She Walks in Beauty Like The Night

You'll note that good old George Gordon, Lord Byron did not say "She walks in nasty old chinos half an inch too short with the ugliest front pleats to ever appear outside the mall food court like the night".

So why, exactly, are those hateful atrocities still hanging in my closet?

I have three kinds of clothes in my forlorn little closet:

1) cool vintage outfits I had from when I was dancing and/or younger. No one who has ever had to attend a formal Christmas party last minute could throw out that 1950's black velvet quilted circle skirt with the original sparse scattering of tiny rhinestones, pearls and metal studs. I feel pretty just standing next to it. But no, it doesn't zip shut with me in it. At the moment.

2) Nasty "office appropriate clothes" from when I stopped dancing and had to find a new way to support myself. The temp office jobs thankfully didn't last long, and I hated with a displaced passion everything I bought in that one surly Ross-Dress-For-Hell shopping spree that spawned the aforementioned chinos of ugliness. But the clothes were all still "wearable", so I couldn't just throw them all away. They did, however, make me look so ugly I would wear my childhood 1970's Holly Hobby yellow and orange polyester bedspread to work before I would resort to those pants. I still have all the clothes. Still hate all the clothes.

3) Things that I bought in the last five years that actually fit.

Item 3 accounts for, at best guess, 1/5 of my total wardrobe. Somehow, I reached adulthood with the warped idea that I can't throw out anything until I have something to replace it with. Today I woke up and, in a grand fit of clarity, realized if I'm never going to wear it ever again, then I don't have to keep it. And "they" can't make me.

Don't panic. The vintage clothes are staying, until I find them a good home. Or lose twenty pounds. Yeah, I lied and said twenty. Yet another stellar reason I don't have a web cam.