Maybe I should buy a lottery ticket?

If there's one grand rule of a woman's life, it's that if you set out to find one specific article of clothing -- i.e., a black T-shirt, or some dark jeans or tall boots -- you'll have to go to several different stores on several different days before finally settling on an item by saying, "Wellll, it's not exactly what I wanted, but it'll work." (And of course, you also will find lots of other items you didn't need but just had to buy.)

Anyhow, I went on a treasure-hunt outing this evening. I have a red-carpet event to go to later this week, and had nothing in my closet that would be right for that sort of occasion. In fact, I only own two dresses -- both of which still have the tags on them ... I'd decided that my last-resort option would be my simple black dress. It's not super formal, but would probably do in a pinch. But, I still wanted to see if I could find something more appropriate. So tonight, I started off by going to Ross. I didn't want to spend more than maybe $70, and I figured Ross would be my best -- though most long-shot -- chance of finding a cheapish dress. To my surprise, the store actually quite a good selection of summery, somewhat formal dresses. I almost yelled "WHAT!" out loud when I looked at the price tags: each was between $15 and $22!! I ended up trying on six of them. Two of them were keepers, and I found a third on a second go-round of the racks that I ended up buying as well. I don't know yet whether I'll keep all three... it's very tempting, just so I don't have to do another panicked "What am I gonna wear?" run on a future such occasion.

And the icing on the cake -- out of curiousity, I wandered over to the jackets/blazers section to see if they had any cute jackets to wear with a dressy outfit. They only had like five items in my size, but one was just what I had in mind!

A few hours post-shopping, I'm still sort of in shock. You have to understand that I have a rather odd body shape: I'm about 5'4", which makes me about an inch taller than a true Petite size, but about three inches too short (without heels) for the majority of pants and jeans. I have a small waist, but.. um, "child-bearing" hips. And then I'm pretty small and narrow up top (I often shop in the kids' section -- much cheaper and the fit is surprisingly good). So finding clothes I like and that are flattering is often a huge ordeal for me, especially when it comes to things that need to be somewhat fitted. I could believe I actually was able to do one-stop shopping. It was a banner day!