My Formal Wear Is Out To Get Me!

My formal wear is out to get me.  That's really all I can come up with. It's some kind of nefarious plot perpetrated by the designers of formal dresses to completely unsettle me.  These people used to be my friends!  I swear they did, but something has obviously happened to turn them against me.  I didn't really know about it until today when I decided to try on my formal dresses to figure out which one I would wear for an event on Saturday night.  That's when all of this evilness came to light!

Me in my natural environment back when cocktail dresses still liked me.  Yes, I'm on the computer in a beaded gown.  These things happen.

Today I had a few options to choose from.  I don't get out to formal type events all that often anymore but I do still have a few dresses that work for when I do.  My first choice really didn't go well at all.  I'm not sure what kind of weirdness was at work, but how can a formal gown look so simple, elegant and beautiful on the hanger and then suddenly produce a flashing neon sign that says "I Gained 10 Pounds" the instant I put it on?!  Really!  That'd can't possibly be natural!  Regardless, that's basically what that particular gown did.  I looked liked like a stuffed snausage.  I looked at it for all of 30 seconds before I decided that WASN'T the look I was going for.  Honestly, my boobs looked like they'd been stuffed so tightly in that if I took one deep breath the whole dress was going to just blow and the shrapnel from it would do Lord only knows what to anyone within about a 20 foot radius!  Death by boobs.... that just has to be embarrassing to put on the death certificates!  I sort of feel it's my duty not to put anyone through that sort of indignity.  I'm a given.  You're all welcome.  So yeah, it was both unflattering and a hazard to life and limb.

I had a second option, a little black cocktail dress that was always a good stand-by.  I gave up on my dreams of wearing the first gown and just grabbed that one.  All was well until I had some trouble zipping it up and realized the zipper had broken and was unfixable in its current state.  I would like everyone to note that I figured this little tidbit out with the dress zipped nearly all the way up... and it wouldn't zip back down.  It's pretty fitted on the top and I... was stuck!  There I stood in my bathroom, dress partially zipped and far too tight to go either down over my hips or up over my boobs.  This was seriously a no win situation.  So I did what any perfectly rational woman would do... if that rational woman had thought of doing this and absolutely nothing else....I jumped up and down, shrieking in fury like a banshee, screaming threats of death by completely outlandish methods to everyone in the high fashion industry (or any of them that I could reasonably locate within the next 20 minutes or so), and cursing up a blue streak!  And I can assure you, dear readers and loyal subjects, the Queen can come up with some incredibly creative curses.  I even cursed the makers of the most delicious chocolate toffee treats that my mother sends me from out in Colorado. Surely this was all their faults!  Seriously, I was mad enough to spit on a goat!... if I had a goat...and if that weren't unhygienic... mostly for the goat... alright on second thought I wouldn't have spit on a goat because it's pretty gross but I was willing to yell and threaten to!

It took me about ten minutes of stomping my foot and working with that broken zipper to get it back down far enough for me to escape the dress of death.  I swear it was like Cthulhu had me and wasn't letting go.  And I'd always liked that dress!!!  I got back into something comfortable again and stormed out of the house, car keys and purse in hand.  MPH (My Poor Husband) took one look at me, mouthed a little prayer that HE wasn't the cause of me being in such a state, and asked:

MPH: Where are you going?

Queen: I'm going shopping.  

MPH looking at his watch since it was about dinner time:  What?  Now?  Why?

Queen:  Because I've gotten fat and my formal dresses either won't fit or the zippers won't work!

MPH: (Long pause as he tries to figure out some way of responding to any statement wherein I have announced that I am fat without being killed for whatever response he comes up with.  This is really a damned if you do and damned if you don't scenario in my world... so it was a REALLY long pause) Ummm, okay.  Would it be bad for me to ask you to bring back something to eat for dinner on your way back?

Queen:  (Long pause as I considered killing him by any number of methods just to make myself feel better then considered again) Well... not really McDonalds or Taco Bell?

Maybe I should have cursed the people at McDonalds and Taco Bell, but honestly it was getting late, I needed to buy a new dress, and I really was sort of hungry.  On the bright side, I did get a cute new dress.  The zipper even works!  Now if I can just find some new SHOES!!!!