Why I Suffered from Years of Insecurity

My brother sent me this picture today.

(I'm the one on the left, the two on the right are old family friends...freaking adorable!) I had just about convinced myself that my weight problems as a child were mostly in my head. And, er, now I realize that those problems resided squarely in my thighs. The word they used on me back then was "sturdy," which was a term that my husband also suffered when he was a less than fit young boy.

I can look at this photo and go awwww, but good god, I hope my kids have it a little easier. At least they'll have the benefit of not living in the '80s, when eyeglasses were purposedly designed to swallow up half your face. And I remember that little sweatshirt with the teddy bears and hearts. I loved that sweatshirt.

A Yuppie Day

We had a very yuppie day today. I needed to buy a dress for a wedding and Aaron decided that he needs more grown up clothes (flannel can only carry you for 20 years or so, and he's already retired the hoodie). So we went to the mall.

I'll start with the fact that not only did we valet the car, but dropped it off at the car wash that's inside the mall garage. He decided to go for the $35 deluxe wash with spray wax, as opposed to the $59 wash with hand wax. A wise decision I think. Yuppie moment number one (get your car valeted and washed, but don't be ostentatious about your choices.)

Aaron apparently doesn't like department stores, so we braved the "size 0 is average" world of American Eagle, Guess and Banana Republic. Believe me, I never shopped at those stores before...but I have to say that I was impressed by BR. A little overpriced, but good quality. Guess, however, was just silly. All the jeans were in boys' sizes, so I grabbed a 30 and a 31. I asked the girl on the floor if that translated into an 8 and 10, and she just giggled and said "I have no idea!" While I was trying on the clothes I heard her flirting with Aaron. As soon as I came out holding the jeans, she said "They didn't work out?" Um, now how the heck did she know that unless she KNEW that I was going in with the wrong sizes?

Fortunately I have a sense of humor about the size of my ass so I just laughed and said no. Then we went to check out with the stuff Aaron was buying, and the girl at the register flirted with him! I swear to god, I'm not making this up. It was full on giggling and tossing her hair and throwing in a little cologne sample into the bag. I swear, those girls must have thought that I was just his friend helping him shop for the day.

Anyhoo, I was thrilled at Banana Republic because they actually had a ROOM dedicated to petites. I picked up an adorable orange halter dress that was completely overpriced, and was easily convinced into buying it by Aaron. I swear, it might be the most expensive piece of clothing I've ever bought next to my wedding dress. And that was made by a bunch of Indian people in what I imagine to be a sweat shop, so who knows how much that even cost? Yuppie moment number two. (Buy a dress you don't really need because the store is pretty and the employees aren't rude).

I dragged Aaron to Macy's to look for a fancy dress for a wedding. He dutifully sat in the husband chair while I moved as fast as possible to find a dress. It's sort of a good strategy. I couldn't linger while he was pretending to be patient, so I was working completely off instinct of "hate that dress, hate that dress, kind of like that dress but it's not dressy enough, love that dress but I would look fat, a-HA!" I wound up with an awesome dress that Aaron approved of. It's now the second most expensive dress I've ever bought (don't worry, each one was under $150- I'm not that far gone). Still, yuppie activity moment number three. Oh, and out of a store full of amazing prints, I picked a "timeless" black and white piece. That's yuppie moment number four.

At the food court, Aaron ordered sandwiches while I went to Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf to get drinks. No sodas for us on our yuppie day, oh no. And what do I order? A venti mocha. The guy looked at me in complete confusion, and I was all, oh crap, I'm not at Starbucks. I've actually been indoctrinated to refer to sizes as tall, grande and venti. Sigh.

So that was our exciting day. I came home with two wonderful dresses, underwear and socks, so I'm happy as a clam. Now I shall have a glass of chardonnay and try to figure out what other things yuppies do at night. Perhaps Frasier is on.

Addendum:
To complete our yuppie day...our cable was shut off because we forgot to pay the bill for two months. We were immensely grateful that technology allowed us to pay the bill over the phone, withdraw it immediately from our checking account, and it was back up instantly. We also thanked our lucky stars that the high-speed internet wasn't affected. If it had been, we would have noticed a lot faster. And then we ordered in sushi.

More Otto, Less American Idol

More Otto, less American Idol. Both fans have spoken, and I'm listening.

Well, not much to say about life these days. I'm still working a lot, but see a light at the end of the tunnel. It's gotten to the point that I don't mind that work spills far over into some nights and all weekend. I'm very zen about it, which may have something to do with the fact that I have like no hobbies. The only things I like to do to relax are hang out at home eating and watching TV, and going jogging or to the park with the dog. For some reason, that doesn't feel terribly unhealthy to me.

My new project when this is all over is to buy a house. I figure that's a big enough educational hobby, will be incredibly time consuming and will culminate in something useful. I'm a little nervous to make such a committment, but I figure it's got to happen sooner rather than later.

So enough about me, here's some Otto. I did record some terrible doggie porn- you may remember how the little guy had a thing for humping the bedspread. It progressed onto Aaron's arm, and so I bought him a stuffed toy to take out his emotions. Well, that worked a little too well. Really, really well. To the point that we thought that something was wrong with him. I had to spray him with water to make him stop playing with it. A few days later, I found him in the living room humping the stuffing out of that poor little toy, with the same result. So I videotaped it. I'm a very bad mommy. And if I can figure out how to post it on my public blog, I will.

Oh, and he had fleas, so we put a white flea collar on him. There's no way it could translate onto camera, but I swear he looked like a little priest:

The Dogsercist: