The Bridesmaid Skirt Debacle of 2010

Yes this is a long-ish post, and YES it is worth reading (especially if you want to laugh with or AT yours truly).

So, my baby brother got married (to a girl I really, really love) on January 2^nd, 2010. And their wedding was awesome. They were sealed by President Mac Christensen (one of my Grandpa Headlee’s oldest and dearest friends) in the Bountiful Temple. It was a great day. My cute, soon-to-be-sis-in-law (Julia Ghoulia) asked all of her soon-to-be-sis-in-laws to be bridesmaids. This included me. I love being a bridesmaid, so I was excited. I also really loved the outfits she put together for us. Her mom custom sewed an olive green skirt for each of us, and then we got to pick any ruffle-y, lacey, frilly cream top that we wanted, and then we all wore a long strand of knotted pearls. So cute.

So anyway, I gave Julia’s mom (who lives allllll the way up in Bountiful) my measurements and told her to just whip a skirt out, and if I had any problems with the fit, I would have my awesome sew-er of a mother-in-law tailor it to fit just right. So, when I got the skirt, it was too big around the waist, so I thought – kay, I will have to go over to Mary Lee’s and have her fit it for me. Then I felt too sick all week. Then, the day before the wedding, I realized that I had better bite the bullet and go over there for my dang fitting. But I decided to try the skirt on first, and lo and behold… it fit!

My little poochie pregnant belly + bloating + that extra 500 calories per day + laying in bed and sleeping around the clock, had made up “the difference” over the past 5 days. The skirt was still a little loose, but it would work "as is". So I took it off, called Mary Lee to cancel, and got back into bed. (Oh…how I love my bed…)

So, on the day of the wedding, I realized… I had made a huge mistake. The skirt was really, like, quite a lot too loose. So, I was hiking it up all day. It tried to fall down while mom and I karaoke belted the pop classic “Tell Him” to our sweet little Jubes, and it really tried to fall down when the hubs had a hip hop battle in the middle of the dance floor. (Yes, I stressed a lot of people out during that 30 seconds of intense krumping…and I almost lost my skirt about 12 times…it was REALLY cramping my bad-A street style.)

On the drive home, I unzipped the side zipper of the skirt because the stiff satin was pulling at my sensitive baby belly. I promptly told the hubs that we were having special skirt burning ceremony when we got home. (No offense Jubes, it is a perfectly lovely skirt…I’m just a moron who can’t roll her sorry hiney out of bed to go to a fitting ONE STREET OVER and was thus tortured by a skirt all the live long day!)

As we pulled into Springville, we found that a heavy fog had settled in throughout the valley. We could probably only see about 20 feet in front of us. When we were 3 blocks from home, a dog came out of nowhere (looked like an Australian Shepherd mix…for anyone who’s interested) and the hubs slammed on his breaks an missed hitting him by an inch. The dog seemed completely unfazed. This worried me – being the insane animal lover that I am. We totally almost killed that dog, and it wouldn’t be long before someone actually DID if we left him to wander aimlessly down the street.

I asked the hubs to turn around and see if he could call the dog to him and check if he had any tags. The hubs did just that (because he is awesome.) It was 10:00 at night and the streets were completely empty, so he just put the car into park right in the middle of the road and went to get the dog. He got the phone number from the tag and used his cell to call the owner. The owner lived right up the street and said he would be there to get the dog right away. Kyle didn’t want to wait in the middle of the road, so he asked me to get in the driver’s seat and pull the car over onto a side road while he led the dog over to the sidewalk. Now, I am already too uncoordinated to do the whole “hop over the center console and into the driver’s seat” thing, and a truck was now driving toward me in the opposite lane. I would have to get out and walk around to the driver’s side. I didn’t want to waste time putting my strappy high heels on, so I just hopped out in my bare feet (like the awesome, true-blue Emery County girl that I am) and started running around the front of the car on a wet, icy road. And do know what I totally forgot?

I had unzipped my skirt.

Yep.

Just as I got right out into the SPOTLIGHT of my car’s headlights, and just as the truck in the opposing lane was about 50 feet away, my skirt hit the asphalt. And no, I’m not saying that I felt it start to slip and hurried and caught it around my knees and was “sorta embarrassed, te he”… I’m saying that it hit the asphalt and I had to stop dead in my tracks, bend over, pick it up, and sprint back into the car.

Well, the truck came to a stop. Huh? Why? A barefoot woman running on an icy road who randomly drops trough in front of God, trucks, headlights, and any unfortunate woodland creatures that happen to be passing through is stop-worthy? I don’t see why…

So, I just got in the car, threw it into drive and peeled out. The truck, realizing that I was just a flipping nutter (and not drunk, confused, or otherwise in need of their assistance) just moseyed on down the road. (Don’t you just love the word “moseyed”? I know I do.) Kortland had seen the whole thing unfold from the back seat and was laughing hysterically. Only 2 days into 2010 and I’ve already outdone myself!

So, I flipped a U and drove back to where Kyle was standing, and he and I had a good laugh. The guy who came to get the dog was the Stake President in the Stake next to ours and he was very relieved. The dog had slipped through a gap he had sneakily pushed open in the fence. I was sure he would have been killed in such a foggy, icy night, so I was very happy that we were able to contact an owner. Otherwise, you know me, we would have had an extra friend staying overnight while I took pictures, posted them on craigslist and KSL, and littered the neighborhood with flyers.

Collars with phone numbers are awesome.

It’s just unfortunate that securing the safety of one family’s beloved canine meant that the people in that truck had to get a super-random eye-full!

Well, as my dad told me 3 weeks ago when I got yelled at for gathering humanitarian supplies; “No good deed goes unpunished!”