Shlumpadinka

For those of you that watch Oprah, you know EXACTLY what the title means.

If you're a non-Oprah lover, please allow me to explain:

It's Saturday. You just rolled out of bed. You realize you're out of milk, you need to grab your dry cleaning, and you haven't bought a gift yet for the wedding shower you're attending on Sunday - which is tomorrow. You throw on a pair of baggy sweats or cargo pants or gym pants coupled with a t-shirt and head for the door. You stop briefly in the hallway mirror to throw on a pair of sunglasses and throw your hair into some concoction that kind of resembles your garden variety pony tail. You jump in the car and quickly look into the rear view mirror.

"Ugh geesh. I look awful." You think of that 3rd glass of wine you had the night before that you could have totally gone without. Brian usually stops me at 2. Sometimes I listen. Usually I don't - and wish that I had.

At this point we reach for the lip gloss because lip gloss will somehow pull this ensemble together so we don't look like a complete and utter disaster. We brush a few fly away hairs back only to watch them pop back up again, and back out of the driveway.

"Just today," we think to ourselves, "I got to get out and get my stuff done."

But somehow "today" has turned into "every time I leave the house to go somewhere other than work." Don't get me wrong, at 21 I could pull off this look. At 21, you could pull off this look.

At 32, you're officially a Shlumpadinka. At 32, I'm officially a Shlumpadinka.

I realized yesterday, while impatiently waiting at the deli counter in the supermarket, that I have indeed officially veered from my old stunning and hip self, and slammed head on into looking like a bag lady (no offense to bag ladies as most are wonderful people). I stood there, tightly holding my little pink ticket watching the deli engineers maneuver around at a snail's pace. I caught myself mentally tearing apart the girl standing in front of me.

"Good God," I thought to myself, "THAT is a disastrous pedicure. Ugh, and the bra straps hanging out, seriously? It's called racer back bra honey. Buy one. And the roots? That look went out with 80's Madonna. Time to pay a visit to the salon."

And then a little voice chimed in. It was very faint and very reluctant to speak up.

"Um, I don't mean to interrupt your uncalled for yet entertaining internal dialogue regarding this poor innocent stranger just trying to get her deli meats like the rest of us, but I can't help asking - have YOU looked in a mirror lately?"

And that's when it hit me. Here I stood in a pair of beige velor track suit pants, a white long sleeved t-shirt, flip flops, no makeup, greasy haired ponytail, and a black head band tying this whole God awful get-up together. I was mortified to realize that the girl with the awful pedicure and bad hair didn't look any better or worse than I did at that very moment.

So I've decided to add an additional resolution to the 10 I'm already (miserably failing) working on accomplishing this year.

No more Shlumpadinka. On that note, I'm off to iron the shirt and pants that I'm wearing to work today, because I've realized that although I'm usually put together when going to work, a small degree of Shlumpadinka-ness is creeping into my work appearance as well......