the price of being fabulous

one of the costs of prolonged education and training is that eventually, your friends and family all have real jobs and real houses and furniture that doesn't come from a box and a decent wardrobe.

when it comes to clothes, my blogmate and i have both been students or poorly-paid professionals for long enough that we've had several phases of desire for material things, vacillating between "it's time to dress a little better" and, as said in unison the other day, "it's time to dress a little shittier." for the latter, we're both relatively accomplished. i still remember fondly the first time i asked my blogmate if she wanted to spend a little of an afternoon off shopping in our new hometown of chicago, with its magnificent mile and halsted st. and assorted boutiques, and she responded excitedly with "perfect! target! i'll drive." i knew we'd be friends.

but now we're 30. we're still poorly paid. and we're not talking about keeping up with the joneses, just dreaming of a few little upgrades. so two martinis into a conversation last week, we pinky-swore to go on a shopping trip where we bought better clothes. no kohls, no target, no tj maxx. just once, to see what it's like.

you can imagine what happened next -- from the girls who swore that cheap particle-board furniture was out of our lives but then justified my impulse purchase of a super-sale do-it-yourself wine-and-liquor cabinet as "advanced particle board" (and if you saw my rapid transition from "i'm like bob vila's daughter" to "%&$$?!?" you'd call it advanced particle board too)... into banana republic, straight to the sale racks of off-season last-year's-styles. into ann taylor loft, straight to the clearance racks. to be fair, we tried on lots of full-price very nice things; it's just that the things we liked were on the 60% off rack. i had to struggle to come up with one full-priced t-shirt so i could get 30% off of a pair of pants i wanted. and then bee-line to goose island in time for happy hour 1/2 price appetizers.

you can take the girl out of the bargain basement, but you can't take the bargain basement out of the girl.