Hobby Horse

First, the news. I weighed in this morning at 191.50 pounds, down a total of 59.50 pounds and just 0.50 pounds away from my pre-pregnancy weight of 191.0. I am officially caught up from that annoying plateau last month, and I have 3 pairs of size 12 pants I can wear out of the house, so I'm chucking my size 16s. This will be the first Misses-sized item I’m recycling because it's too small to wear. They’re not really too small, but they're history. These days, I only wear things so tight that, unless you can tell whether the change in my pocket is facing up heads or tails, they're too big and out they go.

I'm going to have to get some more 12s, since one of the above-mentioned pants trio is a pair of painters that I love, but which are so far fashion-retarded that I can only wear them in my bathroom at night with all the lights off. I admit, they are flattering to my figure, but even my sand-draggers aren't big enough to leave the house wearing a reject from the Basic Training Workout. And so for the sixth week in a row, I will be spending my Free Day by clothes-shopping at the mall.

I’ve never been much of a shopper. I don’t like the whole covered-streets-city look to malls, and I’m suspicious that the Muzak they play holds secret and sinister messages, such as ‘Happiness is emptying your wallet and filling your stomach.’ It’s not enough, either, that I’m accosted at every angle by Size Zero jeans that look like they’ve been through a wood chipper and blouses that scarcely cover teeny breasts and show off the latest in belly-button jewelry. I’m not tempted really, and in any case, even down 59.50 pounds, I’m too large to squeeze past the shirtless ‘model’ standing at the entrance, gunning to undo his jeans so everyone can have a look at the tighty-whitey underwear poking out from his low-slung pants. Ick, but I can handle it. I’m not there for the barely dressed barely-men.

But what’s up with those kiosks? Do these remind anyone else of those carts from the Old West where bearded men hawked snake oil and medicinal waters until the tar and feathers came out? These new ‘carts’ have more glamour and the hawkers are better dressed, but they sport the same useless crap. At least the girls honor the salesperson’s rules of not bothering someone who is obviously avoiding eye contact. The boys have no such grace. They jump out from behind their displays, rope people with neon-colored feather boas or hair extensions, and insist the customer cannot take another step until their look is updated. Let me tell you, I am almost 42 years old, and I have never seen boas as a standard fashion accessory, and anyway, there will never be a boa made to ‘complete’ the track suit.

In a way, though, I’m thankful to the Kiosk Kings, because their ‘hound the harangued until they call security’ sales methods have moved me out of the “mallways” and into the anchor stores.

I used to loathe the department stores. They’re more expensive than most of the boutique fare, and you can’t find salespeople or ladies rooms, even with a map, a directory, and a clerk in tow. They have their own form of the kiosk, the skin care gauntlet, but now it seems that the clerks in white lab coats (what is that all about?) now spend more time over-applying their make-up and talking with each other than chasing down commissions. When I bought my perfume to celebrate breaking 200 pounds, I had to scour 3 anchors before I found a saleswoman, and even then, I had to get her to stop “blending” her black eye shadow long enough to wipe her hands on her smock and open up the cash register.

When I was fat, I discovered that while the department store Women’s clothing cost more than the boutiques, their selection was better, and some of it actually qualified as business wear, rather than the flower-bedecked housecoats at the Big & Beautiful stores. Now that I’m a Misses, I find that I like the displays of their label-wear, and that I can always find my size, because items are always neatly hung and graduated on the racks, size 2 in the front (bitches!) and size 16 in the back. If I don’t find what I need, there’s always something similar right next door, or, if need be, in the next anchor down.

Since I don’t like to shop and I’m not very good at it, I try to buy things that are sturdy enough and plain enough to last me for several seasons. I’ve never had This Year’s boots, and I will probably never be fashion-forward at anything. I wear simple, straight lines that compliment my figure when I’m showing it and hide it when I’m not.

And even though I’m in the ‘look at me!’ stage of my weight loss, I hesitate to spend any real money on clothes. On Friday, I found a sweater at T.J. Maxx that really enticed me. It was a deep v-neck angora with sparklies and bugle beads splashed across the bust. I’d have to wear a t-shirt or a turtleneck underneath, because even in my 'OMG, my boobs are shrinking!' state, I'm not ready to flaunt them to the public at large. Ever since I started buying bras at Frederick’s of Hollywood, I’ve been less reluctant to give glimpses of my lingerie, but I remain a conservative when it comes to flaunting my foundation garments, as it were. Still, I liked the sweater and plucked it off the rack to take a look.

They had 2 sizes, Small and Large. I can wear the Large now, but not for long. I’m already dancing with Mediums in sweaters, and I’m sure the blouses aren’t far behind. I suppose I could snake into a Small, and then the knit would cling hard enough to my torso that my bra wouldn’t really be on display, though my fat rolls would be. I could also buy it and wait it out. I know I’ll be a size Small eventually, and while the sweater has a holiday hint to it, it’s clearly an all-winter garment, and I could still get some use out of it in January. Convinced, sort of, I pull the tag out. $29. I sigh and put the sweater back. Too much, especially for something I can only wear for a little while.

I told Howard about this and he shook his head. “Get the Large. Wear it while you can, and then donate it.”

But I like the sweater, I respond. This is not just something pretty to wear on my way down the scales-I’d want to keep this one. I’d rather wait until I fit it, and then get the next size down. And it’s $29. I can’t justify $58 for one sweater, even if I do get to buy it twice.

“Get the sweater,” Howard insists. “Reward yourself. It’s $29. This is the cost of losing weight. And the reward. Think of it as your new hobby.”

My ex-husband used to tease me that I had no hobbies. Not true, I’d counter. I quilt. “X” insists that quilting is not a hobby. “A hobby is something expensive that takes up all your time and gets you nowhere,” he remarked once. “Quilting is productive. It builds something. So it’s not a hobby.”

I don’t agree, but I saw his point about having a hobby-something where I could spend my money that didn’t necessarily contribute to the GDP. I’ve always wanted to be trendy, or at least fashion-appropriate. I’ve had a subscription to Vogue for years. I got it originally so I could “dress” the characters in my fiction books. I’d been so indifferent to clothes that I wouldn’t bother describing a single outfit in 400 pages of manuscript. Once I did, everyone dressed like me, and while that’s easy, it’s dull and of course, fiction heroes need to be forward-thinking. Solving life-threatening problems loses it’s compelling edge when the hero is pacing in painter’s pants (see above). So I got the Vogue subscription, and then DS showed keen interest in the pictures, and suddenly I was flipping through it every month, checking out the trends and the changes, and eventually I saw a pair of shoes I liked.

Of course then I saw the price, with the tricky “around” modifying the terrifying $600 price tag. How does that dilute this, and what does it mean, anyway? Around $600. How far around? For me, that would be ‘around’ the time I set the shoes down and went looking for Nine West.

But still, moving up the fashion food chain might just be worth the slimmer wallet. Decorating myself is a reward I’ve always wanted to have. I’ve never indulged the desire even when I was thin, precisely because I didn’t want to spend ‘around $600’ on some item, only to find that it was out of style the next fall. But I think now I understand that while I’ll never be a Burberry’s regular, and while I am still in transition, so there’s no need to dump $1,200 on the Mark Shale leather shearling, I have decided to splurge-a little. So look for lined pants with labels you recognize, and don’t be surprised if some day my purse (which I don’t currently carry) has a label other than the Target bull’s eye stamped on the tag. After all the years of drooling over those Vogue models and all these months of slimming myself down into something resembling a real person, I’m ready to clothe the horse.

Looks like I have a new hobby. See you at the mall!

A the C(lothes Equestrian)