Women's Wear Wednesday

I have always had a fondness for blue short sleeve button-down shirts. Not sure why, maybe something about it appeals to me in a geeky pencil protector way.

For years I rocked the perfect short sleeve blue button down shirt from Old Navy, which because I loved it so much ended up full of holes. I can't bring myself to get rid of it yet but it really is only marginally wearable for chores like house painting or car washing. You know if I'm saying that than any other normal person would have relegated it to the rag bin years earlier.

Then I bought a pull over blue cotton shirt sleeve shirt that buttoned about halfway from Muji in London. Unfortunately it shrunk down to a nubbin in the wash, not before becoming pit-stained, so that actually hit the garbage. I would have used it for a dust rag, but since I don't dust, I have no need for such an item. I was very sad to see that shirt go and thus there was a big void where a blue short sleeved button down shirt should have been.

Hence I was as pleased as punch when I found my new love at Thrift Town last week: a short sleeve blue button down shirt. It's nothing special really, although the button pattern is super cute, but I just love this shirt. And the best part? $2.99. Oh hell yeah.

Things took a slightly less happy turn last week. Started out okay: I found a fetching wrap dress at Marshall's. It's comfortable, flowy in a pretty blue and brown interlocking circle pattern. The price was right at $19.99 but I had an unpleasant moment in the dressing room, with its requisite unflattering yellowish light, where I was forced to confront all my lumps and bumps. That jersey fabric is so unforgiving. Sure I want to love and accept my body as it is and all that shizz but I just cannot, CANNOT leave the house looking like that. Now, will I, in a few weeks, be gracing the beaches of Cape Cod in a bikini, all my pale flab on display? Yes, I will. But that's different, for some reason I can't articulate.

So I needed a constricting undergarment that would harness my muffin top and trunk junk. I already own a bra/slip combo which would be perfect except it hikes itself up constantly, encircling my waist like a belt, thus defeating its purpose. Short of slathering my thighs in Liquid Nails before getting dressed, I can't figure out a way to make the slip stay put so I had to consider the modern version of the girdle, Spanx.

Mama had told me that Target carried Spanx-like "shapers," so when we went together I checked them out. Do want to laugh? They're called Assets, but they should really be called Asses, as in tame your giant lumpy one. Comfortable they are not but they do what they say, smooth out the hills and mounds until the landscape is acceptably smooth. I suppose I could go for the ultra mega hold but I do like to breathe and occasionally go to the bathroom and I can't envision any of those activities occurring in anything tighter.

I'm thinking this purchase was a milestone of middle age. I hearkened back to rooting through my mom's underwear drawer as a teen looking for some clean undies because I had none, and being absolutely horrified/mystified by the strangely paneled undergarments. Now of course they make perfect sense, which is how I know I'm getting old. I really wanted to call her then, remembering my snotty adolescent behavior, and tell her, Mom, sorry I was such a damn brat. You get the last laugh cause I'm buying a girdle.