Not Going out

 Not the BBC comedy sitcom and definitely not a self-imposed challenge like 'Not Buying More Dresses' post a couple of months back following a closet clean out, and which I have observed more in the letter than the spirit of the challenge, having acquired several more pairs of jeans/jeggings and all-in-one jumpsuit [something Sue Richmond gleefully described as my Space Command Deck outfit - though in my defence I did have a serious crush on Gabrielle  Drake in UFO in my teens, and almost certainly coveted that famous purple bob wig and silver lurex catsuit as well.] 

It's more that I can't remember the last time I managed to get outside the house as Susie. The blog roll reminds me that this was in February, the last time I had a couple of days to myself, but nowhere more adventurous than an aborted walk to the local nature reserve (which turned out to be far too muddy to attempt) and one of the local parks. Between work, various hurts, illnesses or ailments (both of us, at different times), and the vagaries of the weather (either wet and rainy or far too hot and muggy) there haven't been any opportunities for any extended time on my own as Susie.

I've not been completely stuck in bloke mode since February though. I've been taking advantage of non-work Friday mornings and occasional work-from-home Thursdays when I don't have a series of meetings to dress when L goes out for a few hours in the morning, mindful that I have to be changed back and everything tidied away when she is due to return home around lunchtime. I don't know if L knows, or guesses, how I spend that 'me' time when she's out - it's not something we can discuss - but she will often phone to warn me if she expects to be back earlier or later then normal.

While a couple of hours doesn't justify a proper makeover, and is also something of a waste of makeup if you have to scrub it  all off again shortly after, a minimal swipe with an eyebrow pencil, liner and lip outliner has to suffice to stop me feeling trapped in bloke mode all the time. Nails, of course, are out of the question.

It's something I've come to refer to as 'microdosing'. Short periods where I can be my preferred self and release the pressure - or more accurately a feeling of restless - that arises when I've been stuck in bloke mode for too long. 

The danger is that is this becomes the new normal, and the opportunities and luxury of having two or three days to myself when L goes away on a trip might become a thing of the past. Neither of us are getting younger and each mornings is an adventure at discovering new ways in which different parts of the body can throw unexpected twinges and aches. One of which sent me to a doctor for the first time in years when I developed a low level but intermittently persistent ache across my chest. A nice lady doctor gave me an all clear after massaging my breasts - which was not anywhere near as erotic as it sounds - but the ache and tenderness is still there. On the upside, after a lifetime of being flat as an ironing board I seem to developed A cup tits a 12 year old girl might be proud of. Curious, though not unpleasing.

Not buying more dresses

 I know. It's a bit of an alien concept. But I'm trying to be good.

Following the last blog post, two large bags of clothes (both his and hers) have been removed from the closet and the house and donated back to the Blue Cross shop, allowing some of overflow stash in the spare room to be moved back into the closet. The overall effect doesn't appear to have made much of a difference. There are still close to 40 dresses in there, but culling a number of outfits that would likely have caused raised eyebrows  and tuts on someone a good 30 years younger, as well as several jeans (when did 'he' last wear a pair of jeans?), tops, shirts and an old suit from 'his' side of the closet gives them (and the moths) a bit more room to breathe and means I no longer have to take a dozen things out the closet just to select a particular dress.

The ridiculously short pink peach dress picked up from £3 sale rack was also returned to the shop with a weak and probably transparent excuse that 'she' thought it was nearer an 8 than a 10 when she tried it (which , given the Primark label that I should have noticed at the time, was probably true.) Browsing the rack before leaving I was tempted by, but resisted, a black and white polka dot flared midi dress. Looking at it again a couple of days later I decided there was something I wasn't quite happy with and left it. A few days later I was similarly tempted by another black-on-white print midi/knee-length dress but left it on the rail to see if I felt the same about it a day later, but by which time it had gone, making the decision easier. 

You do see some odd stuff in charity shops though. Last week there were three OTT short flouncy peach-pink bridesmaids' dresses on the same rack (they must have hated the bride for that, or possibly vice versa), and another(XXL, almost as wide as it was short) in white this week. Or how about a pair of orange bondage-strap jeggings.  

