Snowmen, Skinny Jeans, and Storms.

Ali, of course, was overly thrilled to use her mad card-making skills to make Daddy a Birthday Card:

However, the first thing she said when I told her we needed to make Daddy a birthday card was, “Yes! I want to put a snowman on it!!!” – so the back (or rather, front according to her,) looks like this:

Yes, quite fitting for a July Birthday. Especially the one-eyed snowman. He melted only enough to leave him in a permanently flirty wink.

Anyway, Chris worked half a day, and then we used the other half of the day to drive down here to the beach to visit Kitty and Leo.

Chris very lovingly dropped me off at the outlet malls while he and Ali went and unloaded (I tried to convince him that it was HIS birthday and so therefore we should do exactly what HE wanted to do, but, being the wonderfully logical person that he is, he said that this was the most sensible use of our time. I love it when logic equals shopping.)

So I went to my favorite store first, BCBG Max Azria. I would never buy ANYTHING that was BCBG except at their outlet stores – they have TRUE outlet deals (unlike most outlets). I have bought many shirts for $19 that were originally $180+.

It is The. Best. Outlet. Ever.

Plus, they always have some interesting new fashion trends for entertainment value. I wish this next picture really illustrated how crazy this is (I would have set it up better with my hand as a point of reference, but I was trying to be sneaky and take these pictures for you – I’m SURE the store clerk would have frowned).

The dress on the left is a sweater dress, made EXTRAORDINARILY teensy to ENSURE that it would be as skin tight as possible. The dress on the right is a normal dress, for point of reference:The waist of the sweater dress was seriously less than my the length of my pinky finger. It was crazy small.

I also felt like I was in the famed “0-2-4” store from the movie “Mean Girls”. You know, the store that only sold things in sizes of 0, 2, and 4. For instance, there were twenty XS’s in a particular shirt. I only managed to find one other size:

Yeah. XXS.

But you know what that means? This is an OUTLET store – you know – the store that sells the things that don’t sell at full price. So, if there are a ton of XS and XXS’s left over, then that means that there aren’t that many girls around that shop at “0-2-4” after all.

At least that’s what I told myself in consolement.

At any rate, I managed to find a few non-XS things to try on and headed to the dressing room.

The first shirt I TRIED to try on was a really funky wrap shirt. It literally took me SIX tries to get it on, which was my first clue that this shirt was probably too smart for me to purchase.

Then I tried on a silk shirt with a zipper on the side. However, I didn’t realize at the time that the zipper was broken. After I got it on, I literally couldn’t get it off again – I worked on it for at least 10 minutes. I tried getting it off with the zipper up, but no luck.

Finally, I had to sheepishly ask the saleslady to please get me out of this broken shirt (I’m sure she thought I broke it, but I swear I didn’t!!!). It took her half a second.

Apparently to work in retail, you must possess zipper magic. But when she got it off, she gasped – “It pinched you!!”. Sure enough, I had a big red whelp where the evil shirt had not only attempted to ensnare me, but eat me as well.

THEN she asked if I wanted it in another size.

Uh, no thank you.

I DID, however, actually find a pair of jeans. And I ventured into new fashion territory for me: skinny jeans. I actually (gasp) liked them!

I know, I know, I pretty much dissed them in Mom Jeans and the Dreaded “Long Butt”, but I think the reason that I actually liked them is that fashion is finally catching up to the “normal” (i.e. not 0-2-4) body, and they aren’t quite AS skinny as skinny jeans originally were.

Or as tight.

Or as spandex-gripping.

However, to try them on, I needed a bit more heel than the flat flip-flops I had with me. So, my rescuing saleslady brought me some heels.

And I don’t wear stilettos.

I know people say they are comfortable, but I swear my feet were hurting before I even got them on:

So obviously, I got the jeans and threw the shoes to the Venus Girl-Trap shirt to contain it’s ravenous appetite.

Chris and Ali came back and picked me up, and we headed to dinner. We were watching a wall of storms come in waaaay off in the distance while we were eating – great lightning, wall clouds, and a few spirally looking spouts (which I’m sure weren’t what they looked like, but it was fun to pretend anyway).

However, the storm was moving much faster than it appeared.

By the time Chris was eating his last Birthday Buffalo Wing, we could literally see the clouds surging toward us. When we got to the car (still well within daylight hours), the sky looked like this:

So, of course, I took it as a photo op:

I call these “Nightmare at the Outlet Mall”:

We managed to outrun the storm, and even have time to stop at Publix for birthday cookies before it caught up with us.

So, it was most definitely a perfect storm. It gave us the allowance for awesome pictures and EVEN cookies.