No Jeans For Me

19 May 2002

Yesterday we went to the temple of consumerism. I was looking for wedding presents, a bra, and jeans. The bra was the easy part: only one store in the mall carries my size, so that's where we went. I tried on all three possibilities, bought one, and made note of another that was hideously expensive for when they have a bra sale. And let me tell you, it is a good thing that I love me some geekboy, because the bras they make in my size are largely interesting as feats of engineering. I'm serious. I'm surprised that the History Channel hasn't done one of their Modern Marvels shows about them already. I can hear the announcer's voice already: "By the mid-1950s, the synthetic materials so long in use in brassiere manufacture...."

I tried looking for bras at other stores when we first moved out here. Nope. The saleslady at Macy's was downright rude when I asked if she had anything in my size. Acted like I had asked for some specialized form of kiddie porn or something like that: they did not sell that there, try somewhere else. And I wanted to say, lady, did you ask for those floppy little uncooked-chicken boobs of yours? Well, I didn't ask for what I got, either, so back off.

Ahem. So. Jeans shopping. I went to every store that might carry jeans in my general size and style range. I won't wear bellbottoms, so I don't know if any of the bellbottoms -- oh, excuse me, flare leg jeans -- they had would have fit me. Because I won't wear them. But otherwise I tried on everything that might be in my size. Argh. Most of them didn't go small enough. Some of them were far enough from small enough that I took them back off again without unbuttoning and unzipping them. I acknowledge that I am not a size 6 by any of the standards of the brands I tried on yesterday, and I tried on many. This is something I will just have to accept. But I don't think I should be enough smaller than their 6 to be able to do that. That's just not okay. And some of them went small enough, but only in the hips, and the waist was absolutely yards too big.

I'm not sure what to do now. I could, I suppose, go to a different mall that had different stores. I could order online from someone, don't know who. But if I don't get to try the jeans on, I don't know if they'd fit decently, and it's going to be a huge hassle to send jeans back and forth in the mail if they don't. I could go to the Levi's store in the City where they custom make jeans for a bit more money, but their website claims that they only do well fitting within a certain waist size range, and I measured, and I was, as I was finishing off my period and thus at my largest, the very bottom number of that range. So. Anyone have any advice? This is ridiculous. I sent e-mails to those unfortunate enough to have e-mailed me recently, ranting and raving about this experience yesterday, but I really don't think I'm that all-out freaky that I shouldn't be able to buy a pair of jeans.

Or rather, I would not have said that any all-out freakiness I may or may not possess is in a realm that should affect my jeans buying.

Am I wrong about this? Those of you who have met me -- would you have said, "Now, there's a girl with a weird ass?" And don't dodge the question, either. Although "I didn't pay any attention to your ass" is a good enough answer, if it's honest.

Sigh.

We did get wedding presents for Curt and Rebecca and for John and Christine, whom I totally forgot to mention when I was talking yesterday about people getting married this summer. And we did get me a bra, and we got girly soap (pink floral shower gel, as opposed to the manly soap that Mark and Timprov use) and laundry detergent. And we found the Goodwill, only to find that it was boarded up and closed, so we dropped the old clothes off at the St. Vincent de Paul place on Decoto Rd. So the trip wasn't entirely a waste. Just...disappointing and frustrating.

Ah well. I gave up on the Margaret Atwood short stories when I started grinding my teeth at them. Read Donald Maass' Writing the Breakout Novel instead. (Maass is a literary agent, and I'll probably submit my query to his agency if the agent I've currently sent to ever gets back to me and it's a no.) Some of the stuff he said was kind of silly, and some of it made sense. A lot of it was refreshing because he was focused on telling a good story, because he honestly believes that's what sells books. But I think the most important thing it did was to get me thinking more consciously about the construction of this book, even when it was on total tangents to the stuff he was saying. When I was done with that, I found myself in the mood for a murder mystery, so I went back to Kate Wilhelm's Death Qualified. Good stuff, as expected.

I got some good Not The Moose work done yesterday, but I also wrote a couple of pages on one of the YA novels in the works. Not a problem. Just got the ideas down, so then when I'm ready to write it, I have some scenes from which I can jump off, and some major plot points explicated. This is never a bad thing. The only time I've ever sat down to write a novel and not had some scenes for it already written was Fortress. I don't anticipate that it'll happen a lot in the future, either, because when I get the ideas for the novels, I often get a few easy scenes as well, and I might as well write them down as not. So then when I have a novel to write, I already have bits of it.

I'm so tired. It's only 8:30, so it would seem like I could go back to bed. But I can't. My brain is wide awake, racing around, probably accomplishing more than my body is going to let it do all day. So tired. Don't know how I got this tired, and it always scares me when I'm this tired, because this is how it is before I get sick. This is also how it is before I just need to get a lot of rest, though, so it's no guarantee of illness. Thankfully. That's the last thing I need just now. I'm going to sprawl and read Kate Wilhelm and hope that my white cranberry peach juice gives me an energy boost that the Nutella tortilla and milk did not. And try to figure out what's on my "to do" list that will take the least energy. Have a good day. Rest up.

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