random thoughts – Day 1,724 – (Thursday) – manufacturing stress

Morning snow against  the neighbor's house.

The forecast called for snow overnight Wednesday and into Thursday, but it was not snowy and the street was barely wet I woke up and looked outside. Other places weren’t as lucky and I was glad I wasn't at any of them. It began to snow around 9:00 and kept going for an hour or so, but I wasn’t really paying attention. It was barely a dusting on the lawn and then it was gone. I’m not sad about this.

The workday was reasonable and mostly stress-free, so that meant I had to shake things up with some self-inflicted aggravation. It’s the night before an event with a green and gold color theme. I found a green top a couple weeks ago, barely two hours after describing to a friend what I wanted. The default bottoms could be a basic black pant, and the only issue (for me) is that there isn’t much gold in the ensemble. 

There was a two-week cruise through Amazon and a couple not-quite-exactly-the-right color skirts and pants were found. Because they weren't exactly right, I delayed pushing the big old buy button hoping to find "exactly right" and by the time I decide "not-quite" would be okay, the delivery date had shifted from two days before the event to the day after it. Literally. In the course of five minutes. 

Tonight, at 5:00, I logged off the work computer, put on my coat, and launched myself into the traffic for a trek to St. Vincent de Paul. Marshall’s had already failed me earlier this week, and everyplace else was all the way across town or in another town. There was an itch for pants, a skirt, or a dress I could wear under the top, but it wasn’t a full blown desire/need.

At St. Vincent tonight, there was a peachy-gold sequin wrap dress at half off, making it a whopping $5. There are no fitting rooms so it is always a gamble buying clothes there, and I had on jeans and a fleece top that were too bulky to put the dress over to check fit, but $5 isn’t much of a gamble, so I bought it.

At home, the not-exactly gold-gold dress was tried on and it’s a smidge too small. It's not wearable as is, but if I had another week I could easily alter it. Conceivably, I could alter it tonight if I rearranged a bunch of stuff to make room and hauled out the sewing machine and stayed up late (likely swearing a lot), and once upon a time that would have happened, but I don’t feel that passionate (obsessive) about such things any more. So black pants it is. Unless the location of the winter white pants comes to me in a dream. They are either still packed away or were recently donated because I never wore them but hung on to them for years “just in case.” 

So, yeah, self-inflicted stress and aggravation was a rousing success tonight. And there is a dress I’ll be donating back to the thrift world real soon. But hey, I was out in society after work. Ok, it was the Society of St. Vincent de Paul thrift shop, but you get the idea. Tomorrow night will be the real social thing.