The Closer I Get to 2

Call me Junior.

Well, first the annoying stuff. Despite having a banner week AND working out 4 times this week, including a 90-minute marathon racquetball session on Friday night, I am up an inexplicable 2.0 pounds. WTF?

I refuse to consider this a gain, since I’m pretty sure I burned all the calories I ate this week. DS has me at 1-minute intervals, where I’m walking at 3.0mph and then running at 5.0mph. Let me tell you-for a woman who runs only when about to miss her flight, 5.0 mph is fast. So it’s not possible that I’ve gained weight, but there it is. It’s just another line item on the list of Inexplicable Things About My Weight Loss. Lucky for me, since I weighed in last week wearing everything I owned, I only registered a 1.20 pound gain, and anyway, I’m still far below my WW goal. But still: annoying.

And of course now I’m coming up on PMS (yippee!), so next week I’ll be doing full-on battle with the chocolate drawer at work, the goofs who keep leaving donuts on the hallway file cabinet, and the endless array of suited vendors who want to take me out for lunch. Happy to Be Me!!!

It’s not the out-to-lunch thing that bothers me so much as it’s where these reps want to take me. Nobody wants salad or grilled lean meats for lunch: not when the Branch Manager is buying. No, it’s deep fried oysters in cream sauce and things under silver hoods, born by waiters dressed better than I.

All I hear is, ‘let’s get to that tapas place-the plates are small’, or ‘there’s a new chic French restaurant right down the road from you.’ Okay, a little food tutorial here. ‘Tapas’ is code for ‘your ass is going to spread out like a sombrero’, and ‘chic’ means ‘this is why Americans hate us: we eat healthy, wholesome foods and feed you clowns the bread-laden fatstuffs covered in sauce.’ And by the way, the ‘small plate’ phenomenon is meaningless when it comes to tapas. They have to serve those things on teeny coffee plates, or customers would die of instantaneous heart disease while deciding on dessert. So no, I’m not going there.

One vendor asked me where I wanted to go (now THERE’S an idea!), and when I said I wanted go to go Chili’s to get the grilled Caribbean chicken salad, he nearly choked on his tie. Chili’s? When I have approval to get flaming crepes and I could sneak in a glass of wine and say it was for you? What kind of procurement person ARE you? I can’t even make a coffee meeting civilized. When I offer to meet them in the building for a brief, no-food talk, they always try to get there ahead of me and then produce a tray full of All Things Lard-Laden as proof of their desire to work here. So lately, I have to leave my desk early to beat them to the cafeteria, and fill my mug before they get there. Even then, I get, “oh, well, if you bought your own coffee, then at least let me get you a danish. I’m getting one for myself, so it’s no problem.”

Not for you, maybe.

On the up side, I’ve been on expeditions the last few weeks, shopping for the next piece of my transition wardrobe. I’m pretty sure that if I could find a pair of 1% lycra jeans in a size 2 long that they would fit.

Ah, but herein lies the problem. Where I was once too large to shop at Kohl’s, unless I was willing to be seen in Mavis Fuentes wear (that’s Daisy’s older, fat sister, btw), now I am too small. The lowest size on most of their jeans is a 6, and the few brands they carry in a 4 don’t go long. I’m a 34 inseam. It’s not Nicole Kidman long, but I’m not Queen Torso either, and I’m still insisting on pants that go all the way down to my shoes. I tried on a pair of Capri pants, just to see, and it’s just not going to work for me. As with everything in my life, I exist only at the extremes. Short-shorts or pants to the heels: nothing in between. The only thing I can wear that shows leg is a skirt, and even then, it must be knee-length or it bombs. Shin length and all the high-fashion equivalents (tea length, intermission length, ankle-sweeping) make me look dowdy. Forget the short varieties: let’s just say that they suggest that I’ve switched professions from vendor management to something much, much older.

Anyway, I started at Kmart, looking for the low-rise stretch that hailed up the 4L that I threaten to wear out. Nothing. Not even a 2 Average to let me try. Next I try Eddie Bauer. They have them, but the button placement weird and wrong. It’s not above the zipper, and really, it’s closer to the right pocket than it is to the fly. I ask the clerk about it. “Yeah, that’s how they’re made,” she remarked, stating the obvious. “You might be able to get them on line.”

“It’s not the size, it’s the button. Don’t you have any with the button in the right place?”

