Last weekend when Sunday evening arrived, I couldn’t figure out where the time had gone.
Oh yeah. I went shopping. Shopping for cotton t-shirts to replace the food stained collection currently in my drawers (I didn’t gain weight during the pandemic, but I did ruin a lot of shirts by eating dinner on the couch) and for shorts and pants. Went to the PO for passport photos.
K and I went to THREE places in search of a new side chair for the living room. Look at us, I might’ve said. Shopping for new furniture like adults! It’s not something we’ve done much.
Then I returned one of the shirts from Uni-Qlo because it was too tight. Got the large instead. I might have dropped what for me was a small fortune at JJill.
How much time we used to routinely spend in pursuit of food and other goods! Errands, errands! Decisions, decisions! Driving, parking, waiting in lines! Finding the bathroom, because…
Today, I was at it again. I returned the shirt I bought to replace the too-tight one because it still bound at the neck (I have a thing about that). Returned the swanky JJill outfit. I loved it but it was too drapey and long for a short woman with curves. This is when I wondered if maybe I enter a fugue state when clothes shopping, one in which I’m a slender woman standing five-seven.
I also returned the olive shorts bought last weekend because when I went to put them on this morning, I grabbed another pair of olive shorts. You know, the ones I forgot about.
I believe this fugue state might have a clinical name, but never mind that.
This morning I headed to the mall at 10, forgetting that nothing opens until 11, even though I was just confronted with that fact last week. Made a quick right into the Wegman’s complex and good thing, because we have two social gatherings coming up. I will bring bruschetta and artichoke dip to one, seared, honeyed shishito peppers and a plate of tomatoes with homegrown basil to the other.
Back home now and I’m breathing a sigh of relief.
In other news: I hit the “below obese designation” on the scale this morning. Talk about relief! This, merely by employing the trendy but sensible process of intermittent fasting. I didn’t give anything up. I didn’t start using my exercycle. I just stopped eating at 7 pm and held off eating again til 1 pm. It works!
The catalpa blossoms litter the yard. The white scatter offers unusual floral beauty, but also precipitates a little dread since we will need to pick up rotting piles of them in a couple of days. Our back catalpa — we have two — didn’t used to flower but now does. Who knew trees changed gender? Probably all of you…
With mild temps and sun, I’m able to edit on the deck under the umbrella. It makes for pleasant typing, even as I am reaching a point of deep reluctance. I hope it’s a temporary resistance, for I have a ways to go. Line by line editing is pure pleasure for me. I could do it all day, every day. But this business of moving big chunks around and deleting or drastically shrinking entire chapters requires a different kind of focus. Ugh. Maybe this new mood signals that I am nearing the end. I hope so.
Again your post tu4ned an ordinary day into an excellent read. Intermittent fasting has helped me loss the ten pounds I’ve been trying to loose for ten years.
I am almost at ten pounds. I don’t find it difficult to do, do you?
Ha. I didn’t know that kind of fasting was a thing! I try not to eat past 7PM, except maybe a piece of fruit and I can easily wait to eat til one…so maybe I’ll be a tad more intentional! Shopping and errands…oh my yes. My mom was the queen of errands. I have no idea how she found so many little things that needed doing! lol I kinda don’t miss it, the shopping. But, there will be a few things I need at some point. Your yard is so beautiful Dee…what a lovely place to sit, either place. That statue is interesting in the fact that the baby is so ‘doll’ shaped. Curious. And you deserve that certificate, 10 fold. You learn, do, share teach! Congrats!
I thought post-pandemic I’d embrace shopping as something a teeny bit celebratory. It’s such a time and energy suck, though, I want to be judicial going forward. But this also: if I am going to be able to stand myself, I have to wean myself from Amazon.
I went shopping two days in a row, too. For the most part, it was celebratory but not something I want to embrace on any level. I enjoyed having the same three folded twenties in my wallet for months on end. Also, yesterday I saw my PCP for the first time since way before all of the madness started. It’s been a year and a half. Next up – getting my transition distance glasses replaced with the existing prescription, or else I have to wait until November to have them replaced and that’s not happening. Am nervous about this one. The optometrist has very strong opinions about many offensive-to-me topics. But masks are mandatory so at least I can grimace undetected.
