Gender confusion

For the first time ever, I walked into a store and mistook men's clothes for women's clothes.

Yes, it's true. I don't shop very often. But I didn't think I was that out of practice!

I had gone to my local Stein Mart to exchange something. As I walked over to the customer service counter, I thought they had rearranged the store and put women's clothes where the men's department used to be.

The corner display featured Lucky jeans and shirts with pretty embroidery on the cuffs and pastel paisley prints. I honestly did not realize they were for men.

I tried really hard to find a photo of the Malibu Cowboy shirts so I could post it here and say, "Am I right?!" "And you'd go, "Yep. I'd pick that for a woman." The best I could find was this Lucky Brand shirt that is quite representative of the shirts in question.

It's really no big deal, I know. Even though I live in a very creative town and see so-called "music-industry types" with chunky, highlighted haircuts and contrast-stitched jeans, I'm married to a man who thinks turquoise blue is a very flamboyant color. So there are men around here who get haircuts that cost more than mine and wear boots with heels higher than mine. I just never actually found myself this ... confused.

I need to get out more often.

This week's Brentwood Home Page column

Find out why the best may be too good for me.

Diamonds on the soles of her shoes

I know I live in Brentwood, and there's a lot of discretionary income in this community, but I don't think I'll ever get used to the idea of folks wearing $250 sandals to the ballpark.
At our last T-ball game, the opposing bleachers looked like a cast party for Desperate Housewives, with all manner of white jeans, satin tops, spike heels and gigantic leather bags. Our side had a couple who dress like Felicity Huffman, including me, but only a few. It's not like Civitan Ballpark is THE place to be seen, and that red baseball dirt stays with you, if you know what I mean.
Yet more proof that I'm merely a junior varsity mom running in a varsity world.

The eternal question

If you believe newspaper ads, the most important tradition of the Easter holiday is dressing up.
We all know, though advertisers won’t say it, that the dressing up is for Sunday church services. If you’re gonna celebrate the resurrection of your lord and savior, you might as well do it in a new outfit.
Besides, anyone with little boys knows you wouldn’t attempt to dress them up just to sit around at Grandma’s house unless they are having their picture taken or they’ve just come from church.
There is a special stress associated with buying Easter clothes, however. Well, it’s stressful for women. We’re the ones who maintain these holiday traditions. If there were only men on this planet, holiday greetings would consist of one guy looking at the other between March Madness games and saying, “Isn’t Easter coming up?”
In fact, if men got to choose, the Fourth of July would be the biggest holiday of the year because of the potential involvement of fire.
Still, most men don’t appreciate the role of Easter clothes: They announce the departure of winter drab and bulk and the arrival of breezy, springlike colors and fabrics. We are reunited with white and linen and all the other forbidden fruits we stored away for winter.
Shopping for Easter clothes is wearisome, though, because you can’t predict the Easter weather. Weather matters more on certain holidays because it sets the mood. My mom actually gets mad if the forecast says “60s and partly cloudy” the third week of November. And what kid wants to wear his winter coat over his Halloween costume?
Likewise, the ideal Easter weather would be like when Dorothy steps from the black-and-white farmhouse into Munchkinland for the first time –bright and sunny with flowers blooming and little people frolicking about.
What ruins the shopping trip is that sometimes Easter falls in March and sometimes in April. Up North, like in mid-Michigan, you can bet that it will be in the 40s or colder on Easter. But in Tennessee, we sometimes get a warmer Easter, so much so that chocolate candy has been banned from the last few egg hunts I’ve chaperoned. It melts in the egg and in your hand.
But here we are, looking at a high in the 50s, which sucks the fun out of the strappy high heels and summery sundresses at Dillards. Even if you do find a dress that comes with a cardigan, the sweater will be silk, and you’ll still be shivering during your in-laws’ egg hunt. And stiletto heels are no good in the mud.
I don’t think Jesus would have cared, though, since he wore sandals year round anyway.

Puttin' on airs

I adore offbeat shirts and accessories, like this crime scene tape scarf I found on Girlz Lyfe.com.

My problem is that I usually get stuff like this and then, the first time I wear it out into The World, I'm overcome by a fit of self-consciousness and wish that nobody would ask me about my really cool item that just begs to be asked about. I know I've written here before about this old T-shirt I had that read, "Just researching my novel." One time as I stood waiting for the Sam's Club guy to check my receipt on my way out the door, he said, "What's your novel about?" I never thought someone might not buy into the irony of my oh-so-clever T-shirt. And some things just turn out to be stupid when explained.
Once Tim got me these awesome earrings that are miniature levels, the kind you'd find in a toolbox, but I cringe when people lean in to get a closer look. I know, 'Make up your mind, Mrs. Passive-Aggressive Deviationist! Notice me! Don't notice me! Which is it?'

