I am not a tall woman. I am also not a toothpick. A package of toothpicks? Yes. A single toothpick? Nooo.
What I'm trying to say is that I am not a six foot tall woman who weighs 110 bitching that a size x-small is too short in the torso; I am a 5 foot 6 woman who is not going to tell you her weight but will admit to being a size large, sometimes x-large, and when they fuck with the sizes to make you feel smaller than you actually are, a medium.
Are we clear?
Ahhh...fall! Fall is my favoritest season of all, not only because of the pretty colors, and the pumpkins, and apples and their by-products, and the pumpkins, and the crisp air, and the pumpkins, but because I can begin to hide my body in layers if I so choose. You know, it's not that I'm carrying around a more than a few extra pounds of people, it's the fabric yo! And maybe, just maybe, after some Jazzercise and a little dieting I could emerge in the spring from my black fleece cocoon all skinny and shit.
So I totally splurged on this cute jacket back in early August when it was still 85 degrees that was totally admittedly frivolous because I thought it was sassy and maybe even stylish and it gave me hope that fall was really coming because cold weather clothes had been in the stores here in the desert since June and that this amazing jacket might distract from my ill-fitting frumpy mom jeans and make me feel sexy because it fit ever so nicely over my boobs and elegantly and deceptively made it look like I was wearing a size large not because of my gut flub but because my boobs are bigger than yours and it was so interestingly stylish that you couldn't help but notice it and not my ass and not my thighs and it's brown and I'm trying to infuse some color into my black, white, and gray wardrobe and hot damn was I really excited about this jacket. Now fast forward through the conventions and Sarah Palin and debates and the freakiskly late fall weather finally arrives and I rip off the tags which I had left on just in case I got flu and lost 15 pounds and then kept it off or because the flu had killed me and J could return it for cash and buy formula and have a pizza delivered because he would have no use for a women's sassy brown jacket in size large because he's been such a good husband that I wish for him in such a scenario a new wife two-thirds of my current age and half my current body weight without cellulite that loves to swallow and has big nonleaky boobs. I threw those tags in the trash and washed my sassy jacket which you know means it's not that sassy or that stylish because it isn't dry clean only and then it wasn't returnable because it had been washed and I put it on and fuckity fuck fuck fuck gotcha because if you thought Tina Fey's Palin impression was spot on you haven't seen yet seen her do it in my sassy jacket. (I would send it to her but she's probably a small.) So I immediately started whining to J who assured me that it yes he remembered the jacket and no it wasn't a Sarah Palin jacket and that a jacket is just a jacket which meant jack shit since he is even more clueless about fashion than I am but only because he is a boy. Determined to continue the funk, I went and put it on. "See?" Bahahaha, yes it is a Sarah Palin jacket! OMG! It totally is! You're not going to wear that are you???
This is actually not the story I meant to tell, but it naturally found it's way here, and as you can see it needed to be told.
Going back...me, anxiously awaiting cooler weather because my arm fat looks better when my tank top is covered by sleeves. However, I had conveniently forgotten that last fall I was preggers, and the fall before that I was in a short lived lowish BMI phase. (I will always have hips, thighs and ass at any weight. Yeah me!) So I don't have any clothes that fit. Throw another "fuck" on the pile.
So I try shopping. Because finding pants isn't hard enough, finding tops is even harder. If it fits the breast feeding boobs and doesn't cling like saran wrap to my muffin then the shoulders are about a gazillion times too big and would also fit a 300 pound man. It's hard not to feel like the most disproportioned woman in the world.
My problems became intensified when I went shopping for an off-the-rack (stunned, I know!) and
very specific Halloween costume. In retrospect, sewing one would have been easier, even though I'm quite busy these days screening my MIL, writing check after check after check to the PTO instead of selling breakfast burritos at the ass crack of dawn, teething an infant, schlepping to Saturday soccer, Tuesday/Thursday/Saturday swimming, Wednesday hockey, tearing my brain and the house apart looking for kindergarten-worthy sharing that begins with the letter X (seriously, 3rd week! obviously retaliation for 1 week one: the letter O producing a classroom full of Optimi Prime, and week two: the letter M is for Megatron!), running into town to Costco to buy fully cooked just reheat meals that I don't even try to pass off as my own anymore because my husband is just glad that there's food period, Facebook time suckage (which I know I'm supposed to hate and throw virtual tomatoes at since you are not allowed to post breastfeeding pictures for random people you went to high school with, but whatever, honestly I'm okay with that because being friends and exchanging pleasant twitter commentary and (Lil) Green Patch requests with someone I had sex with pre-husband when I was young, horny, experimenty, and a 32A and being all mature about it is enough for me), scrubbing cat barf stains off the carpet because you know how fish-shaped red/yellow/brown dyed food is all they'll eat... Seriously, taking up learning to sew for a Halloween costume would have been totally easy.
Here we go again, this time with the Halloween costumes, with my long ass torso trying to fit a poorly made one piece. And again, my boobs are always in the wrong place. But I've found a costume, and it's not perfect, but I know I will not do better, and the price, while outrageous, is less outrageous as everything else. So I pivot left, and I pivot right, and I'm sucking it in, hoping that somehow I can make it work.
And then my light bulb moment...
I reach in from the top, grab a boob, lift, pull top of dress down, and release. Repeat.
And wouldn't ya know, it's not that I have a long, hard to fit torso, it's that I have sad, super saggy boobs.
I'm guessing that if I go out and buy, like, a bra that it might be easier to find tops. Two years and counting a breastfeeding leads me to believe that the damage is irreversible.
Yeah, I don't feel so much better now.
