New Clothes

I went shopping this afternoon.  I was in a neighborhood with stores containing interesting clothes (there aren't that many) and I had time and energy.  I wasn't hungry or thirsty and I didn't need a bathroom.  No one was waiting for me.  I had no excuses nor reasons to avoid the temptation.  The seasons are changing and my wardrobe needs refurbishing.

Let me clear - needs is a relative term.  I, like most of you, could get through the rest of my life without buying anything but replacement underwear.  I have sweaters and t-shirts and long sleeve shirts in a variety of fabrics and styles.  There are corduroy pants and jeans and one remaining pair of black wool slacks where the button and the button hole are actually able to get up-close and personal.  My changing shape has led to an interesting and immediate sense of the power of gravity; my weight is within 5 pounds of where it always is but the sizes have shifted.

Oh, my, have they shifted.  I remember when Banana Republic resized all their clothing.  Suddenly I was wearing a size 4.  I hadn't worn anything that small since college yet there I was, a mother of 2,  snapping the waistband of a pair of size 4 khaki pants.  I've always thought of that moment as the grown-up's version of don't-worry-honey-mommy-will-make-it-better: Feel like you're gaining weight?  Don't worry, we'll just rename the sizes on the garments and you'll be just fine.  It annoyed me then and it annoys me now.  If I don't have the clothes to remind me to stand up straight and pull in my abs I'll be a round ball of protoplasm before the year is out.  I have a bell-weather pair of jeans (don't we all?) and when they start to tug I know it's back on the treadmill I go.  There's a wonderfulness to being a gym rat that may not be obvious to those of you who eschew those sweaty confines:  gym clothes have elastic waists and are very very very forgiving.  With an old XL t-shirt over the top I could weight 200 pounds before I noticed a difference.  I don't need the manufacturers being co-dependent.

So, there I was, at Main Gate on the campus of the UofA on a Sunday afternoon.  The adjacent college town area is two blocks of eating (cold cereal, pizza, sushi, gyrosand burgers and cupcakes) and beauty enhancements (waxing, cutting, piercing, tattooing, shampooing, perfuming, etc etc etc) and shopping.  There are national chains and local boutiques and most college coeds must be rail thin because there was nothing that would possibly have fit on the bottom half of my self.  

Not a thing. And I'm not that big.  But that was okay with me, because I had my skinny jeans and cowboy boots on the bottom half of myself and getting them off and then on again was really more than I was interest in doing.   But there were some lusciously soft and surprisingly reasonable tops hanging from the rods and for them my jeans and boots were perfect.  I bought three for less than $100, including tax, and I rolled them up in my purse so "No, thank you, I don't need a bag.  There's too much packaging in the world, anyway,"

Insert gnashing of teeth and groans accompanying the Cuters plaintively pleading me to stop..... "MOM, why do you always have to say that???"

After 15 minutes I was done.  I really liked everything I bought I each item seemed to be worth the price I paid.  Tucson's celebrating The Day of the Dead tonight, and the white-and-black-facepainted revelers were as happy as I was.

I now have an updated winter wardrobe.  I bought new earrings in Sedona last month and I'm getting a haircut next week.  Let the holidaze begin -- I am ready.