Jeans Friday R.I.P.

It’s Friday. My favorite workday of the week. Why, you ask? It’s not because after 9 hours in the office I’m free to start the weekend. It’s because I get to wear JEANS to work. Something about not having to figure out which pants go with which sweater, blouse, vest, etc is quite exciting. I’ve recently noticed that Blue jeans are essentially the perfect neutral. They go with black or brown and every color in between (there probably aren’t many colors precisely in between black and brown, and my Mensa friends would remind me that black isn’t really a color, but the absence of color, but you get the idea). That must be why I love wearing them, and I never dread getting ready on Fridays because pretty much everything in the closet will go with jeans. On mornings Monday through Thursday, I start the process with facing the bottoms in my closet and picking a color either from the brown family or the black family. Unless I pick the pants my Mom gave to me. (Back when she dropped a few sizes and she had no use for her 10’s and 8’s – Thanks Mom. So uplifting when you get your Mom’s fat clothes as hand-me-downs) The orphaned pants are neither grey nor brown, and I have never figured out what group they belong to. That’s probably why I rarely pick them – I never know what to put on top. Once I’ve determined the base color, I can work out the rest from tops to shoes, earrings, etc. It’s never easy and most mornings it’s just annoying. I have far too many suede shoes that I’m afraid to wear out in the Seattle-like gross winter rain we’ve been getting. And although I have 2 pairs of short boots and 2 pairs of tall boots (1 brown, 1 black in each style) there is something about boots and dress slacks that aren’t working for me lately. I think it’s perhaps because my boots are so tall, that the pants end up looking like floods. My high heels are pretty tall too, yet heels and my pants don’t yield the same result. Of the heels I have that are season-appropriate, 2 of the 3 are suede and the non-suede pair is brown, so on rainy days with black as my base color, I’m pretty much screwed. See how complicated this dressing thing is? I think I need more shoes.


So, back to my love affair with Fridays. Since I can remember, my department at work has had a Jeans Friday policy. Pay $5 and you can wear jeans. Every month the money was pooled and given to a worthy charity. We raised some serious money for some really great causes. Apparently, there were lots of people that never paid, and someone high up said no more. I can’t tell you what that has done to my Friday morale.

So I’m officially mourning the loss of Jeans Friday and fidgeting in my tannish-gray, hand-me-down, fat pants, trying to have a nice day! Don’t ask about the shoes.