Yard Sale

This weekend we had a neighborhood garage sale. It's a great time to get rid of stuff and it's usually a big hit since so many families participate. 

I had  a ton of baby stuff to unload. Cute girl clothes. Barely used baby equipment. Blankets.

I sent Dan outside to man the garage sale while I got the baby fed and clothed. I came outside just as a super cute pregnant woman was perusing our merchandise. She looked to be in her twenties and had two friends flanking her side and telling her, "Oh, you definitely need that" or "No, you don't need that... I never used my (enter baby equipment name here)". She was being mentored. It was beautiful to watch.

I took that opportunity to plug in my two "veteran" cents. I sat my super cute and well fed baby girl on my hip and popped over her direction.

"Oh, when are you due?" I asked the super cute pregnant lady.

"September." She gleamed.

"Having a girl?"

She was.

With that I launched into a hard sell of how my super cute baby clothes for sale would fit her super cute style. She smiled politely, bought a few super cute pieces and left. The garage sale had been so stellarly bad that at this point I just wanted someone to take my stuff. Hard sell was necessary. 

Then I went inside to the bathroom sink and saw something horrible. 

There, in the mirror, was someone who was not super cute.

My hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail. Fuzzy little hairs poked out.

My face showed the fact that I had been up at 3:30 that morning to feed my baby. 

This wouldn't have been so bad if I had taken the time to wear makeup. 

I guess I thought my glasses would camouflage my face.

There were stains all over my black t-shirt. Black shows stains remarkably well.

I looked for all the world like the pale, tired, running-on-adrenaline mother that I was.

Years ago, I saw a woman wearing pilled forest-green sweatpants and I swore that I would never let myself go to that level. Every woman has her threshold of, shall I say, "comfort". For some, its velour. For me, it was pilled sweatpants. To borrow a saying from my husband, "What better way to tell the world you've given up than to wear sweats?"

I put the baby down, ran upstairs and brushed my hair. I freshened my face. I put on jeans instead of sweats. I put my contacts on instead of my glasses. 

In my overly-neurotic and somewhat sleep-deprived "I-want-that-stranger-to-respect-me-and-not-think-mothering-has-to-look-like-this" state, I ran downstairs and outside to the sale. The super cute pregnant woman was gone. Rats. 

"Where's that pregnant woman?" I asked Dan.

"Don't know."

"You know... that super cute one who was just here? Where did she go? Did she go down the street?" I was persistent.

"I don't know, Em. And why does it matter? She's gone now."

How could I explain The Threshold in 3 seconds to a person of the male gender?

*sigh*

But wait, Self... There is another way to look at this... You've just shown a super-cute-mother-to-be that even if you are a bit scary looking, you can be happy. 

In any case, she'll find out on her own. Probably in September.