Dots, Stripes, and (Occasionally) Febreze - Welcome to My World (A Mama Kat Writing Prompt)

This week, random.org handed me Mama Kat prompt number two: Write about the last item you looked for. Why did you need it? I am tempted to write about prompt number one, A List of 22 Things You Have Done because it would be an interesting counterpoint to last Sunday's list of 22 Things I Haven't Done. Maybe I'll do that this coming Sunday.

For tonight we have something much more mundane. I suppose it is the ubiquitous "missing sock's" business-dress cousin, the unmatched knee hi.

Take today, for example:

 (I hate the way the stripes don't match each other. A decent day, however since it was not dots and stripes.)

Matching knee-his may not be the last thing I have looked for, but this issue has existed for quite some time now. It got much worse in August 2010, right after high school started for my daughter. My husband was going to be the designated super-early-to-leave the house guy (6:55), leaving me the more leisurely 8:30 departure (which correlated with my son's middle school start time). Well, three days into the school year he lost his job and I become the early-morning girl. This meant a rapid lowering of my standards about wrinkledness of clothes and other criteria for getting out of the house dressed for work.

And, as God is my witness the knee-hi situation is going to do me in! Way back in September, 2009, my friend Fred Davenport dared me to blog about my sock drawer, which has been meticulously well organized ever since (thanks Fred!). Still, almost every morning I look in there hoping to find a matching pair of knee his that have been washed and paired. They're never there, perhaps because of the laundry processing breakdown in the family. (I'll spare you the picture of laundry mountain - it is embarrassing!).

If I had the amount of money I have spent on "last minute" runs into Walgreens, I could probably buy a Kindle. Yes, blogland, I am sheepishly admitting that I have sprayed Febreze onto knee his to try to get through one more day in the work world (sometimes they matched, most times they didn't, but they sure weren't freshly laundered). 

Sunday, when I had the opportunity to do one of my very favorite things on earth, a film shoot with an FSU Film project, I had to take a variety of clothes because the director wasn't sure what he wanted my character wearing. You'd think I would be über-prepared for something that means so much to me. I had taken mostly black/gray (and yes, the knee his matched - I'll avoid the topic of Febreze) clothing. But I took a few things in the brown family, and the only thing I could find hosiery related (despite having purchased quite a few "emergency" pairs at Walgreens over the year) was a pair of cream hose, the plan being that I would cut them off and make them into knee his if I had to. Cut them off? What is going on with me? (We stayed with black.)

(Fortunately the director, Nestor Bustamante, and I were more concerned with figuring out how to write messages in lipstick on glass than with my hosiery!)

 Here's another example: a funky tan/cream pair balled up in a little bag I found in the car:

Where have my standards gone?

I think it's time to admit "defeet."

Sigh.