And I Am Martyred by the Color Pink

Certain family members of the in-law persuasion have long made veiled accusations that I will not permit my girls to wear pink. This, I declare, is flatly untrue. Yes, it was completely true when they were infants--I actively put my girl babies in clothing gendered as male, but I'll tell you all about why I did that some other time. And yes, it's true that when I shop for clothing for my girls, I generally don't buy them pink stuff--when my kids don't care what they wear, I buy them clothes that I like. Who doesn't do that?

However, I firmly believe that I have always been extremely accomodating when they do show a preference. Why else does Willow have at least 12 dinosaur shirts? And pants with dinosaurs on them? And dinosaur jammies? And a dinosaur dress? And don't even get me started about the ponies and the rainbows, because I really don't feel like discussing it right now.

And therefore, since Willow has lately been complaining that she has no "pretty" pants (and since my suggestions that, since she doesn't like the pants I've bought her previously, she should really get a job so that she can buy her own pants hasn't led to her actually getting a job, alas), yesterday at the Goodwill 50%-Off Storewide Sale I invited her to come over to the children's clothing section so that we could pick out some pretty pants together.

It's hard, obviously, for a five-year-old to find clothes at Goodwill--they're sorted by color, which does help one zero in on the "pretty" pants, but only a Momma can accurately evaluate fit and condition and quality and appropriateness. Fortunately, it turns out that I'm actually quite good at ascertaining the kind of pants that my daughter will find "pretty".


If the pants are jeans, they should be fancy jeans:Otherwise, light blue is pretty:
Light green is also pretty:Purple, too, is pretty:So, yes, Willow and Sydney both came home with scads of pretty pants, and a few other pretty necessities----and even a couple of other awesome items:The future farm girls have a system for who gets to wear THAT shirt on any given day, let me tell you.

Other than that, some work shirts and work pants were bought for the man, some record albums and vintage sheets and T-shirts were bought for crafting, and the babies got more books, of course. But did I find any awesome clothes for myself, you ask?

Well, you can fail the PhD student concentrating on medieval studies through a feminist lens out of her qualifying exams, but you can't erase the ridiculous amounts of useless information about the medieval time period and its literatures out of her head: And also? When I was a little kid, I never, never, NEVER had cool clothes. And in junior high, one of the MAJOR things that I wanted (along with stone-washed jeans and T-shirts in two different colors so that you could roll the sleeves up and see the color of the shirt underneath and leggings and the dexterity to tie an oversized T-shirt into a knot at one bottom hem, etc.) was THE FOLLOWING KIND OF HOODIE THAT ALL THE COOL KIDS WORE:

Childhood dreams really can come true, can't they?

Especially when they're simple: