There’s a reason the phrase, “getting up the nerve” exists. I think if we always had the nerve it’d no longer feel like nerve, it would just be. Not bold. Not brave. Just constant and with constants come the desire for change, no? Look at me overthinking and stalling while I try and work up the nerve.

See, yesterday was a bad day. Started a half-step out of synch and began spiraling quickly to something much worse. We tried to fix it and by we, I mean Sean. He did every little thing you wish for your husband or best friend to do, but you’re too embarrassed to ask. We almost made it, but then naps and meals and conflicting desires collided into a family-wide meltdown on the way home. Yay failure. Somehow through a haze of Lion King soundtrack, drowse-inducing heat and hand holding we made it.

This morning, despite serious indicators of another shitastic day, I turned a corner. After a brisk, but sunny walk with temperatures below 20, I found myself remembering. I walked a little faster, held my head a little taller. It was intoxicating, not a little bit, like head-to-toe chills and a smile that never wavered intoxicating.

I’d dressed for a meeting knowing that I would have to be walking outside in the cold. The pants were an unapologetic kelly green and the shirt a silky black find for our last trip west.

Here comes the part where I show my nerve. I love this shirt. Love it, love it, love it. I love that it has a ruffley front that probably flies in the face of trends but makes me feel sassy. I dig that it has a three quarter sleeve that doesn’t make me feel like my arms are too long. I am wild about the way it hangs just right so that I don’t have the to tuck or not to tuck fretting issue. I giggle at the way that the collar opening frames my neck and makes my hair look chic. Rather than choking up I feel giddy as the girls eyes pop when they see me in it. “Oooh, mom, that’s pretty.”

But the thing I love, the thing that really makes me wrinkle my nose and do the mean pretty girl laugh is…kind of embarrassing as I sit here in my too small Target sleep tshirt in day-glo coral. It feels so far off, but it’s still there.

My silky, funky, cut-just-right black shirt makes me look like I have a preserve-it-in-a-pin-up-poster-OMFG-rack.

There.
I said it.
My boobs look good in the shirt. No air of those girls are meant for nursing, no “that shirt is cut too low and all I see is cleavage,” just pure, undeniable that shirt and that chest make beautiful music together.

As I said here, deal with it. Today this mama is owning the fact that she felt sexy. And that feels sexy and frankly with three kids a small business and part time day care, sexy can be in short supply.

You can go here and read another kind of deal with it or you can stay here and sing your own. C’mon, it feels good. What’s your good girl’s bad girl confession?