Today, some representatives from a potential partnership company are touring the office I work in. There was much hustle and bustle in preparation. The carpets were cleaned, some walls were painted, the system administrators were moved into an area where their disemboweled servers aren’t visible to passers-by.

At Friday’s office-wide pizza party, we were told to wear “board appropriate” attire today. This means clothes that wouldn’t frighten members of the Board of Directors. Not that we dress poorly here, but it is a dotcom, and some of us (especially the webdev department) tend towards jeans and flip-flops. I have been known to wear strange pink sparkly dresses over dirty pants. Shorts are not uncommon. People clip their fingernails at their desks. It’s a comfortable sort of place.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I am unable to don formal business clothing. I can’t wear pantyhose. I haven’t gotten my legs waxed in over a month, so a skirt was out of the question. I tried my best this morning with a little floral button up with puffy sleeves, and some tan striped trousers. Looking in the mirror this morning, however, I was keenly aware that I really didn’t look very dressed up at all. All the clothes are from Anchor Blue, which is not really business casual. Meanwhile, I was due at Heidi’s house for carpool in just a few minutes.

Sitting on my bathroom counter was a little mini hatbox that had once enclosed a gift from my mother, and now is used to hold toothpaste, tweezers, and spare Sonicare toothbrush heads. The hatbox was adorned with some festive little ribbons with a fabric flower attached, uncharacteristically frou-frou coming from my mother. This morning I realized that the colors of the ribbons and little flower matched my shirt, and snip went my little fingernail scissors as I cut the ribbon of the box, and BAM! I put it on my neck.

Heidi has been giggling at me all day about the ribbon around my neck. I will admit that it’s a semi-awkward attempt at dressiness. In leiu of formal, I went for frilly. I may not be able to do pantyhose, but when the big-wigs come visiting, I can wrap myself like a birthday present, dammit! “And here’s our copywriter, Ariel. She may look like she’s just jumped out of a cake, but, um, she’s lightening quick with the customer communications! Um, moving on now…”

When I got to work, I found that the pasties covering the nipples of my lewd Justin Timberlake cubicle poster had been removed. I guess purple-feathered pasties are not board appropriate.