Baa baa black sheep

I've had the somewhat revolting term "mutton dressed as lamb" stuck in my head for days like a bad but catchy melody. "Afternoon Delight," say, or "Tie A Yellow Ribbon." Those earworms are often idiopathic, though, while I know exactly why I've been thinking ovine thoughts: I got bored with the edge--free, not to say matronly style I'd defaulted to after too many bodily changes, and started looking longingly at engineer boots and big black buckle-y coats and other items I wore regularly in my, if not entirely wayward, certainly way waywarder than I am now youth. As I've started to add back in the occasional "Hey I was too a punk rocker" item, I've wondered if you're allowed to wear them over forty (hell yes) and whether people might judge me for it (also hell yes) and also whether anyone might ever look at me in my combat boots and think "mutton dressed as lamb."  One does hope not. And screw them, obviously. And yet at the same time one still hopes not. 

Look, here's one now, Style Spy proclaiming Doc Martens (how much do I want a pair of the cherry patent ones?) off-limits to anyone over-- get this-- 20.

I've managed a useful trick of mine-- fretting without actually caring-- about the whole issue until this last week, when I indulged a lifelong taste for funky legwear by buying a pair of loverly over-the-knee sockings, or stocks, Comme ça. They stretch way up, past the knees, and well into the zones not usually discussed here unless we are talking about diapering products. And they stay there, until they don't. I remembered some gartery clip-type things from the old days, and dug them out, and indeed they do work but they are old. Almost to the point of giving up old. And so I searched. 

Sock Dreams, the vaguely fetishy and altogether delightful sock fanciers shop I'd ordered from carries them but they are out of all colors except baby bllue, which, no. Men's shirt garters are hilarious (they attach your shirt to your socks) and available from haberdashers, but I don't need my shirt attached to my socks. I need my socks attached to my underwears. And so (and now you know why this post is here and not on socklover.com) I ordered mitten clips.  Little kids' mitten clips, for ataching their darling mittens to their snowsuits. The cutest, most innocent thing in the world, to hold up my sexxxxy soxxxx. I feel dirty. No, I really do. This is mutton dressed as lamb fetus. It's unseemly. And I dearly hope it will work. 

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