Alas, A Tale Of Tears. And Food. Specifically Chocolate. Also Gummy Bears.

voltee ♦ November 24, 2010 ♦ 10 Comments

Item: Perfect, beautiful Dress Color/Fabric: Wild Plum/ Silky, satiny heaven Designer: Nicole Miller Collection Where Purchased: ideeli.com Years Owned: Not long enough! Not even six months.

Tonight I lay before you something that I has been tormenting me relentlessly for the last two weeks. My Barcelona dress. Yes, I am showing you the back first. Explanation to come.
I love dresses by Nicole Miller, because she knows how to make a woman’s body look amazing. (If Trixie had a butt, it would look awesome in this dress!)They feel fantastic, hug in all the right places, and are the most flattering dresses I’ve yet to find. And also rather expensive. I bought this dress on my very favorite type of Saturday, the Ideeli Red sale Saturday. This is a magical event that randomly pops up on Saturday mornings and allows you to buy fabulous clothing for ridiculously low prices. Prices that go above 90% off retail. It’s truly, truly amazing.
If you are stout of heart, and are willing to to spend some time, perhaps hours, hitting the “refresh” button, you should go here and join Ideeli. There are sales everyday, but what you really need to watch for are the Red Sales. I have a feeling that there will be one this weekend. I sweat just thinking about it. You have to be quick on the draw to get the extra fantastic deals, but you can end up with genuine treasures.
Like this dress. I got this dress for almost $400 off of retail price. I was so excited, and as luck would happen, Kevin and Vicki arrived just in time to witness my euphoria. I had to show them pictures of my conquest.
“I’m going to bring this to Spain!” I declared ecstatically.
“Um, Ker,” said Kevin, positively oozing wisdom,”You don’t want to wear that in Spain. You need practical things, like what you wore in Hawaii.”
“No,” I told him. “We’re staying in this ultra glamorous hotel, and I will need a purple cocktail dress.”
“Hmm,” said Kevin.
“It’s lovely!” said Vicki.
I had this gorgeous image in my head, of Nate and I lounging in the lobby of the Claris, me in my purple Nicole Miller, Nate in a dapper suit of some kind, patiently awaiting a car to pick us up and whisk us to a sophisticated restaurant or perhaps the opera.
Wouldn’t that have been nice?
Here’s what happened instead.
Yes, we did stay at the Claris Hotel, which is just beautiful, and yes, we did get upgraded to the rock star suite, which meant that we had a lovely spiral staircase that lead to a sitting area with leather couches, a flat screen tv, and an archeological artifact of some sort. It was spectacular!
And they did in fact get us a car. It was a Smart Car. Great fun for zipping around the city but not very glamorous.
So first we just drove around and explored Barcelona, in good old-fashioned tourist attire. We visited the ethereal Guell park, and then drove up Monjuic to watch the city gradually turn into a diamond landscape as night fell.
I think that was when I realized that we hadn’t eaten in over eight hours.
Those of you who know me well are probably already a little scared. I do not cope well with skipping meals. At all.
We started to head back to our hotel, to change and then get a much needed meal before my head exploded.
Somehow we got horribly lost.
Then the low fuel light on the Smart Car started blinking.
And I was still hungry.
The roads in Barcelona do not just go East,west, North, or South. There’s diagonal. Semi-diagonal. Transverse. Reverse. Backward in time. Circular. Roads that are undetermined if they are actually sidewalks. Spiral. Underground.
Oh, and something that is very important to know about Smart Cars that no one tells you; they have no interior lights. So have fun trying to lean out the window and read a road map by street light, crying, and hallucinating due to hunger!
Anyway, somehow we found the Claris again.
They had filled our room with chocolate! I ate fistfuls of chocolate, and two bags of gummy bears, and the dragon diminished.
Later, we had the most amazing feast of all time. It involved something like 10 courses, and there was, among other things, baby squid, warm goat cheese, and cava, although not necessarily in that order.
Since we only had one night in our rock star hotel, we went back and hung out in our fab sitting room.
Where we watched Jay Leno, in English! It was the only Englis tv channel that wasn’t the BBC we encountered in 2 weeks.
So of course I had to go put on my lovely Nicole Miller dress.
And Kevin thought I would not need it in Spain. Ha!
When we got home, The first thing I unpacked was this dress. I had put it in a special compartment, to keep it safe. And, behold:

Apparently, the shower gel I had in the front pocket of my suitcase leaked all the way through the suitcase and onto my perfect dress. And it actually bleached the fabric. I made a few wordless shocked mumbles, and then burst into tears. Nate said “This is why you can’t have nice things.”
I am considering having it shortened, since it does hit below my knee. But would a few inches off take it from classy to trashy? I am so uncertain. Does anyone know anything else I might be able to do to save it? It would be a travesty to toss it after only wearing it a single time, to watch th Late Show with Anne Hathaway. Right? Suggestions?

As a bonus, here’s Nate in his rock star robe in our rock star room. Just because I think you all might enjoy.

**I still haven’t fixed this, but I love it so. There has to be a solution. Can anyone help me?