jeans circa 2010

It had been a VERY long time that I had been in a retail store looking for clothes. I buy a lot of my stuff second hand, and lately I don't buy very much stuff period. But after one more basic of my wardrobe was scarred with an irreversible flaw, I decided to take the plunge.

I can remember being in Hungary in the mid-nineties and thinking I needed to get home before this email “craze” got too out of hand. I didn't want to be too far behind in learning what was what. I was twenty-something with a lot more energy and no clue of just how fast technology was about to fly along the spectrum of new.

Apparently, technology wasn't the only thing to speed ahead. So, I let a bit too much time pass since I've pawed the racks. Now, there is a whole code to finding pants and I didn't get the decoder ring in my cornflakes. Jeans all have coordinates that refer to how long, how stretchy, and how fitted they are. Perhaps you are normal and know this already, but if you are a fashion outcast like me never fear – because it's all made simple by assigning each of these formulas a woman's name.

Let's just called them “Clarissa,” “Lexie,” and “Madeleine” - to protect the innocent. It's a little like being back in high school – and who wouldn't welcome something that fun! “Clarissa” is relaxed through the hips, boot cut. “Lexie” is slim in the waist and hips, fitted down the leg. (Bitch. We hate Lexie.) “Madeleine” sits just below the hips, regular cut.

But the award-winner was something called “the Boyfriend” - and I quote, “slouchy through the hips and waist, relaxed leg.”

One boyfriend to share around with all these women. Trouble.

So far I had survived mostly unscathed and under the radar with only a few “you doin' okays?” Next, I just had to battle the sales clerks at the registers. Mine was surprisingly tolerable, minus her distinctive overuse of the two-syllable descriptor “Sah-weeet!”

I hope I don't make a return trip any time soon, though I'm praying the information cache I've gathered won't devalue. I'm hoping this trip was education enough and that if I come back in another bazillion years it'll be kind of like a soap opera where nothing ever really changes except who's hanging next to the Boyfriend.

fashion notes, or, how you know you live in too small a town

I've decided I despise all of my clothes and wouldn't miss a thing if I suddedly discovered my closet raided by gypsies, eaten by crows, or stripped to threads by microscopic weavers from a parallel universe where everything moves backwards. (I'll pause here while you recover from that strange and terrifying image.) ...

You can blame the fashion plate you see in the picture to the left. I know I do.

Nearly three and a half years after the birth of my shining little clothes horse, I have yet to adjust to my new body. It's actually been many bodies since then, really.

When Isaac was first born, I sent Mike out to Goodwill to get me nursing shirts - as in, crappy stuff I could stain or that unbuttoned easily. Half of what he brought didn't fit over my burgeoning boobs. I was confused. This had never come close to happening to me before. I stood in front of the mirror, quizzical. My husband clarified things for me: "They're HUGE!"

Next, I was a breast-feeding, walking machine. I did both activities interminably on a daily basis. Consequently, I ate an embarrassing number of chocolate peanutbutter brownies per week while losing weight right and left. (I don't have a name for this former diet as of yet, but I'll be holding a contest, so send in suggestions. The winner gets to share a chocolate peanutbutter brownie with me. ) This is my personal favorite of the post-partum body phases. However, I was also unbelievably sleep-deprived and hormonally insane and therefore couldn't really work it up to put on anything more than the same pair of filthy jeans and white sweater with chocolate drool on the collar every day.

In addition, there is that inexplicable piece where, although you are below your pre-baby weight, you still don't fit into the clothes you knew and loved as a childless person, since along the way to his graceful entrance from that world to this one, the kid RESHAPED YOUR SKELETON.

No worries. Okay. Next phase: the no longer breast feeding, moved to a less walkable neighborhood, work from home, phase. Oink. Followed quickly by the no longer breast feeding, moved to a less walkable neighborhood, work from home, the kid only wants to go as far as the park in the stroller phase. Oink. Oink.

There is a bag in the bottom of my closet. It is full of clothes I technically fit in but that are not currently comfortable. To confess to having this bag is to confess that I am living my life in a future or past fantasy. It's ugly. The bag is bad news.

When I was in college, I can remember shopping for clothes and having to go back and forth to and from the dressing room a million times because everything I picked out literally fell off me. You could say I had a distorted body image. Times change. Sort of. The distortion has only distorted in a different direction these days.

The motley array of clothes I claim as mine do not make me happy. I've been threatening forever to toss them all and start again and my big chance came just two days ago. I was at a dance performance. Afterwards, I left my crappy pink acrylic sweater with a hole in one sleeve on the chair where I was sitting. I realized it before I left the building.

I made a decision. I was leaving it there. This was the first day of the rest of my fashion life. I would give away one piece of clothing every day until everything I had even the remotest hesitation about was gone, gone, gone. Kind of like the frog in boiling water scenario, I would do it a little at a time, and by the time I noticed, it'd be too late. Perfect. I walked out in the brisk night air sleeveless and determined.

Last night, at dinner, I suddenly realized I'd almost forgotten my promise. "I haven't chosen what piece of clothing to give away today!" I told Mike spiritedly. "Oh," he started, playing with his pasta. "I forgot to bring it home." Huh?

Oh, yes, you see, someone I was sitting next to at the dance performance works with Mike and someone she knows got the sweater from someone she knows, who knew that I was sitting there and that I was Mike's wife and so gave it to Kyra to give it to Mike to give to me... In a complex and disgustingly magic route, called "I live in too small a town," the vile article of clothing found me again. But I'm refusing it entrance to the premises. That kid in the picture may have dumbed me down more than I know, fattened me up more than I'd like to admit, but no crappy pink acrylic sweater is going to keep me there.