It's not a sport if you don't sweat.

I have been thinking about sweating this week. Gross. I know, but I'll tell you why. (Parental Warning: If you are seriously grossed out by sweat, stop reading.)

On our New York trip, we went shopping for a little while. One of the stores we went in was H&M. I really wish we had one around here, because they have super cute, trendy, business-looking clothes. So I grabbed a couple of different shirts to try on. The one that fit was a really cute green sweater. It cost $30. If you know me at all, you already know that this means I didn't buy it.

But, Emily, you said it was really cute... Yeah, I know. But I can't spend that much on a little sweater.

And sweating is the reason why.

It took until Tuesday for me to figure this out and be able to put it in words.

I started a new 8 week class on Tuesday night. I try not to tell them, or let it show, but new students scare me. Ok, that's a total exaggeration, but I do get nervous. And unfortunately, when I get nervous I sweat. And it has been warm this week, which means the classrooms are too hot, because they haven't figured out that they need to turn off the heat yet.

Yeah, it was something like this:


I saw this ad while I was watching the Carolina game yesterday. It's just digusting enough to be kind of funny.

So I left class with huge sweat stains. And it all clicked. The reason I don't feel like I can spend $30 on a shirt is because I sweat, and I get huge sweat stains, so I have to wash my shirts every single time I wear them. Which means that the sweater I bought at Christmas (a mere 3 months ago) already looks like Tim Gunn should be making fun of it on his Tide total care commercials.

$30 for 2.5 months of not-that-frequent wearing? It's a lot.

But here's the other side of the problem. When I don't spend $30 on a shirt, I walk into work and the secretary tells me, "You really are just a college kid." And that is exactly what happened today.

I thought I looked nice today. I'm wearing close-toed shoes (my Sketchers, because I wore cuter closed-toed shoes earlier this week that gave me a wicked blister), khaki pants, and my blue long-sleeved sweater that I got at Christmas. I'm even wearing a necklace. I might have forgotten the eye-shadow though.

So what do you do when you have a budget but want to look nice?