Blonde Moment

Once upon a time, a girl fell in love with a pair of black pants. We're not talking love at first sight here - in fact, the girl almost left the pants at the store, but the nice Ann Taylor lady informed her that they were marked half-off, so she thought, "Why not?" Why not, indeed. The pants were absolutely perfect - flat front, zipper on the side, wide (but not too wide) waistband, and just the right flare to the leg. The girl wore them until the lining started to disintegrate and the zipper lost a couple of teeth. She went back to Ann Taylor and was dismayed to discover a store full of front-fly, straight leg pants. A different, but equally nice, Ann Taylor lady asked the girl if she was "finding everything alright," and the girl replied, "No, I'm looking for a pair of pants that I purchased here with a flat front, a side zipper, a wide (but not too wide) waistband, and just the right flare to the leg. They are the best pants in the world."

"Oh, I know exactly which pants you are talking about," said the Ann Taylor lady. The girl's heart soared.

"Those are the best pants in the world, and I can't for the life of me understand why we stopped making them."

[Forehead slap]

Yes, I'm the girl in the story, and after looking far and wide for similar pants I ended up having the zipper in the original pair fixed and the lining replaced. Yes, I could have bought a couple of pairs of pants with what I spent on the repairs, but they wouldn't have been the pants. I learned my lesson: if you find a pair of black pants that you really, really like, don't stop at one pair. Buy multiples - particularly if they are half-off.

Fast forward to this morning. I took my own advice awhile back and bought two pair of black pants, the hem of one of which has fallen out. Because I don't "do" hems (okay, okay - I'm lazy, but I have a full-time job, thank you very much, and time is money, and also the way I see it my laziness keeps a couple of different tailors in business - although, quite often, they will only charge me a dollar or two, or refuse to charge me at all, advising me that they can't in good conscience charge me for what is so simple a job - okay, I get it, I'm staffing out sewing projects that a trained monkey could do, probably with one hand tied behind its back), I added the pair with the pulled-out hem to a stack of clothes in my closet that, for various reasons, require a tailor's attention. That left the other pair of perfect pants on the hanger.

So, I'm getting ready for work, I pull the perfect pants off of the hanger - and they aren't just a little bit tight, they are alarmingly, "no way I can wear these" tight. I begin to freak out - surely, it must be the Mexican brunch on Saturday and the eggplant rollatini on Mother's Day catching up to me, but I have multiple (try seven!) Junior Woman's Club closing dinners to attend this week, and I need to look nice at all of them . . . but I will be expected to eat at all of them, too. MAJOR pity party commences: I need to lose weight, but how will I possibly find the time? I hastily throw together an outfit, and between work and my first JWC engagement of the week I head to the mall and manage to find a few items of clothing that fit, including a pair of black pants, but they aren't perfect pants - they are merely okay. The entire process of trying on clothing is maddening, because - notwithstanding the fact that I have clearly put on a ton of weight in a short time frame - I don't seem to have changed sizes. In fact, when I try on the next size up, the clothes just swim on me. This frustrates me to no end - either I'm bigger or I'm not.

[Wait for it . . . .]

I go home, and I'm trying on clothes, and I go into my closet (which is sort of a hot mess, thanks to my frenzied search for things that fit) in search of a particular black tank top. I start sorting through a pile of black clothing that didn't make it back on hangers, and I run across the too-tight pants . . . and then I run across them again. Wait, whaaaaa? I check the pile of "clothing to be mended," and there are the unhemmed pants, right where I left them. Something doesn't add up - figuratively and literally. So I take a closer look at the other pants - and realize that the ones on top are not my current favorite black pants, but rather they are a historical favorite, in a size that I haven't worn for awhile. A good, long while. I take a closer look at the other "other pants" . . . pull them on, and not only do they fit, but they are a little bit loose.

Yup, you guessed it - the reason that my current favorite black pants didn't fit this morning was that they weren't my current favorite black pants at all. I grabbed the wrong pair off of the hanger, and the pair that I grabbed haven't fit me for eons. In other words, I gave myself a flippin' heart attack, completely unnecessarily. I had to start laughing - it was either that or cry. And I had to share my amusement (and sense of relief) with someone, so I told my spouse, who shook his head, chuckled a little and started to say something, but I cut him off thusly:

"Yeah, yeah, I know. The blonde really does go all of the way down to the roots."