Glamour don't

It will surprise no one that I often go to downtown N******* wearing sweatpants, sweatshirt & maybe nothing else. Shoes I suppose, but that really is it. This is because I like to get to the feed store before most people have finished their chores. The wait is shorter, also all the parking is on-street & I cannot parallel park to save my own life.

So I roll out bed, brush my teeth but not my hair & head into town. Every time I am guaranteed to encounter at least one person worse off than I am. Once time I met a distant neighbor who had stopped to get feed on her way home. That is she wass having a morning-after-the-night-before & thought to herself "I need animal feed. I shall get it right now". While she did remember her errand, she did not remember her shirt & we all had a farmers-wife-meets-Madonna-circa-1982 morning. I later learned this was not the first time & I also know it was not the last. I thought everyone seemed pretty calm, if a bit smiley while they loaded up her truck.

Earlier this year I accidentally joined a McCain/Palin rally in this manner. I pulled through the one stop-light in town but could not get past the gun store becasue the rally was in the parking lot (I really do not have to make this stuff up). In the end I had to wind my way through the neighborhood behind the main street & park more than a block away.

So there I was wearing my usual uniform: filthy garden clogs; sweatpants with reflective striping (a la the local prison system, but that is not where I get them, honest); a sweatshirt on which I had spilled my own special cocktail of fish oil & turpentine, a paste commonly used to treat white line in equine hooves. This magic elixir never really washes out, but several tratments with bleach will take the edge off of the smell. All around me were smiling happy famlies with "NObama" signs strapped to their strollers. They were all clean & pressed, dresses hats & gloves, I kid you not, for some of the older ladies, ties for most of the men.

I made my way to the feed store & there, waiting in line were two other people, total strangers dressed almost exactly like me (cowboy boots instead of clogs), sporting that same fresh-from-the-farrier smell. I wish I had a picture so I could put that black box over our eyes.