Just after my own closet cull I spend a large part of an afternoon in a long back and forth Facebook exchange with someone who had posted about having to be ruthless in decluttering their own closet (more enviously a walk-in wardrobe) headed by a very similar photo of a crammed closet to the one in my post.  That collection, amassed over a shorter 10 year period, was largely new designer outfits in the $100-$600 range, and would have given me a lot more pause than a cull of my own charity shop gleanings. (I spent most of a morning running a quick-change photoshoot to check which skirts and dresses were much too girly/short/tight and ought to be culled since the camera was likely to be less forgiving than the mirror. All now safely deleted, even the ones that didn't immediately make me wince. Incidentally, it's not a wise idea to mirror your OneDrive import folder on your partner's PC, even when you are careful to delete stuff since those deleted files and folders also show up in her own recycle bin and raise awkward questions about where they'd come from.

There are probably still another dozen dresses/tops that could be culled for donation and recycling. I notice I have periodic fads for certain styles of outfit and one of those was for peplum waists, and I could probably lose several of those. Likewise bolero tops. How very 80s. Luckily I never succumbed to Dynasty shoulder pads. (I really don't need any help there.)

Until next time, be good, or if not at least be careful or fab (or both).

xx

Susie

27 (or more) Dresses and the Rule of Three

 Idly flipping TV channels before the footie yesterday afternoon, I caught part of the start of the romcom movie  27 Dresses just at the point where the wedding journalist Kevin Doyle (James Marsden) interviews Jane (Katherine Heigl) who has been a 27 times bridesmaid for her friends, and discovers she still has all the bridesmaids dresses crammed into a closet in her small apartment. 

Kevin declares that they are all uniformly terrible, and the main point of a bridesmaids' dress is to be so awful that even the plainest bride looks good in comparison, and dismisses even the least offensive that Jane picks out in defence as being "vomit coloured". In a scene that will be very familiar to those of us who have far too many frocks and too little opportunity to wear them, Jane models each of the outfits one after the other during a hilarious impromptu photoshoot. (Which only goes to prove Kevin's point - although I will admit to a slight envy for the floaty peach/orange number.)Naturally, afterwards I had to go and count just how many dresses I had crammed in my own closet. Which turned out to be more than 27 and nearer 32 or 33. And that's just those hanging in the closet, ignoring another 10-12 in the spare room - or  skirts, suits and tops. Is that too many? How many is too many?

L hasn't worn a dress since 1988, so there was no help there. 
Google AI suggests women have around 18  dresses on average,  ranging from 2 to 30+, which puts a figure of 30-50 in the "I may have a dress problem"* range. 
[* Well, yes, rather obviously  I do have a dress problem, certainly as far as L is concerned even if I don't see in the same way, but that's a whole other conversation that we won't go into here.]
Google AI also suggests that most women have between 70-100 items of clothing overall. I suspect, if I dared add them up, I could easily double that. 

The sheer amount of stuff that has accumulated in 40 odd years of browsing charity shops presents a more practical problem of storage. When we first moved here, 30 something years ago, I could hide all my girl stuff into a small suitcase. Now, I probably have more (and certainly nicer) girl clothes than boy clothes, and certainly more than I have opportunity to wear. From being able to  hide Susie's undies discreetly beneath my socks, pants and t shirts in the bedside dresser, Susie's stuff has now taken over two bottom drawers of the dresser and evicted 'his' t-shirts, socks and pants to an untidy pile on the chair at the foot of the bed.

I guess 50-odd dresses is too many, which led me to think about a Rule of Three. A third could be likely donated or recycled, as either unflattering, too short even for Stana's  fingertip test, or bought as retail therapy and worn only once or twice. Another third are definite keepers, practical or favourites that  I keep going back to; and maybe another third that fall between the two, that are pretty or make me feel good but I probably wouldn't want to wear outside the house. 
As a case in point, I picked up two 'new' dresses in the last couple of weeks, lured by 'everything £3 or less' sale in one of the charity shops. 
   

The one on the left is probably a keeper: it's a nice fit, decent length and feels comfortable. 

The one is the middle looked lovely in the window display during the week and I took a punt on it when it went back on the rack. But while it feel lovely and floaty, it's way too short and probably a size too small. (I can still squeeze a 10, but sometimes it really is a squeeze.) 

The third picture is one of those in-betweens that falls into that third rule, as an old favourite that is still a bit tight and only just passes the fingertip test for being too short.

