October 20
Well, howdy! I sent a quicky update out to the people on my notify list a couple of weeks ago saying that I probably wouldn't be posting for a while, but I honestly didn't think it would be this long. The business with Angelo got me down some, as you might imagine, and two days after he moved into the assisted living place, and one day before I was supposed to go see the Beastie Boys in New York, I was diagnosed with having "severe asthmatic bronchitis", which more or less meant that I spent the next SEVEN DAYS in sort of a Sex and the City induced coma in my livingroom, coughing pitifully and huffing bronchial medicine, and also codeine. My feelings about Sex and the City are par for the course of my life. I never saw an episode of it while it was actually on the air (no HBO) except when I was at a hotel or something, and the episodes I did catch, I wasn't at all impressed with and sort of waved it off. Well. I don't know if it was the codeine or my general malaise about missing the Beastie Boys but for the first three days of my Bronchial Shutin, I watched Sex and the City nonstop. I was a woman obsessed. I fell in love. I laughed, I cried. I longed for vodka drinks (though, let's be honest, the Cosmopolitan isn't a very good vodka drink. Why pollute good vodka that way? Pair it with what it deserves, tonic and a lime. Just my opinion). I started actually UNDERSTANDING the wack ass outfits Sarah Jessica Parker wore. Giant flower pinned to sweater? Yes!! Skirts so short sitting would be an impossibility? Yes!! Writer living in NY off the money she makes writing a newspaper column? WHY THE HELL NOT? The improbibility (that totally can't be spelled right, sorry) of hot guys falling for the Carrie character over and over again? Yes, sister. I believe.
I was a convert. It was a sickness. I wouldn't even answer the phone when it rang. When I finally staggered back to work with an impressively dangerous sounding cough, people asked what I did when I was sick. I just shook my head sadly and sighed, as though the weight of my sickness was too tragic to talk about.
So, remember the ponchos (ponchii?) I bought? I don't think I mentioned that I returned one of them because the strain of owning TWO was far too great for me to bear. I'd see them sitting on the guest bed, piled up in kind of a conspiratorial heap and feel overwhelmed. Nick finding me sexy in them be damned, one had to go back and for the first time in my life, I hadn't cut the tags off. Off it went. Later, poncho. The OTHER poncho was dutifully packed in a duffle bag for the trip to Atlantic City. I reasoned with myself that NO ONE in AC knew me (other than the people I was with), and they would love me whether or not I looked like an assface in the poncho.
Folks, I tried. In our stupidly fancy hotel room, I donned the poncho and examined myself. I showed everyone. They assured me that I did NOT look like an assface, but I couldn't do it. I just could not wear the fucking thing. Sort of like when you throw a tablecloth over a giant, scractched up table? The table is still giant and scratched up, just now it's got a flowery cloth over it? That was me in the poncho. Nope. That's when I realized I would never wear the thing, and god help me, I think they look CUTE on most people! I see them on people and I sigh "Ah! What a nice looking poncho!!" Maybe it was just the one I bought. I have no idea, but I realize now that I am not a poncho person and I was really just deluding myself.
With the failed poncho experiment in mind, I went off to the mall last night after work because it's getting cold out and I need some sweaters (I have two sweaters from last year I love more than is right, and would happily wear them every single day, just alternating, but that's kind of nasty and I think people would notice). I went to Lord and Taylor up to their Tubby Lady Section(tm) and went to town. I walked out with four sweaters and a blouse and some of it was DESIGNER. Does Sarah Jessica Parker wear Tommy Hilfiger? Because I do, now.
There was a photo of a model (a non tubby model, of course. Why show the tubby ladies what actual TUBBY people look like in the clothes? Would that be too depressing to bear?) wearing a striped rugby shirt (in festive fall colors, like all orange and kahki and grey and whatnot) with a khaki cord skirt and orange tights and a cute hat and scarf. I would be lying if I said that I didn't buy into it. I would be doing you a disservice if I didn't tell you I grabbed that striped rugby shirt and cord skirt and marched around the store thinking about how cute I was going to look. Until, of course, the sudden realization that normal companies were NOT about to make bright orange tights in tubby girl sizes hit me. And I realized that even if I was to find bright orange tights to finish off my cute little outfit, I didn't have the shoes (they didn't SHOW the model's shoes. I assumed she was wearing adorably rugged and also feminine all at the same time hiking boots. Oh, and leg warmers. Did I mention that?) or the precious hat with the doodads or the happy looking Chocolate Lab to coordinate the whole thing and really, how could anyone walk around their entire lives with a benevolant Chocolate Lab by their side and what about when I had to get up and go to the bathroom, suddenly a very important part of my ensemble would be missing and the whole thing would fall to pieces, so DAMN YOU Tommy Hilfiger. Damn your slave labor using factories and bright colors! Damn your mansion in Fairfield and your weird looking daughter with too much money and the tapping of her third eye!!!! DAMN YOU TO HELL.
Needless to say, I put the striped rugby shirt and matching cord skirt DOWN and walked away. I walked all the way downstairs and was halfway out the door when I was stopped dead in the scarves and things you throw over your shoulders on a chilly night or at a holiday party when you've had too much to drink and everyone is wearing glittery blouses and talking a little too loudly. I was rendered motionless when I saw this:
It was not part of a set, so it's not a cardigan. It has flowers AND snaps AND big old glittery buttons. If I was to throw it over my shoulder, it would have MAYBE come to mid bicep, making me aware that even in this trend, the Tubby Girl would be left out. It's for the best really. What self respecting fat chick would put on her outfit for the evening (I am certainly praying that it is indeneded for NIGHT wear and not, say, running to the CVS wear) and decide that the perfect outfit topper was...this? It has no sleeves, making it perfect for use as say, a tissue cosy.
For the love of god, fashion designers. WASN'T TRICKING ME INTO BUYING A PONCHO ENOUGH?? Do you HONESTLY thing I'm going to be fooled into buying a BATHMAT to wear? Lordy.
the other day - home - email - soon