This Dress Has a Story.

yeah, I know, don't they all? but this is an extra potent story. or at least an emotionally charged one to some degree...

But First: a little picnic in Riverside Park.








(just a 4 minute walk from our apartment!)


So, remember that flea market and that picture of me with this cute dress? I am wearing it. guess how...

It was marked 60 dollars....at a FLEA MARKET....but it was on the half off rack. Now, after having handmade a dress, and after having realized how ridiculously expensive it actually would be to make my own clothes from now on, and after having experienced the toil, frustration, long hours, and back pain of sewing my own contraption I thought...THIRTY DOLLARS, what a BARGAIN.

Ryan is dismayed at the fact that my forays into sewing, made with the best naive intentions of learning to save money through crafty, innovative means, has had the polar adverse effect, and now I loudly boast that any dress is worth at least fifty dollars, now that "I get the work that went into it" I knowingly let him in on the cost of patterns, fabric, zippers, thread, not to mention the hours and hours of tedious manual labour, and emphatically point these out unnecessarily when I see a dress in a store for what I used to think was a steep price. sewing has ruined me.

Alas, I digress. So. This dress. The fabric was light and flowy. The pattern was amazingly cute and eye catching. The details made my heart swoon. It was my size. And it was, with my self proclaimed legitimate change of heart, a bargain. oh, also, did I mention it was Anna Sui? I wanted it so bad. I had 23 dollars in my wallet. The lady would not take that $%!& and said she wouldn't go below thirty. she was stubborn. I reminded myself I was at a flea market and left to keep exploring.

I kept thinking about that dress and nothing at the other booths caught my eye so eventually I wandered back with a new found determination to own it and a lust cultivated by that 'absence makes the heart grow fonder' rule stirring in my very imaginative and idealistic heart. I was two booths away. I could see the favoured fabric catching the wind better than any other textile on the rack. I was one booth away. A middle aged, much-bigger-than-a-size-small woman reached her arm into the depths and my beacon disappeared. WHO in the hayull would DO that!? I was two yards away from picking it up and buying it! Ryan and Lizzie giggled behind me at the painfully poetic turn of events. I panicked and hung awkwardly behind this snatcher in case she chose to put the dress back.

She kept perusing the rest of the tent, all the while holding that dress under her arm, unwittingly dangling my dreams in front of me like some cruel toreador with his alluring red blanket. An older Latina woman was standing behind me, and amusedly watching me watch this other lady. She asked if I wanted that dress....I awkwardly said yes... and she chuckled and said there was no way that lady would fit into it anyway. All four of us gazed at her with bated breath...she was walking up to the tent owner. She was going to buy it for sure then! She was talking to the owner for an abnormally long time. She was inspecting the dress, holding it up to the light, and putting it under her arm again as she double checked all the racks one more time.

Finally, she took the hanger from under her arm and motioned to put it back on the rack. Her hand hovered above the pole and jerked back in her direction again. She was doing this on purpose! She had to be! All these baits and switches and elongated antics were rollercoastering me like crazy and here Lizzie was laughing at it all while I tried not to look too frantic or disappointed or whatever I felt. She held the dress up again. She looked inside at the tag. Lizzie muttered something about he not being able to squeeze into that thang. She hovered a little more, while I, admittedly, hovered, and she put it back.

The older lady behind me beelined straight to the spot, grabbed, the dress, and marched up to the owner. WHHHAAAATT. I thought. what is happening!? She handed the dress to the owner, turned around, smiled, and beckoned to me. So you're ready to purchase the dress now, the owner said a little too knowingly. Yes. I said. yes I am. give me that dag blasted dress for thirty bones and I'll blow this popsicle stand, never to return.









also, how cute is my husband?