having a ball

chris and i attended the north carolina inaugural ball last night. this might surprise you, but it's not every day that he dusts off his tux and i wear a floor-length gown. it was an amazing evening, full of pomp, celebrity sightings (i was two feet away from miss north carolina! in her crown! oh, and a bunch of political people), great music, dancing, food, mingling ... topped off by a stop at the downtown krispy kreme with good friends as we headed home close to midnight. we had a wonderful time.

there's just one complaint i had. try to imagine, ladies, being on a marble floor for three hours as you're dressed to the nines, with no chair in sight. i'm betting your feet hurt just thinking of it. could there be anything worse than standing on an unforgiving, non-cushioned surface while wearing three-inch heels? why, yes there is. let's throw clip-on earrings in the mix! the kind that pinch your earlobes so tight that the NEXT DAY the red impressions still linger! (i have sworn i will never get my ears pierced ... but after ten minutes of those things, i'm starting to see the allure ...) i was radiating pain, literally from my head to my toes.

but wait! there's more! towards the end of the evening, i temporarily shed my shoes and let my throbbing feet massage each other from underneath the hem of my gown. (any sense of decorum at that point was overshadowed by my intense desire to amputate below my ankles.) so i was kind of swaying from side to side, while also rubbing my left ear mainly to convince myself that i did still indeed have an earlobe, when chris turned to me. "jeez," he sighed, fiddling with his cuff links. "did you know that tuxes aren't all that comfortable?"