Where There's A Will, There's No Effin' Way

In fairness, The Gap is liberal with its sizing.

Yesterday, a dress I had been lusting after went on sale and the store at the White Plains mall had one left in stock. In the size I wanted. Clearly the universe wanted me to have this dress. Now malls perplex and frighten me and I try to keep our interactions to a minimum, but since malls force you to pass by 1000 stores prior to arriving at the one you were searching out, I found myself in the Gap. Which was good because the Gap jeans I was wearing were officially getting too big.

I grabbed one size down from what I was wearing in every style and hustled into the dressing room. But there was a problem. The one size down from the style I was currently sporting went on without a hitch. You might think this is good, until you remember that jeans now have a bit of lycra in them and if it fits in the store, it will be hopelessly and oft-times irretrievably stretched after a single wearing (I know from experience that chucking one's too big jeans in a very hot dryer only stays the inevitable - that is throwing the jeans out - for a moment or two). With a mixture of disbelief and euphoria, I got the next size down. A size really only reserved for Kate-sized people and their ilk (as an aside, devoted partner and I have started referring to our combined weight loss as "we've lost a Kate"). But even the Gap salesperson agreed that these were the pants I wanted to buy. Because they were a little tight in the dressing room meaning they'd be good once a day's wearing had been accomplished.

I was a little giddy as I checked out, but also sanguine: after all if the Gap is saying that a size 4 is a 27" waist, then it makes sense that my 28" waist would snugly fit. It's just that I don't believe the real world has the same sizing.

So across the mall to the store where my dress was being held. Part of me just wanted to buy it and flee the mall (harder than it seems, actually, as the access to the parking garage is limited to only certain floors - it took me about 10 minutes to get back to my car), but I decided to try on the dress before buying it - especially as the last time I had tried this dress on, it was a size larger and I was only guesstimating that I would need the smaller size.

And then it happened. And dear readers, I can only imagine how bored you are by now. Please forgive me. It's just that I'm continually amazed by my body's changes. It really isn't bragging, and I hope it doesn't sound like it, it's disbelief. Because even when I dreamed of what smaller me would look like, she looked bigger than I am today.

So I had a little cry in the dressing room. Because the girl in the mirror wasn't fat. Not even a little bit. The girl in the mirror was normal. The girl in the mirror could choose to stop dieting right now and it would be fine. The girl in the mirror is losing another 8-10 pounds out of vanity, not necessity. It is, without reservation, BANANAS!