In the eye.

I don't typically pay much attention to my appearance, but on this particular day, I was feeling fat.  Frumpy.  Forty-ish. 

Occasionally I go through phases where I try to actually wear clothes from this decade, but it's just usually not a priority for me.  I'm a happy girl in my jeans and t-shirts, and they require little to no thought.  I like not having to think about what I'm wearing.

But, I had an EVENT coming up.  An event where I would have to leave the house.  An event where I would have to dress up.  An event where I would see people I used to know well but hadn't seen for years.  An EVENT.

I hate events.

I had dumped my kids with my sister and spent nearly an entire day trying on clothes at every store in town in an attempt to find something suitable to wear.  I tried on every dress and skirt in the entire city that day, only to keep letting the negative thoughts creep in - "You're too short for that." "Your boobs are gigantic in that."  "That would only look good on a size 2, which you are CERTAINLY not." and I left empty handed, dejected, and feeling frumpy. Outdated. Dowdy.

Since the EVENT was rapidly approaching, I spent the next day trying on everything in my closet, and the negative thoughts continued.  "Why did you every even buy that?  It looks awful on you."  "HA!  1998 called - it wants it's clothes back."  I had just pulled on a dress of undetermined origin and was mentally berating how it showed my fat (insert random body part here) when Cooper wandered in.

"MAMA!"  he gasped.  "You look so beautiful!  You look like a pretty, pretty princess!" he said.  And then he laughed and ran up to me.  "May I have this dance, my pretty, pretty princess?"

So there we stood in the middle of my bathroom which was strewn with discarded outfits, dancing to music only my four year old could hear, and for just a minute, I felt like the most beautiful girl in the world.