I could just keep getting this stuff and enjoy it without an audience. The truth is, though, it's no fun to be fabulous at home all day. The kids are not adequately impressed by my intermittent eccentricities. I like to wear stuff that has a sense of humor. I just get embarrassed when everybody's not in on the joke.

Fake-tree huggers

This is the year we Burgins bought an artificial Christmas tree.
Our last enchanted experience selecting the perfect tree from the Home Depot outside garden center converted us into fake-tree people.
Nothing against The Home Depot, of course. It is what it is. I knew going in that taking my family there to buy our tree would not resemble that commercial where the Budweiser Clydesdales are pulling a sleigh full of smiling models with hatchets snuggling up to a hot beverage during a holiday tree-seeking expedition.
No, our escapade played more like an episode in the Dr. Phil house -- still with the hatchets, though.
Once Henry overcame his initial embarrassment over his dad’s cold-weather getup, he was surprisingly game. Mason, however, had a social studies deadline bearing down on him, Tim kept counting down the minutes until tip-off in the UT/Memphis basketball game, and Owen spent the entire time boycotting the buggy.
Toddlers can be ruthlessly critical shoppers, anyway. If it wasn’t their idea, nothing will please them. Of nearly every tree Tim picked up, Owen said, “Not that one. We don’t need that one. That one’s not good for us.” Never mind that we never asked him. We just needed a tree big enough for our immense collection of ornaments made from kid footprints.
Oh, how far Tim and I have sunk from those kidless days when we’d go out to dinner, then peruse the selection at what my friend Andrea calls World’s Most Expensive Christmas Trees, Santa’s Trees on Moores Lane. You get what you pay for, though. Each of their trees is fluffed out and spaced so you can walk around to evaluate its shape and fullness.
Back then, I thought nothing of plunking down $90 to $100 for something we’d throw out in less than a month.
We’ve always been staunch proponents of the “live” Christmas tree. “You can’t beat the smell!” we’d say. “Picking one out is a tradition.”
Well, scratch that last one. Somehow we forgot we live on the low-ceiling side of Brentwood and came home with a 9-foot tree we had to cram under our 8-foot ceiling like Will Ferrell in Elf.
While our tree tradition has degenerated into a blindfolded dart throw, recent advancements in fake trees are staggering. A Web site called Balsam Hill offers what they call True Needle technology so lifelike, I’ll have to convince my friends it’s fake! Their pre-lit trees are “thoughtfully strung” to guarantee no wires are showing.
Next year I’ll just be thoughtfully strung out.

At least it's not bills

Pottery Barn’s annual yuletide attack on my mailbox has begun.
I’ve ordered maybe three things from them in my lifetime, but apparently that’s not enough. They want me to want more!
It’s not just Pottery Barn, though. It’s the stepchildren, PB Kids and PB Teen. Plus, Pottery Barn and all its kin are owned by Williams Sonoma, so if you let one of them in, you’re also inviting in the folks from Williams Sonoma, Hold Everything and the ultramodern West Elm home décor catalog. Each week leading up to Christmas, they visit my mailbox and overstay their welcome.
Our recent summery weather didn’t do much to put me in a fall magazine or catalog-shopping mood anyway. Sure, it’s cold now, but Southern Living’s “Celebrate Fall with our Blackberry Cobbler and Apple Dumplings” issue arrived on an 89-degree October day. On the way back from my mailbox last week, I glimpsed velvet curtains on Pottery Barn’s back cover and almost passed out on the steaming driveway.
I brought this catalog assault on myself, of course. I no longer believe the Internet is the work of the devil, and I have indulged in a bit of lazy (I prefer the term “efficient”) online Christmas shopping. Mail order companies now know me as “direct mail bait.”
Lots of companies bombard us with catalogs, but Pottery Barn and Lillian Vernon in particular seem to have it out for American postal carriers. Their catalog onslaught has the desperate air of the stalking high school boyfriend who would call you eight times before you left the house in the morning.
“Hi! It’s Pottery Barn again. Just wanted to be sure you saw our $40 pillar candles that will make your mantle look so elegant for Christmas, but only if you buy at least six of them because you don’t want your holiday mantle to look skimpy, do you? OK, well, see you tomorrow.”
As if I had room in my budget for $240 worth of candles.
I guess the catalog printers will survive the economic downturn, even if my mail carrier doesn't.