Un-awe inspiring wardrobe

    There is a common joke among my friends when we go out.  "Hey Tristan, are you wearing the green sweater, or the green blouse?"  Oh we all laugh and laugh, well, they laugh and laugh.  The thing is I do not own a lot of clothes... I don't really need to.  Part of the reason I don't own many nice clothes is because I am a stay at home mom, I mean it really doesn't make much sense to wear an evening gown to clean toilets.  The other part is unfortunately, self -worth, or lack of it.  I feel like because I only have occasion to wear nice clothes once or twice a year, I'm just not worth it.  It makes more sense to get new clothes for the kids (they grow like weeds, and are a reflection of me) or for Christopher (he's harder on clothes than the kids are, and is in the public eye).  As always, I put my self last.
    It's funny because in my teens I was a clothes horse, and very vain girl.  I would not leave the house unless my makeup was perfect.  I got pink eye once from the kids that I baby sat for.  I was so upset, not because my eye was itchy, but because I would not be able to wear make-up for the week, which meant I could not leave the house for a week.  At university I kept a curling iron plugged in and on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, you never know when you might need a hair touch up.  I had a tiny butane curling iron that I carried around every where (incase I had a hair emergency and wasn't close to home).    I'm not sure what happened that made me not care so much about my appearance.  Just over time I started to let myself go, little by little.  I'm sure that lots of us do it, we shift our priorities.  I just shifted my priorities so that they no longer included me.  I transfered my vanity from myself to my kids.
    I really do only have a few "going out clothes".  Most of the time I wear yoga pants (one of my friends pointed out the irony that I wear yoga pants, since I never do yoga).  Basically I look like I wrestled my outfit off a homeless person.  I admit it.  Honestly why do I need to wear nice clothes around the house?  Shouldn't I be comfortable for my daily drudgery?  Why do I have to look nice to clean the house and look after the kids?
    I remember being so humiliated at a school assembly.  The school was doing an assembly to support character building.  There were several slides showing students making a difference.  Don't ask me why, but I was in two of those pictures.  The pictures were taken on different occasions.  I was sitting in the audience thinking that I looked really good.  I was wearing the outfit that I have on in the above picture (the above picture was taken after Christopher's Grandmother's funeral.  You know that nothing says grief like pictures with Santa).  I looked up at the big screen, only to see myself wearing the exact same outfit, not in one picture, but in two pictures.  I sat there trying to figure out how I could dig a hole and climb into it.  I sat there in a cold sweat, praying that no one noticed that I was wearing the same outfit.  I decided that it was time to get a new sweater, and pace myself on that outfit.
    I think as women we so often de-value ourselves.  We don't put ourselves first and everyone around us follows suit.  So I think that I need to make more of an effort on my appearance.  I need to make myself a priority at least one time out of ten.  Wish me luck!