no, no, NO

Rompers


Pleats

the body breaks

Two weeks ago, my mother pointed to my bare feet and said, "Looks like you're going to get bunions."

Whaaaa? Aren't those an affliction of the gnarled old women who would come into Famous Footwear when I was 16, searching for the perfect pair of Easy Spirit sneakers into which to wedge their achy, deformed feet?

What the heck are bunions anyway? (Other than a word, through the potency of rhyme, that deterred my consumption of Funyuns.) Apparently, they are the enlargement of the bone/tissue at the base of the big toe. This relieved me somewhat of my fear that bunions were some sort of abscess of nastiness, if you were to slice one open, thousands of little trolls would scurry out. Nonetheless, I urge you NOT to do a Google image search for bunions.

My incipient hallux valgus is not the only physical manifestation that my body is aging, that age 30 starts the downward slide into infirmity. Examples:

• My child-bearing hips have reached a girth that just screams "Please let us help push a baby out, lest we are rendered useless, save for making shopping for jeans a travail."
• It's unclear if said hips will ever get to fulfill their duty, given my ONE ovary.
• HOWEVER, my missing ovary ($100 reward for finder) may be REGROWING itself. It's the little ovary that could. Or it's a fibroid. Hurrah for female anatomy.
  
• Often I wake up and my fingers feel like stiff sausages (or soysages, as the case may be.)
• My hip routinely slips out of place, leaving me either uncomfortable or in spasmodic pain and having to tell people "Oh, I'm sorry I can't; my hip is out," leaving them to wonder if I am one smokin' 70-year old.
  
• Rarely do I stay up past 1 am. (But that might just mean I'm boring.)

Thankfully, I have yet to find a gray hair or discernible wrinkles. Give me a week or two.

what does it mean?

- When you dream that the boy you had a crush on for two and a half years in middle school offers you a particularly gooey Rice Krispie treat?

- When you dream that someone stole your couch?

- When you dream you're drunk and carrying around a drunk baby?

all in a day's work

Two things I legitimately had to do for my job today:

- Look up euphemisms for "farting"

- Organize a bar crawl

- Look for cheesy 70s clip art

'Tis rough, 'tis rough.

do i have a problem?

I bought two vintage train cases within one week.

I can't say it won't happen again.

when good clothes die young

Today I am mourning.

Of all the myriad people and things about which I could mourn, I am mourning the demise of a denim skirt. (In addition to mourning, I am now extending my arm for a cursory slap on the wrist for my conspicuous shallowness.)

I bought this skirt at Target back in the summer of 2002, along with purchasing a copy for KEWP, who had her eye on it. My hips were a little less ripe for child bearing at the time, so it was a bit loose. But I also hadn't quite mastered properly fitting my clothes to my body yet, so it still worked. (And now, with my mastery down and incipient saddle bags riding below my waist, it's almost a perfect fit.)

It has been my "go-to" skirt (a term I steal from KEWP, who shares my affection for this clothing staple). Denim goes with everything. Actually, "denim" would even be a glorification of the fabric most of us know as "jeans." It is more of a somewhat-sturdy cotton made to resemble denim. (It is from Target after all.)

And that was its eventual downfall--a lack of resilient, hefty fibers. One quick skirmish with a unfortunately situated piece of jagged metal and my fashion foundation was torn asunder.

I did not fling my aggrieved body across the desk, wailing (like I did at age 17 when I found one of my brand-new brown clogs to be fodder for the dog's mouth). I showed restraint (or rather the stoicism of a 50s housewife, as I channeled my angst into cleaning my office).

I must admit, though, that perhaps the fashion unconscious of the universe knew I had been considering cheating. That I had been searching for another denim pencil skirt to add to my closet--one of real denim. And rather than be cast aside for a newer model, my tried-and-true committed the only suicide it could.

Now that my denim skirt is too disfigured for professional wear, I am too aware of its virtues, realizing just how difficult it will be to replace. And I am humbled.

very seriously considering a move to California