Dad, you may want to skip this one.

I have a two year old. And an almost one year old. And aside from the lack of sleep (thank you teething!), this means that, for the most part, whenever I go out in public, my clothes are a bit stretched due to 4 little hands grabbing and pulling, my hair is a bit frazzled from those same 4 hands yanking and tearing (also, if I am being honest, from sleep, because usually the first time I catch a glimpse of myself in the morning is in the reflection off of a freezer door at the grocery store... which usually has me immediately smoothing down the wildness that is happening, sometimes resorting to my own spit to nail down some of the more stubborn parts... ya... luxurious). Also, I usually don't mind at all that my clothes are being stretched because for the most part, they are pajamas... and Paul's shirts. Which even that sometimes has me doing a double-take as I walk past the freezer door when I glance the sayings on Paul's shirts, which are usually along the lines of "BEER" and "SMARTASS UNIVERSITY." I really should start screening his t-shirt drawer. Because I feel pretty classy when I realize I have Alfalfa hair and a shirt that has some vague references to some alcoholic beverage, all the while pushing my two lovely little darlings around in the cart, both of whom are blowing very wet raspberries and laughing hysterically at the spit that is hitting mommy in the face.

So, you have me, chubby because of stubborn baby weight... or my lack of enthusiasm when it comes to working out, I haven't decided which to blame this week... with my scraggly hair and my frumpy kind-of-inappropriate t-shirts and my man-sweats and flip-flops. Now put that person in front of a rack of frilly, pretty, and mightily initimidating lingerie. What is that? Irony? A cruel sense of humor? Wishful thinking? Who knows. All I know is that those ten minutes of my life were the most flustered and red-faced in my life. I don't do lingerie. I do sweatpants and boxers and tank tops and hand-me-down t-shirts... which I then proceed to wear in public. Every day. But I haven't seen my husband in almost four months. And we have two small children. So I don't even see him that much while he's home. So I decided to do something nice... nice? Not nice. Naughty. HA. Sorry, I just cracked up typing that word. That goes to show just how unprepared I was for this experience. Because I giggle at inappropriate things still. (Also, I'm giggling because I am fairly certain that my father did not heed the advice in the title of this post... and now he's paying for it!)

But really. I went into the store and stood in front of the rack of lacey crazy skimpy things that I guess could qualify as clothing if you really stretched the definition. I stood there. And I stood there. Literally not moving anything but my head, as I looked up and down the racks. I am pretty sure I had beads of sweat trickling down my forehead. A woman came and asked if I needed help, and I turned my head and mumbled something about lingerie and needing some and not knowing what in the world those straps were for. From the combination of my frumpy clothes and crazy hair, I think I overwhelmed her, so she rattled off all the different kinds of lingerie that were ever made ever in the history of lingerie and then yelled over her shoulder as she beelined towards the back employee door that if I needed anything else to just ask. I turned my head back to the rows and rows of straps (because, well, that's pretty much all they were) and began choosing a few of the more sensible ones that I could wrap my head around. As I pulled one off of the bar, about 6 other ones came with it, all of their straps and clips and who-knows-what-else's intertwined and stuck together. I resembled some type of bumbling cartoon character as I tried to shove them all back on their respective hangars without drawing too much attention, which is hard to do when you have a Little-Bo-Peep looking thing that's somehow gotten snagged on the strap of your purse. At that point, my face was red and my palms were sweaty so I just grabbed one and headed for the cash register.

I don't do lingerie.

So now when Paul gets home, I get to say something to the effect of "Sure you had to go to AFFRRIICCCAAA and work SEVVEEENNN DDAAAYYYSS AA WEEEEEKKKK for FOOOUUURRR MOOONNTTTHHSSS STRRAAAIIGGHHHTTT, yada yada yada. But LOOK what IIIII had to do." The scale is so tipped, is it not?