One afternoon in the very recent past I ran out of the house dressed in these. Drawstring velour has to be the 2010 equivalent of elastic-waist polyester pants. I wear them because a) They were free and came in a bag of maternity clothes given to me by a kind soul. b) They fit my post maternity lumpiness.

I was also wearing this. Please notice the ample spit up staining front and center as well as across the shoulder. Though both the pants and shirt are blue, they don’t match.

And yes, I was also wearing these. I adore these boots. They don’t match velour, wide leg pants, but they are easy to put on and keep my feet dry and warm as I trudge from the house to the barn where I parked the suburban. Besides, I was only taking my oldest daughter to piano lessons and picking up two other children from piano lessons. No one would see me. *Insert evil laugh here*

To top it all off I put on this pair of gloves because I was running late and didn’t want to spend time searching for mates. Did I mention that I’d actually gotten in a shower that morning so my hair was clean and dry just not anything else like curled or straightened? Yep, I was pretty stylin’.

So out the door I ushered my oldest daughter and three little boys. We pulled up at the piano teacher’s house, dropped off one child and picked up two more. Then I decided I had time to run to Walmart and pick up the 8×10 prints for my children’s Reflections projects.

Inside the store with a crying, hungry  baby, an upset, tantrum throwing three-year-old and, three school-aged children I remembered what I was wearing. That’s okay, I’m sure we weren’t calling undue attention to ourselves and no one would notice.

In that moment I remembered another November day near Thanksgiving and a family member’s wedding. That day I was also in Walmart picking up enlarged photos for my children’s Reflections entries. However, that day my mother -in-law stopped by my house to drop off the ingredients for the green bean casserole I was making for the wedding breakfast the next day. She stopped by while I was at Walmart and saw every surface in my dining room and kitchen covered. Every surface. I’d been making two skirts with overlays, two velvet jackets, and a velvet baby boy outfit. The children had been working on a couple of Reflections projects EACH. And everybody still had to eat and do homework. A lot of living had been going on and very little cleaning.

On the way home from Walmart that day my three-year-old daughter sat in her car seat and threw up the Cheetos I’d bought on impulse as we left Walmart because it was one o’clock and the children were hungry. Then I hit a dog. With the car.

After seeing my house and then hearing about my ride home from Walmart (the throw-up, the dog–who turned out to be okay), my mother-in-law called to see how I was doing. While on the phone with her, I was moving a load of whites from the washer to the dryer. The load with the white shirts to go with my daughters’ skirts and jackets for the wedding the following day. In the middle of reassuring her that I was fine, I said, “AACCK! What in the world!? I just found a huge piece of manure in my laundry.” I pulled out a palm-sized piece of manure wrapped inside one of the white shirts. It happens sometimes on the farm. I don’t know how. I don’t know if I want to know how.

My mother-in-law laughed and said, “Are you writing all of this in your journal?”

And so dressed in my Motherwear with a baby carrier and fussing baby slung over one arm and pulling a yelling three-year-old with my free hand , I realized there are worse things than walking the runway of your own personal unfashion show in Walmart.