Big Goofy Smile!

On a message board that I've been reading for years, someone challenged anyone who blogs to write a blog post this weekend about something that brings a big, goofy smile to their face. Right up my alley, huh? So of course, I have to take her up on that challenge. And I just happened to have the perfect opportunity yesterday for smiling a big, goofy smile..

Both of the girls needed new shoes. Badly. I was so excited by the shoes Lauren picked out, as she broke out of her white-on-white, nondescript, shoe phase that she has been in since, oh, kindergarten. I think she inherited her white fetish from her wonderful mother...who has more white shirts, sweaters, etc than anyone really needs. Well, I need them, but that's beside the point.

I was truly shocked by the shoes she fell in love with and HAD. TO. HAVE. They were far out of my shoe budget comfort zone, but she wanted them so desperately, that she paid for them with HER OWN MONEY!!! She's pretty much a tightwad and doesn't part with HER OWN MONEY very easily, so that gives you a clue as to how badly she had to have those shoes. I'll show you in a sec...

Now Rachel on the other hand...whereas Lauren lives in a white bread/white shoe/generic tshirt world, Rachel lives in a technicolor, put on your sunglasses world. She definately has her own special fashion sense that borderlines at times on Introduction to Punky Brewster. And she has no clue who Punky Brewster IS. Sometimes, the things she comes downstairs dressed for school in leave me speechless and shaking my head in shock and awe. I do however keep my amazement to myself (well, most of the time!) since my own mother was still picking out my clothes and telling me what to wear when I was in high school. I just look at her, shake my head and pray that someday (SOON!) she will come to her senses and enjoy a more...shall I say...coordinated look.

So while Lauren's choice of shoes nearly made me faint in surprise, Rachel's surprised me not one tiny little bit.

Here is the first thing that gave me a goofy smile yesterday:



Rachel's shoes are on the left and Lauren's are on the right. (And please oh please ignore my less than clean kitchen floor. It's been a long week). "Mop kitchen floor" was at the very top of my to-do-list for today, in big bold letters, but it's rainy. And we have a dog, so the clean kitchen floor will have to wait.

Close up of Rachel's shoes:




There is one more thing that made me smile an even bigger, even goofier, smile. And just so you know, smiling about this means that I have come a very long way from my borderline OCD tendencies.

I like things to match. In my pre-children days, I wouldn't even carry a purse that didn't match my shoes. In the early 80's when those polo shirts with the little alligator just below the collar were popular, I had a love/hate relationship with them because the alligator was always green, no matter what color the shirt was, and that bugged me. I always thought it would have been so much better if the Lacoste company would have made the alligator white since white goes with everything. I bought those alligater shirts, but only if the green alligator actually looked good with the shirt. God, I can't believe I just admitted that. I just like things to match. I'm not as extreme about it as I used to be, but that side of me is still lurking in the dusty shadows, ready to pounce. So you can imagine how much THIS particular trend originally gave me heart palpitations:



I don't know if it's a St. Louis thing or just a teenage girl thing, but my girls wear socks that don't match. Every day. The first time I saw one of them wearing mismatched socks, I ran upstairs to grab a pair that matched, and I got the eyeroll, and a "MOM! THIS is the style!" I've sort of kind of gotten used to it but not really. Yesterday, when I was buying shoes, the shoe store had a buy one get one half price sale going on, the girls needed socks, so we picked some out. The package of socks Rachel picked out not only made me smile, but I actually laughed...It seems as if Famous Footwear has noticed the trend of teen girls wearing socks that do not match, and they now sell a package of 12 socks, none of which match! Yep, 12 different socks in the same package! There were lots of packages of colorful wacky patterned socks, but guess which ones Rachel picked out? If you guessed the package of 12 different socks, you win.

One last thing that didn't make me smile, but made me laugh in horror...when we were checking out, the cashier was talking about the "mismatch" trend. She said the newest thing is not just wearing socks that don't match, but buying a couple of different pairs of Converse shoes, and wearing 2 SHOES that don't match.

I may need therapy and anti anxiety meds if Rachel embraces that fad.