If this keeps up, I’ll have to run out yet again in order to put more gas in the car.
I got new glasses, too! Forgot about them. My guy wore a yarmulke, wasn’t much taller than I, and was hilarious.
shopping … ugh … my favorite clothes these days are either thrift store finds or gifts from my daughters … my biggest beef is that I have yet to find comfortable, all cotton bras that actually fit
and catalpas … recalling the ones that lined the road leading to the Governor’s Palace in Colonial Williamsburg … don’t remember the flowers as much as the seed pods …
The pods are the final mess!
I miss my second hand shopping. Haven’t been to one of my haunts yet.
BIG congrats on your recognition by the Smithsonian!!! HUGS!!! holy shit, Dee!!! for National Museum of African American History and Culture. wow. You are an amazing human being, and now recognized by a major bonafide respected national entity. If I ever get anything like that (which I won’t and I’m ok with that), I’m fucking going shopping, regardless of budget. I’d take my favorite purchase to be tailored by a professional tailor (which you are already yourself! but hey just have someone do it for you on this occasion why not?).
You bring me so many smiles about your shopping experience. I *used* to be 5’7″ but always a little overweight. You have an obesity indicator?? STOP!! ok, I’ll try that fasting. Every day??
I continue to hang on to one pair size 6 pants from 1989 to see if I can squeeze back into them every once in a while. I can’t. It is a pathetically monetized society we (some of us) occupy here in America. Thank g-d for Margaret Atwood’s realism. And the gruesome historical documentary films to remind us that we are only here by the grace of g-d and driven to survive for unknowable reasons. Grateful am I also for Stacy Abrams and . At least we’re not in the 1% where we’d have to hide on our mega-yachts to enjoy our purchases? I might feel more at home if I lived on the streets of Paris, London or Hong Kong. Shhh don’t tell anyone I said that! I really don’t want to live on the street without a solar shower and They probably wouldn’t provide that. Actually you’d find all kinds of clothes that would fit you right off the rack in Hong Kong! I remember trying to find a size that fit me there – I worked there ever so briefly but didn’t bring enough clothes.
Carry on with that editing kiddo because well… you are almost there!! and trends are showing your first book is going to be a great success. Wait, have you published other stuff we don’t know about?
xx
M
They give those certificates away like candy. I always thought, being on the other side of fund raising, that such gestures/certificates were silly. But now I kind of get it. “Look at me!” I also give to the up-and-coming African America museum in Charleston, slated to open next year.
When were you in Hong Kong? That’s not a chapter I remember!
I put some size 2 pants in the giveaway pile last weekend. Ha! Remember when size 0 was a thing (and I’m not talking Chico’s, which reinvented its sizing to make large women feel better, IMHO). I’m holding on to the 8’s, just in case.
There’s a letter to you in the works but for now, as you note, it’s important I get back to that editing. A perfect summer day here. I will work outside!
ok, well, still nice to be recongized as you say. I get those from the Nature Conservancy… I did think-hope that you’d been recognized for visions as artist or writer in some way.
Hong Kong: I was single-divorced, perhaps at the top of my database-geek game. Got a very cool [sounding] job in NYC. So put down 4K on a small apartment on the Upper West Side and began to feel so LARGE inside. They immediately sent me to Hong Kong to do database design and support on the trading floor of the Hang Seng. 2 weeks of no sleep that turned into 4 (and no clean clothes). Then an email telling to stay for 6 months with no increase in pay. I panicked. I hadn’t moved to my new apartment, I had no one to take my cat or my plants. They said,” get a concierge”. I didn’t know what a concierge even WAS. I pleaded to return home to move all my stuff from NJ to NYC and did boarded the plane back to La Guardia. On the way home I said to myself, “I smell nothing but rats”, and I quit. Actually I tried to negotiate for a NYC assignment but they simply fired me on the spot. It took me several months to recover… but it was the right decision. Wall St is all that people say it is: ruthless, heartless, dark and cruel. And it breeds.
I have lost the lust for shopping. I simply don’t need anything. even food has become simpler.