She checked her ‘stash’ of 2L, which basically amounts to the pair I don’t have in my hand., “Nope. That’s how they come.”

Okay, then.

I can’t find a 2L anywhere that fits. The places that have them (Ralf Lauren, Gap) make them in 100% cotton, and I’m still a 4 in a zero-stretch. Not to mention that the Ralf pants are so low that they actually sit below my hip bones. I would have to dig out my old maternity blouses, or maybe buy one of those mini-dresses that I can’t wear, just to cover up the octopus. Who can wear these things? Anyone who’s had even a single meal in a college commons would splay out of these babies. So this won’t work.

Determined and more than a little frustrated, Howard and I set out last weekend to find new jeans. He scored, even adding inches to his inseam in the process, but I continued to bomb. I did discover that I’m a 30x34 in men’s pants, but come on! Do I really have to go back to Menswear just to get fitted clothes? Besides, I’ve rather grown to like the way that stretch jeans curve with me.

Men’s pants are like a double-denim erection. Everything stands straight at attention-no curves anywhere. I appreciate their extra room in the tummy, though I acknowledge it is not built for the ladies. These pants “fit”, but they’re not curvy, they’re not flattering, and anyway, they stop making the 34” inseam at 30”, so as soon as I drop anymore weight, I’m right back to hunting, and this time, I have Make Me Stiff jeans that are, well, flaccid.

No.

We blanked all over Oak Brook Mall and were about to hurl the white flag at Kohl’s when Howard suggested I try the juniors section. Flooded with memories of Jordache, Gitano, Bill Blass and Diane von Furstenburg from the 1970s, I sidle on over to the Young Miss section and start hunting. Within minutes, I discover a few facts.

Fact #1: Teenage girls are slobs. I knew this on some hypothetical level, but wow, they are pigs. Every dressing room was littered with discarded clothes. I felt like I’d stumbled into the high school girls locker room after the Cheerleader Rapture. Clothes everywhere. Shoes everywhere. Not a clerk in sight. No wonder Moms of Teens go gray. It’s a wonder any of these skinny pre-pubes ever make it to prom.

Fact #2: No one in high school has a figure. All the clothes have curves built into them, suggesting the shape to come, and yet somehow falling short, because, let’s face it, the goods just aren’t there yet. Oh, sure, hints sneak in occasionally, and there are all form of clothes to flaunt it. But they all rest above the (exposed) belly button. Crop tops, lace-up blouses, sparkly wife-beater-like creations with deep dips front & back. But the girly-girl hips don’t really exist yet, and the jeans are there to prove it.

Fact #3: If the designers of young girl fashions are trying to help these girls look older, they failed. That is, unless every 16-year-old in western suburban Chicago wants to look like Annie after she’s done the mosh pit. These clothes look young. I know I’m 42, and it’s been a very long time since I’ve been in the Junior section to buy something for myself. But seriously, these clothes all look like the Juniors are turning wistful eyes back to grammar school.

But size does matter and I can’t find a 2 anywhere, so I dig through the (disgusting!) piles of denim and choose a size 5, size 7, and size 9. Encouraged that there is a plethora of size 0 long, I shove my way to the dressing room, kick the clothes off the floor (hey, I want to fit in!) and slam the door.

The 5s are true hip huggers, and like I said before there are no hips built to hug, so I get them to the top of my thighs before I have to sit down and let the blood return to my limbs, and to keep myself from fainting. I jump up to the 9s, and they are too big. Size 9 junior is too big. I cross my fingers, suck in the jellyfish tummy and slide the 7s on.

A match!

They’re low-probably too low, but they fit, they’re stretchy, so they’re curving, even if by youngin’ standards, and they’re plenty long. I take about 1 second to debate the merits of the men’s 501 button-fly before I chuck them on the floor (Hey! Everyone else was doing it!), and tuck the 7s into the cart.

I am now the proud owner of Girls Jeans. Size 7L-J. They’re not an obvious junior, and the hip pocket design is unisex and simple-easily passable for a Misses. And now they’re mine, lying side-by-side with the 4L-M and waiting for me to find a blouse long enough to cover up whatever might seep out from beneath the ‘hip’ huggers.

I might never find my 2, and I don’t see getting into a 2 Junior unless I liposuction an entire leg away. But I think I’m all right with that. I’m in Junior jeans. How about that? Maybe I’m all right with a gain this week: It’s just what I needed to fill out my new clothes.

A the T(eenie)