I Thought It Would Make Me Feel Better

While I make a lot of noise about eating chocolate – in much the same way that I make a lot of noise about margaritas, daytime television, and tipping 20% – there’s plenty of evidence available to support the theory that I’m talking out my hat.

That is to say, I don’t eat as much chocolate as I’d like to; I probably talk about drinking more than I actually do it (not that I don’t hope to dedicate some time to it this weekend); I both mock and watch daytime television given the chance; and no matter how much I believe in tipping, you absolutely will not get 20% from me if I drink all my water and you never offer to re-fill it.

And yes, I did used to be a waitress.

So I said all of that so that I could say this: I went shopping for pants on my lunch hour yesterday. (After getting through three-quarters of my data-entry nightmare – see yesterday’s post – I thought it would cheer me up.)

Cheer me up?! Silly, silly woman. Pants??? You thought shopping for pants would cheer you up?

Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, what did you think of the play?

Pants. The bane of my existence.

I went to Marshall’s, Macy’s, Banana Republic, and finally The Gap, where I found a pair of pants that fit pretty nicely – except that the leg stopped at my ankles.

I don’t know where you’re from, but where I’m from we call these “floods”, as in “the water has receded, you can un-roll your pants now”.

I will not wear floods.

My request that they find me these pants not in “ANK” length but in “REG” length resulted in a ten-minute foray into the apparently confusing world of their computers and then in them handing me a slip of paper.

The paper said they were pretty sure they have as many as three pairs of “REG” at the Mall of America store.

I am not riding the light rail to the MOA for one pair of pants based on a “pretty sure”.

Sigh.

What’s a short-legged, small-waisted, round-bottomed gal to do?

Oh, sure. A-line skirts you say. Well, why not. I love skirts as much as the next gal, but at roughly $4 a pair for nylons (and here in Minneapolis we do wear nylons three seasons out of four if we want to stay warm), it’s almost like a treat.

Four different stores, 16 different pairs of pants. My chubby little thighs, red with the humiliation of being laughed at by a number of different pant styles and fabrics, cried with the indignity of it all and tried, unsuccessfully, to steer me to a local Dairy Queen.

They failed; and they will continue to fail to get me to walk to the Dairy Queen because it’s that kind of thinking, my friends, that got me into this mess.

Tomorrow: I lighten up a whole lot (having given up on the idea of contentment through trousers) and explain why I’m throwing a Puppy Shower. Until then, I will be over here, flexing and un-flexing my thigh muscles.