Safari Anyone? (NWT Frumpy Shirt Dress for Sale)

Pinch me: We went out last night without the clone babies.

Such a freakishly rare occasion calls for high heels and wiry, lace-up contraptions that push flesh up in areas where its sunken to new lows.

Our destination was, well, any place without the kids, but more precisely The Write Act Repertory Theater, where we would watch nearly close enough to practically smell the actors’ breath as our longtime friend Carlos made his directorial debut.



(If you are in L.A. in the next few days and enjoy theatre, go check it out and tell Carlos Kim sent you. That sounds like some snobby name-dropping shit, but hey … I want to support Carlos any way I can. He’s amazing.)

Thrilled to have an excuse to dress-up, I slipped into a rust and apricot hued shimmery Bohemian skirt with matching coppery earrings, necklace and a bold cuff bracelet. I spritzed Lancome perfume on my neck and one ankle. With scented lotion smoothed over my glaring Winter white legs and mascara carefully swept between my too-short eye lashes, I wistfully headed for the Hollywood hills with the Hubster.

I felt like an adult. I felt like a human. I felt like anything but a harried mom of three really young youngins’. And it felt awesome and surreal.

It didn't matter that my eyebrows were still swollen from the special-occasion wax job I had sprung for earlier in the day.

(BTW, Pigtails apparently thought the aesthetician was trying to rip my face off or kill me. A quick word of advice, never, ever let your 2-year-old witness a strange woman who speaks in strange tongues rip your eyebrows off with piping hot liquids, then individually pluck the leftover eyebrow hairs one tortuous yank at a time, that is unless you happen to have a few extra Starburst flopping about in your purse that you’re willing to chew in half like a bird mama and give to your fearful, fitfull kid as a peace offering and pain number.)

It didn't matter that my unnaturaly rippled forehead and Elephant Man-style swelling made me look like a lady Klingon in heat.



Why didn’t my inflated, shadow-casting eyebrows matter? Because we were dressed to the nines (whatever that means) and we had places to go and people to see, and, more importantly, none of those people required a diaper change (well, let’s hope they didn’t) or a chisel to free up their allergy induced petrified-to-the-nostrils-chartreuse booger snots (again, let’s hope no one where we were going needed a mom-grade booger jackhammer nose-picking).

I have a confession: (Nothing big. Just something you should know if you’ve suffered my boring date details and somehow braved this post up to this point. Thank you, if you did.) Getting all dolled up for our date didn't go as seamlessly as you might think. In fact, it was a disaster.

First, before donning the shimmery, fancy schmancy outfit I described earlier, I buttoned myself into a trendy olive shirt dress and squeezed myself into a pair of skinny jeans that I'm soooo not skinny enough for. I slapped on my brown leather Mary Jane high heels, greenish earrings and jingle-jangly bangles, and, voila, I was ready. It was date night. I felt svelte. The night was mine for the taking. (And my husband’s taking. Insert ban-chicka-weh-weh music here.)



Speaking of my husband, he rushed home in rush-hour freeway traffic to shower, fuss over which outfit to wear and to get downright metrosexual for our date, as he always does before we venture out without our brood in tow. Due to the anal way in which he primps and shapes his prickly beard just-so in the mirror, you'd think his name was Prince or that annoying symbol that Prince goes by now. Maybe you’d even think he wears those butt-less purple leather pants the Artist Formerly Known as Prince sports on tour. Okay, maybe not. Either way, I shouldn't complain because he's trimming for my benefit, right down to the nose hairs.

Anyway, when he caught a glimpse of me gathering up our daughter's jammies, diapers and wipes for the babysitter in my wanna-be, knock-off, modish shirt dress, he unzipped from his lips the kind of crooked, sketchy smile that says: "Shit. The wife's gonna' ask me 'So, how do I look?' and I'm going to have to lie and convincingly say, 'Damn. You're smokin' in that, um, hey, is that a dress or a shirt or a ... What the hell are you wearing and why are you wearing that thingamajig with jeans, for Christ's sake?!'"

Basically, he hated my shirt dress. For a while he was sweet, trying to fake it and stroke me with thinly veiled compliments. "Sure, that's a nice dress," and "That might be kind of nice around the house," and "You could wear it just for me sometimes, dontcha' think?"

Clearly he was tiring of hearing bullshit flow freely from his own nervously grinning lips. His ruse went down the tubes when he could no longer convince himself to ‘faux-preciate my failed attempt at dressing as an all-out MILF for our supposedly hot date.

"So you don't like it?" I snickered with a snide, bitchy, bitch-BI-ATCH tone that he knows better than to sidestep by shovelling more bullshit my way. "Admit it. You HATE this dress, right? I’m not doing it for you in this, right?"

"No, it's cute. Maybe if you took off the jeans and showed your legs. You’ve got the gams for it. C’mon, Kim. You know I hate it when women wear jeans under dresses, even if it is the 'in thing.'"

Fair enough. I vanished into our room, where I started to feel like Lucille Ball in my goofy shirt dress. I looked like a cleaning lady from Molly Maid. The only thing missing was a can of Pledge and a do-rag (head wrap).

Then I thought, "Who freakin' cares what he thinks? If I think I look decent in this, then it's cool. I can wear it even if he hates it."

But then I backpedalled. "I want him to think I'm smokin' hot. How often do we get dressed up for each other and go on a date? Maybe I should just change."

He looked disappointed but amused when I reappeared before him like a humbled wet cat, without the jeans under my dress but still wearing the damned shirt dress.

"You know, that's nice but maybe when your legs are tan it would look even nicer," he said. The hole he accidentally dug himself into was about to get a few miles deeper. (It’s amazing what upsets me about men. Stupid, really.)

"Or you could wear that dress when we go to the zoo. Yeah, THE ZOO!"

"Holy shit. I get it. You think I look like a zookeeper!"



We both burst into laughter. I DID look like a freakin' zookeeper.

"Hey, you could take me on a wild safari later. You’re lucky it’s green and not khaki. Then you’d really look like Crocodile Dundee. The kids will get a kick out of it."

"Yeah, 'My name is Kim and I'll be your jungle safari guide. First we're off to see the elephants. Feel free to take photos of their massive dung piles.'"

So, in the end I did give in and switched to a dressier outfit we both could live with. But I felt mixed about having done so. I knew my husband wanted to gawk, ogle and objectify me wrapped in a swanky outfit our entire date. I knew he prefers to see my curves. I knew he watched me swish to and from the theater’s open-bar in my shimmering skirt, clutching a clear plastic cup of white wine. He watched me sparkle in all the jewels I’d adorned myself with. I knew he liked what he saw, and I liked that he liked it too. Who am I kidding? Of course I want to make him want me. That's the age-old dance men and women do for each other, after all.

We should escape the kids and dress up for each other more often. At least I'll know what to wear if the Hubster should ever take me on an African safari. All I need now is one of those straw Col. Mustard jungle hats ... perhaps the sunscreen infused kind. Hell, if you see me donning one of those, do me a favor and poison-tip spear me between the eyes, okay?

When was the last time you vanished into the night with your partner and left the kids with the babysitter? What did you do? Where did you go? What did you wear?