Obey

There is certainly something to be said for pulling yourself together on those days when you can barely bring yourself to get out of bed. I had one such morning a few hours ago. I set my alarm for 7 am, planning on spending a few hours working on my outline for my practice essay tonight in Bar Strategies before working out and enjoying a cup of coffee on my porch. Guess which of those happened. If you guessed none, you would be right.

My alarm clock is one of those dawn simulators. I set it for 7 am, for example, and a half hour (or 15 minutes, 60 minutes, or 90 minutes, whichever I set) beforehand, the light function starts to brighten, and at 7, it is fully bright and the sound function (a gentle beep) starts and grows progressively louder. I can hold down the dimmer light as far as I want, and that functions as "snooze," giving me another 9 minutes of admittedly crappy sleep. This morning, however, I just kept "hitting snooze" for an hour, until a knock at the door startled me awake. I had put in a maintenance request for the shower rod that jumped out of the drywall Sunday night and attacked me, so I thought it was the maintenance guy. It was, but he was just there to let me know he would be shutting off the water for several minutes. I quizzed him on the status of getting my shower rod fixed, because I was pretty much still asleep and focused intently on the possibility of taking a shower without dampening everything within 3 feet of the tub. He said he would be back in the evening to take care of it. I closed the door and went back to bed.

I woke up intermittently until 10:30, when I said to myself, "Self, you need to get it together. Out of bed now. There is stuff to do." Myself objected and decided a better idea was to stay in bed and cuddle with Mulder, who was asleep with his head on my arm. So I did. Finally I announced to Mulder that we needed to rally and I had to shower and make myself presentable.

I enjoyed what was hopefully my last shower with the water directed as far away from the open side as possible, which meant I was pretty much against the wall, dried my hair, and dressed in what I felt was a good outfit. I had it in my mind I wanted to wear a grey J. Crew top I have not yet worn. It has a small pattern, but it was subtle enough I decided to pair it with a (also J. Crew) skirt with a coral on peach floral pattern, topped with a light coral cardigan, which I belted. Feeling pretty pleased with my pattern mixing but still very sluggish, I promised myself a stop at Lux, my neighborhood hispter coffee joint, on my way to class. I trotted into Lux even earned a compliment from the girl I gave my order to on my outfit. "Yay, me!" I said to myself. When my red eye was ready, I snagged a date oat bar and trotted out the door and promptly sloshed the coffee all down the front of my snappy cardi, but did not realize this until I got to my classroom. In the intervening moments, I had three conversations with different people, the entire time with yet-unknown coffee on my shoulder down to my hip. What I HAD noticed, however, was that the lining of my skirt kept slipping out and remained visible no matter how much readjusting I did. By the time I sat down and saw the coffee I had been wearing, I was feeling much less impressed with myself. I went to the bathroom and removed the cardi and belt and then I spent an hour wearing two patterns right next to each other with nothing separating the two, and in a skirt I feel is much too low on my hips to look appropriate with a blouse tucked in. And then I got too cold and added the cardi back, but now I'm wearing coffee. And I want a Diet Coke. And a nap.

What I'm trying to say is, I was going to take a picture of my cute little outfit, but now I just want to go home and put on my yoga pants and tee shirt. There's something to say for making yourself lovely for the day even when you don't feel like it. But there are also days when the universe wants you to slum it, and there's nothing shameful in obeying the universe. See you soon, stretchy cotton blends.