I'm a bit undecided about this one. I keep moving it between the donate/recycle pile and the keep pile. Having worn it again, I think I might put it back on the reserve pile, at least for summer.

***

I was looking forward to attending Witney Pride again this weekend, as this year would likely be my last chance to take part in the march and help run the stall with my company, and I wanted to be able to go again as Susie this year. Unfortunately there was a email at work at the beginning of this week that said there had been too few volunteers to justify a place in the march or to run run a stall this year, although a few people might still attend. 

I might still have gone, except I was relying on using the stall as somewhere convenient to leave my bulky bag of boy clothes, shoes and makeup after finding somewhere to change, rather than having to cart it around all day. So regretfully, I'll probably pass this year and go to the Saturday lunch and bring and buy sale at the church instead.

xx

S
 

Back out the box.

It seems I can't even be trusted to go out to pick up some bread and not come back with a new petticoat (or pair of shoes).

"You can always return it with the receipt if it doesn't fit" said the lady in the charity shop. "That's OK", it'll probably go straight into her dressing up box.", leaving it open whether said box belonged to a daughter, partner or me. And anyway at just £2, I'll more likely just donate it back.

But it was a keeper. And then I had an unexpected day to myself on Friday while L went to London.

 .

I'm definitely channelling my inner 1950s housewife here.

Then, because it been a long time since I had the opportunity, I'm afraid I got a bit carried away.

Probably overdoing the '50s look a bit. Or even forties from the style of the favourite red frock below. This was one of the first dresses I ever bought for myself some 40 years ago, and had been taken in and let out so many times there's almost none of the original stitching left. I love the slight puffed sleeves and flared skirt. I've loved to have worn this to the VE Day anniversary lunch party.

Amazing how a grey wig ages you (or reveals my true age).

I'll keep that one in reserve in case I get invited to the WI. (Who have, to their credit, re-stated that they are open to all women, regardless of why might be on their birth certificate.)

The red/ginger wig below left came from from Lynn, bless her.

 

And then, sadly, she has to go back in the box until next time.

xx

S

Quiet pleasures.

  In her recent post Better than the Past  Lynn mentioned the enjoyment of quiet time to get on with household chores while spending time not stuck in bloke mode. (Not that either of us, I think, would consider ourselves at all 'blokey'.)  It also coincided with the first extended free time I've had to let out my Susie side since the end of last August, so Saturday was a blitz of washing and drying umpteen pairs of tights and smalls after an early morning bottle bank run and to drop a repeat prescription into the box at the health centre. Then some quiet me time pottering about and watch the darts on TV (and idly checking off the drag fancy dress in the audience). Sunday evening I felt like dressing up a bit after a weekend slopping around in a jeans, sweater and flats jeans and decided I should release my inner Nigella before settling down with a bottle of wine. 

As I mentioned to Lynn, I wonder sometimes who I'm dressing up when I slip into something more constricting and raid the jewellery box: me, or an imagined beau? (And what would happen if one turned up, ideally bearing flowers and chocolates.)

Early Monday morning, after  a quick browse of the sales racks in Sainbury's, I popped across intending a quick walk through the nature reserve, to be confronted by a sea of mud on the approach path and decided I'd need something more sturdy than low-heeled ankle boots until it dried out a bit. So back home for coffee and then a trip to the library to return a couple of books and a quick trawl of the local charity shops. While I've long got over any embarrassment at buying woman's items in charity shops in boy-mode (most assistants either don't care or notice, and a sale is a sale) there's something a bit freer about doing it as Susie, where you pull things off the rack and hold them against yourself in front of a mirror to check the length.

How many, if any, of the shop assistants have made the connection between Susie and the bloke who browses the same racks most weekends is another matter. The sweet trader on the market, who I greeted twice on the same morning, first as Susie and then an hour and a half later as bloke-me didn't seem to notice anything or at least didn't comment. The real test, I suspect, would be if I encountered anyone from the local church group while out as Susie. So far I've dodged that one. *

*Postscript Tuesday: Well, that didn't take long to find out, when I got off the bus this morning an found myself directly behind one of the lady volunteers at the local church and who has served me Saturday morning coffee every week for five or six years. No hint of recognition, although she may have been absorbed in her own shopping trip.