I couldn’t help playing “labor pains” off of my disappointment over summer’s end with Labor Day. Sorry, folks!

When I buy clothes, there are certain qualities I look for: comfort, ease and wearability over 12+ hour days; some originality and fun-ness (yes, that’s a word now, deal); a great shape. Pockets are a plus too — especially in dresses.

At one point this morning, I seriously questioned why I ever bought this dress. It is a full wrap style, meaning I was relying on a button to stay in place all day for this to work. Risky. To fix that problem — and the weird button-lump that was happening — I decided to safety pin myself in. Ladies with large chests with understand this: it is flipping hard to twist yourself in such a way as to see under your boob. I needed both hands for pinning so I couldn’t, like, lift myself out of the way. I instead had my neck and shoulders cranked and contorted around and kind of underneath… Really not glamourous.

After four (!!) attempts, I finally asked B to help. When he too failed, I pulled the frock off, laid it out of my bed, pinned accordingly and shimmied back in. And, wonderfully, that method worked.

Dress: H&M

Shoes: TOMS

Jewelry: Global Odyssey

The guffawing in the fourth and fifth photos are reactions to one of our cats, who is out of the frame. Sweetie was casually laying around watching this mini-photo shoot. As we weren’t paying attention to her, she flung her little purple ball at me — attempting to photo-bomb everything. She obviously elicited a reaction, so I guess she won.