cindy's world

You guys know how I sometimes post things that are unpleasant/traumatic for me but give entertainment value to you because I’m such a nice blogger? Things like the Pumping Incident? Okay, here’s another one.

The day started much like any other weekday. I woke up, brushed my teeth and washed my face, popped in my eyeballs, pulled on a dress, threw some yoga clothes into my bag, and went to wake up the kid. I changed her, she played with my hair, we went downstairs to wait for Jayne. Jayne arrived, took over Allie duty while we chatted about this or that or Allie’s lunch for the day, hubby and I packed into the car and we carpooled to our work locations. At my work, I walked through the public, put my stuff on the conveyor x-ray machine, walked through the metal detector, said greetings to coworkers, rode up the elevator with another coworker chatting about this and that, and I got off on my floor to go into my courtroom. And then I scratched my upper chest area just under my neck and thought, “This dress has a higher neckline than I remember.” I looked down and pulled the front of my collar away from my chest. And I got on my cell phone and tapped out this status message on the social networking site:

Cindy just got into her courtroom & noticed she’s got her whole dress on backwards. #whyDontPeopleTellUThoseThings #MaybeNobodyNoticed

My online friends (some real life ones) got a kick out of that and commented on the message, sharing stories of how they’d worn mismatched shoes, earrings, sweaters turned inside-out, to work themselves. Some even had experience with clothes worn backwards, altho those were all people referring to their young children who had dressed themselves. =P Flip Flop Girl comforted me by pointing out that unless it were a backless dress, nobody would have noticed. The coworker who rode up the elevator with me emailed me privately, after seeing this status message, that she indeed did not know I had the dress on backwards, but that she’d even thought to herself how cute the dress was. I never thought I’d be one of those people whose clothing fit the same forward as backwards. That’s what I get for joking about a flat-chested girlfriend in high school, saying her bra fit better backward than forward. I blame pregnancy/nursing for the changes, but really, I don’t care that much. It was worth it for my kid to be healthy and smart.

Toward the end of lunch, I came back from yoga with only 5 minutes to spare so I changed really quickly in the jury room restroom and then ran out to the front hallway of the courtroom to take roll of my jurors. About a foot out the front door, I made a sudden U-turn and came back into the courtroom, rounded the corner behind the wall, and lifted my shirt collar to peer in again, making sure I didn’t once again have the dress on backwards. The problem, you see, was that my mom gave me this dress and she’d cut off the label, so the dress from the inside looks very similar the right way and the wrong way, except for some ragged bits of white peeking out under the seam if you were to look closely. My jurors probably wondered what the heck I was doing, going out and then arcing right back in, but it’s better than the alternative (turning the dress around in front of them in the public hallway).

Later in the afternoon, I was having a conversation with a very smart friend who holds multiple degrees, including a Ph.D. in law. He was saying that he’s told quite frequently that he is similar to the character of Sheldon Cooper on “The Big Bang Theory.” I told him (only half-jokingly) that I’m not sure I could talk to him anymore, because I’m now totally intimidated, and that he must think I’m a moron. The rest of the conversation went like this:

Friend: “There is not one moronic thing about you. You are probably the most intelligent of all my [social networking site] friends.”
Me: “Well…I wore my dress backwards to work today.”
:/
My friend then tried to make me feel better by saying, “That’s because your mind is so busy thinking about important things, you haven’t the time to look at the tag.” Well, there was no tag to speak of, but mainly, the truth is, I pulled a moronic move. =P I’m not above admitting that.

I put on a black and white dress this morning that had a deep v-neckline, so I thought I’d add a splash of color with a drop necklace that has sparkly red rhinestones throughout. The stones are alternatingly small beads and large beads on a thin gold rope.

When I went to wake Allie up after getting dressed, she said upon seeing my necklace, “Ooh! Putty.” She fingered the beads.
“Thank you! You like mama’s necklace?”
“Uh-huh. Balls?” She pointed to the beads.
“Yeah, there are balls on this necklace.”
“BABY balls!” she said, touching one of the small beads.
“Yeah, there are little balls, and big balls, right?”
“Yah.” She watched the beads reflect the morning sunlight coming through her bedroom window, and noted, “Light, light!”
“Shiny necklace? Are the balls shiny?”
“Light.”
“That’s right, light.”
Allie pointed to her own neck, and said, “Allie like neck-less.”
“Allie likes mama’s necklace?”
“Yah. Mama like neck-less?”
“Yes, mama likes this necklace.”
“Dada like neck-less?”
“I don’t know if dada likes mama’s necklace, dada hasn’t seen it, yet.”
“Allie like neck-less.”
“Thank you!”

It’s great now that she’s beyond the age of the automatic grab-and-pull and I can start accessorizing, again. There are days I wear a piece of jewelry solely for her amusement, like an owl necklace I’d bought just because I know she likes owls. She also likes playing with mardi gras plastic bead strands that the stepkidlet lets her wear around the house. Allie likes putting it over her head, and then sticking each arm through and letting the large string of beads fall to her feet. The other day I wore my favorite simple white gold hoop earrings and she touched one and said, “Eawing.” There are so many words I don’t even know she has, every day is an adventure.