Part 1 of 2

Here’s the picture of me that’s going to appear on the jacket of my “adoption” book (I call it my “adoption” book because my publisher and I are still hammering out title possibilities).

The green suit is my “media” suit. If I ever go on TV, I’ll probably wear that suit because it looks good on camera and doesn’t make me look totally washed out. Surprisingly, fluorescent green is a color I can pull off.

I own a grand total of five business-casual suit ensembles, most of which I bought on sale at JC Penney (although the one pictured came from Nordstrom, but I got it on sale, too). These suits appear on my body at writers’ conferences and other venues at which I speak.

And the funny thing is, when people see me wearing these ensembles, they comment that I’m well-dressed. “You always look so nice,” they say. A couple of women even begged me to be their fashion consultant!

When I first heard this incomprehensible request, I:

1. Looked around to see who the heck they were talking about.




2. Laughed out loud when I realized they were talking to me.



3. Found my roommate (who knows me really well) and shared a belly laugh with her.

People who know me well know that the suits are not the real me. Yeah, suits make me feel special and important and professional and powerful and STYLISH. And people who see me wearing them must assume that I am special and important and professional and powerful and stylish. But they don’t know that 99 percent of the time, I wear ratty sweats and fuzzy blue Dearfoam slippers.

The parents who see me at the school bus stop every morning see the real me. There I am, in all my unshowered bedhead glory, dressed in my pilled gray cotton sweats from Wal-Mart, with my matching gray cotton Whitworth College sweatshirt.

Later that morning, after my kids are off to school and I’m finished working out, I change into my “work” clothes: a well-worn, but less ratty sweatsuit (I love working from home!). And I brush my teeth, just for good measure.

Continued in the next post