Girls night out

Recently, my Wonderful Husband (WH) agreed to stay home with OBB on a Friday night so that I could go out with one of my friends for dinner. A real dinner. In a nice restaurant. It was to celebrate my birthday and my friend's birthday - they're three days apart. We both have little ones so it was a huge treat. Usually, when I get together with this friend, our little ones are with us and we dine at places like Cracker Barrel where a screaming child doesn't disrupt the ambiance to the degree that it would at a fine dining establishment.

So I arrived at the restaurant a little early. It is located in an area where there are many fine shops. A nice dinner out and time to shop by yourself, you say? Yes. I even rode down the highway on my way there, jamming to my CD of U2's greatest hits that WH got me for Christmas. I know. I am such a child of the eighties. But to be honest, it's the closest I've felt to being like my old self again since I gave birth. Not that I want to be my old self again, it's just nice to know it's still there, somewhere, every once in a while.

So here I am in a nice ladies clothing store, looking through a rack of clothes, by myself, without a 10 month old trying to put the sleeves of the hanging clothes in his mouth, and I came across some great pants. Wow, I thought to myself, I might even have time to try these on without being relegated to the handicapped dressing room (which is the only one in which strollers will fit) and spending half my time making funny faces in the mirror so as to entertain OBB. I could just walk into a narrow dressing room like a normal person and quietly try on clothes.

So as I'm holding these pants up in the air to look at them, imagining the relaxing dressing room expereince that awaited me, along with the nice dinner coming right after that, the sales associate approaches me. "Those are great pants, aren't they?" Yes, I say. "Just hope they're not too short for you." WHAT!?! It was like a record scratching in my perfect Friday night out.

Now I know I'm tall. I'm about 5'11. Easily over 6 ft in heels. But this isn't something that just happened to me recently. I've been tall my whole life. I think I've probably been 5'11 for over a decade. Finding pants long enough for me is one of the challenges I accept in life and I really don't need it pointed out to me. So you're thinking "cry me a river, you're tall". But see, there's more to it than that. If you're short, yes, I feel for you that you need to get everything you own tailored, but at least you have that option. Having too much fabric is far better than not enough. When you're tall, you can't get things tailored, because they can't ADD ON fabric. There's just not enough fabric there. They've got nothing to work with.

SO after this remark, I went to the dressing room and made my best effort to get back into my Friday night out groove. I tried on a bunch of clothes, walked out of the store without buying anything and headed straight to the restaurant. There I met my friend, got seated and ordered what the restaurant called the "Ultimate Cosmopolitan", and spent the next few hours chatting and eating. Our delightful meal was capped off when they brought out two chocolate lava cakes, each with a lit candle for our birthdays. By the end of the night, I had forgotten about the pants (of course not enough to prevent me from writing about it in my blog :-), and I drove home, filled with gratitude for WH who made it possible for me to have a fabulous night out.