The Muumuu

I admit it.  My timing could have been better.  In what could only be described as a Lucy Ricardo moment, I jumped into my car wearing my fruit-loop muumuu, lugging my lime green blanket, striped beach towel and teal umbrella.  

Before all the neighbors sitting around the pool even knew what had happened.

Linda was screaming as loud as she could (under her breath), “Hurry Mom!!!  You’re embarrassing me!” 

I put the keys in the ignition ready, to make a quick get-away.

OMG.  Dead battery.

Let me back up. 

I 'm going to the beach on Saturday and I have a teeny tiny problem.

 
I do not want to be seen in public wearing a bathing suit.

Why not?  

First,  a roll of toilet paper looks tan next to me.

Second, bathing suits tend to spotlight my...imperfections. 

I know that's difficult to believe, considering how good I look fully clothed.  

But on the Benjamin Moore color wheel, my stomach is shaded somewhere between "cloud white" and "cotton balls". 

And over the years, my six pack has evolved to a two liter bottle.

To that end, I decided to exercise my only option.

I bought a muumuu.  

Knowing that my muumuu might make good blog fodder, I asked Linda to take a photo of me modeling it.  

At the neighborhood pool. 

As we pulled into the parking lot, which admittedly, was overflowing with cars, Linda needed convincing.

“Nobody will notice me.  We’ll be in and out in a flash.  You just have to take the picture.  I’ll pay you $5.00”

We were like a well-oiled machine.  I slapped down the blanket, threw a towel over my legs, opened the umbrella and said "cheese".  

But a quick get-away was not in the cards.  My battery was dead.

I took a deep breath and said, “I need to get someone to jump my car.”   

Linda looked at me as if I'd grown another head.
 
“Take off that …thing,” she pleaded.  (I assumed she was referring to my muumuu.)

“I can’t,” I confessed.  “I don’t have anything on underneath.  Except my liter bottle.”

I was wearing shorts underneath, and made a rather unsuccessful pathetic attempt to tuck my size 2XL muumuu into the waistband.  I casually approached a table of neighbors (I did not know). 

I could hear Linda groaning from under the front seat of the car.

“Excuse me,” I said nonchalantly.  “Do any of you have jumper cables?”

Now, hindsight is 20-20, but I wish I’d thought of attaching one end of the jumper cables to my umbrella and the other to the lawn chair and asking Linda to take a picture of my jumper cable tanning bed.

That would have made a great picture!