Wardrobe Malfunctions

I am a dork.

Why you say do you think this way? Well let me explain myself.

I always feel like i am seriously out of place when i join my running group. Everyone else has brand new running gear, expensive GPS watches beeping happily, serious sneakers and pricey tech shirts. What do i look like? Well, i am one step away from bag lady from the thrift store in dayglo spandex, 15 year old sweat stained cotton tee shirt and tube socks with holes in each toe (OK, that is a scary visual but you get the idea).

Anyway, let's just say for shits and grins that i am cheap. OK, i am going to actually admit it... i am cheap. There i said it. Spending money on anything other then staples and toilet paper (is toilet paper considered a staple?) always seems frivolous to me.

I can't blame myself for this you know. I refuse to take any kind of personal responsibility! It is all my moms fault. OK, i know that is a cop out, I am after all 47, these "mom" issues should be well behind me right? Well... not so much.

I grew up in a house that was beyond frugal. I mean it was scary, any article of clothing that was threadbare and i NEEDED to throw out got picked out of the garbage by my mom to be recycled for rags or something else. Everything was recycled and reused. I guess from an environmental standpoint it was good, but growing up as a teenager it was horrendous. I learned at an early age that anything that i owned had to be used until it was see through. Buying a new item for school once a year was a thrill, that usually consisted of 2 pair of designer jeans and 2 matching shirts. Those items had to last, anything i wanted above and beyond that, i had to figure out how to buy on my own. It was rough, when your main salary was nights at burger king.

Either way, it pretty much molded me into one big old cheapass. Not all bad i guess. I actually am what you call fairly low maintenance. This makes my husband very happy actually. I am not into make-up, nails, the mall, high dollar hair cuts, or anything girly for that matter. Malls actually give me hives. They also bore the crap out of me. When i spend the day in the mall i am constantly thinking of how much time i am wasting and how i could be outside running or hiking or biking. As a matter of fact one day my husband and I took at trip to the new IKEA and i was so unbelievably overwhelmed that i had to go home and take a power nap afterwards. 

My mall is Unique Thrift store. It is about a mile from my house and if you had to inventory my entire house i would bet that 98 percent of it came from either this store or any number of local garage sales.

But sometimes, this can really bug the crap out of people. I have had my husband come unglued on me at stores several times as he watched me agonize over purchasing an expensive item for myself. After about an hour he usually snaps, turns bright red and says "Oh for Christ sake, would you just buy it!" at which time the salespeople stop talking, look over at us shaking their heads, doing that tisk tisk thing. Mortified, i end up slinking over to register to make my purchase.

Of course, i want to go ballistic on my husband when we get into the car and out of sight but i find myself ogling over my new purchase. Like a small child tearing open the packing and reading all the material. I have very little regret and am usually happy that i "bit the bullet" and spent the money.

So, I am beginning to think my husband has the right idea. Sometimes i just need to friggin buy it! This is also causing me to rethink the whole frugality thing. Maybe not totally abandon it but maybe change just a few small things about it, especially since my last wardrobe malfunction.

I was running the Slacker Half marathon in 2011. I had the cutest little running skirt on. This was a huge splurge for me. I "bit the bullet" and bought the skirt at the skirtsports website, clearance of course for a whole 35 and change. Big bucks! These running skirts are not cheap mind you, typically costing about 75. So of course, i felt like i hit the jackpot, plus i looked amazingly cute in it.

Well, actually, i looked cute in it for the first 3 years that i owned it, then as it got more and more threadbare, it was hard to justify the whole cute thing. The material started to fray and snag, the bottoms were totally misshapen and the elastic was just not working full force anymore. But frugal me, do i throw it out? No way! I guess maybe i was afraid to throw it away for fear that my 80 year old mom would fly in from New York and snatch it out of the garbage can. Damn her and her frugality!

Instead, out of good judgement, i continued to try to "work it" and simply had to wear it for Slacker, one of my favorite races.

The skirt worked for me until about mile 2, then everything just fell apart from there. As i was running the elastic band around the waist started to slip off my waist and slowly edge to somewhere around the halfway mark of my ass.

I tried my best to adjust it, shoved my shirt inside the skirt, pulled the skirt up, folded the top of the skirt down, ya, nothing helped. To make matters worse, because the skirt had a little pair of spandex shorts attached to them, i had nothing on underneath... yes that's right, commando for this girl!

So here i am running, holding up the skirt and trying not to give the people in the back of me a show of a lifetime (it might actually make them run the opposite direction which would be an unfair advantage on my part). White pasty butt action was after all, not every bodies cup of tea.

One of my running friend's kept looking at me, shaking her head and said, "Girl, that skirt needs to go in the trash as soon as you get home!" Liar! I had this under control. I could just hold it up and run, she would see, i was going to PR that day, skirt around my knees and all!

Finally, after about mile 5 or so i got the bright idea to take some of the safety pins from my bib and use them to pin the top of the skirt so that it did not keep sliding down past my ass. It worked, but boy did i look like a complete dork. I was dork personified. Maybe they had a medal for that at the end of the race?

So now, you ask, what has this experience taught me? Well maybe, i should stop being so dang cheap. After all, life is short, and i should really look cute at all my races right? I mean, i can't go fast so i may as well look good while shuffling for 13 or so miles.

So now what i need to do as soon as i finish writing this is buy a new running skirt and... realize that my mom is not going to come out and snatch my threadbare clothes out of the garbage anymore.... thank god.