a Style, because there are only so many hours until this shindig and you will have time for either a manicure OR a pedicure, only one of which can be crammed into the 50-minute time slot when Seth is at therapy on Thursday afternoon. There's no time for a haircut. Besides, it's risky at this juncture. Hairdressers can smell desperation.

By now, your darling husband is gnashing his teeth and wondering why he even bothers. All he was trying to do was to provide a night on the town, a chance to dress up and get tipsy on fancy cocktails and fake-gamble and bid on silent auction items (maybe they'll have a salon package I can snag?). He is thinking, you always say you want us to go out more? Well here it is, on a silver platter, and now you're all stressed out and splattering over a thousand words (!) onto the Internet and unearthing long-buried hang-ups that he wasn't entirely aware existed.

But you will reassure him that, really, this is the stuff that normally goes on in your head. And he'll be all "Really?" And you'll say "Yes, really. Trust me." 

...at which point, he will go to his closet and pull out his nice suit - the dark one - and a crisp, new white dress shirt, select a tie, quick-shine his shoes, and BAM, he is ready to go and looks like a million bucks, and what is taking you so long??

 Men have it so easy.

You will have to further reassure yourself that while you *have* gained some weight (and yes, losing some would open up new wardrobe possibilites AND be good for your overall well-being), you really are quite content with who you are. Extra flab and all. Life's too short to sweat the last 40 25 ten pounds, right? Ninety percent of the time, you don't care. It's only when you try to buy fancy clothes, or a bathing suit, that it ever becomes an issue.

So, you will determine that Wednesday evening will be when you bravely drink to excess venture out to buy two burners for your old stove some fabulous Cocktail Attire and Flintstone-esque costume jewelry. And you will wear your new clothes on Friday night, but you will also don your winning smile and your sparkling sense of humor. And you and your handsome, suit-wearin' husband will charm the bejeezus out of the other partygoers because seriously, the two of you together? You're a lot of fun to be around.

People like you. They don't like your clothes - they like YOU. 

Party dress codes are important to observe. If you were to show up in your not-leaving-the-zip-code duds, you run the risk of well-dressed people looking askance at you as if to say, hey, the suburbs called, they want you to come back now. Or, you could be denied admittance to the event and cited for failure to comply with the stated dress code. But when it comes right down to it, that isn't the stuff that really matters. It's who you are that speaks louder than any extra 25 40 pounds or fake-bling can. 

Dear Angela at Citibank,

I'M REALLY SORRY I PUT YOU IN AN AWKWARD POSITION earlier today when I visited your branch. The thing is, Angela, the last time I was in - remember, when Citibank  threatened to freeze my dormant accounts unless I "used" them - I added just enough money just to keep them open. Because a girl never knows when she might need to have a bank account. You weren't charging me to have them, so I just.... kept them. 

But then I noticed that my already low balance was... negative! And then I got a letter from Citibank telling me my accounts were "overdrawn" and I needed to visit a branch and pay the negative balance in order to "unlock" them. Which seemed funny, because I didn't have to visit a branch to open the accounts - Citibank did that for me for free when we transferred an equity line of credit there a few years ago.

So I called, Angela, but the frosty lady I spoke to when I phoned Citibank said she couldn't help me unless I deposited enough money to cover the negative $21.32 that your repeated fees caused, which could only be accomplished by visiting a branch. That's not your fault; it's policy, right? And it probably isn't your fault that the nice guy who met me at the door and asked me how he could help, couldn't. "I can't waive the fees, Ma'am," he said as he stared at his monitor. "Those are the rules."

"I'd like to speak with a manager, please," I replied.

Anyway, Angela, even though you didn't smile at me, you handled the transaction pretty well, considering how peeved I was when I walked into your branch. I simply stated that I'd be willing to let the whole thing go if you would just zero out the negative balance and close the accounts. You said you could do that! Unlike that nice guy who also works with you, you had the power to do something.  And you did. 

So thanks again, Angela, for your help today. Considering your bank was trying to tell me, in a greedy, passive-aggressive way, that they no longer wanted me as a customer, you were pretty nice about it. Even if you did make me wait 10 minutes while you queued up for the one teller working the window (who staffs only one teller at lunchtime??) to credit my account to wipe out the negative balance that was caused because Citibank decided they would rather have $60 of mine than my business.

Citibank got their wish, finally. Hey - you don't have to hit me between the eyes with it! You should have just come right out and asked me. Now you will have a lot more time to pay attention to your customers who actually USE their accounts. At least until they realize it's ROBBERY to charge $20 a month to maintain an account with a balance of less than $1,500. 

I know when I'm not wanted. And now you know, Angela, why I have been a loyal customer of my credit union since the late 1990s. They don't charge me ridiculous fees. They're straight up with me; none of this "let's fee her to death till she figures out we no longer want her stupid little accounts" bullshit. 

It's been real, Angela. Vaya con dios, Citibank.

Sincerely,

Your Former Customer