Getting It Off My Chest - Part I

A former co-worker of mine once said that she didn't like confrontation. I feel her pain. Confrontation for me has always been painful wether it's bad confrontation or even a good confrontation. But, after working 20 years with women, I'm slowly learning to tell people to kiss my ass. Slowly.

I'm just waiting for that right person, at the right time, to say the right thing so I can chew their ass out. To unleash 40+ years of bottled frustration, anger, irritation, you name it. I'm usually watching people from the corner of my eye as I walk through a parking lot. Just waiting for some jackass to approach me for a mugging or a purse snatching. Just waiting to use that back kick on him and send him to the hospital... and probably me off to jail.

As a woman, I've always had some difficulty finding suitable clothes that fit properly. Sure, I didn't really have that problem in my teens or early twenties. But as time creeped up on me, it became harder and harder to find a decent top or pair of jeans. Women's clothing styles are just plain horrendous. Why would any woman want to intentionally dress to look like a skank?

I know it's bad when I'm in Wal-mart and the Mylie Cyrus line of clothing actually look modest and appealing.

I now have the body of a small Michelin tire man. I'm short-waisted. That means if I were, God forbid, to ever wear a pair of "mom" jeans, that the waist would be hitting me right at about the breast line. An empire waist might work.

I try to stick to something about hip level or mid-rise on the jeans and pants and maybe even skirts. Anything higher... *sigh*

There's usually a problem with that. It seems that anything below my belly button makes me look like a plumber in training. Gut protruding over the front, but crack just looking for some daylight.

Add insult to injury. Breast cancer. A left mastectomy. A failed reconstruction attempt. One breast left. Try finding clothes for that.

Once upon a time, in a land far, far and away, I actually dressed... somewhat attractively. Then I grew to enjoy comfy clothes. And it shows.

I don't know how the very short conversation came up, but, I probably said something to my husband about nice clothes and he said that I should dress up more often.

I'm okay with that.

But at what price? What kind of clothes? How much shopping do I have to do to find modest, feminine, affordable, age-appropriate clothes for a 45 year old woman with one breast and a tire around the middle?

I set out on a mini journey Friday in hopes of finding some skirts (I'm usually in cargo shorts) and some nice tops (I usually pair those cargo shorts with a t-shirt).

I find a skirt I love and a top I sort of love, pull out the iphone, snap a picture of me in the mirror wearing it and send it off to my husband. He responds that he likes the skirt and

"I do like that style of skirt on you!

You just need to work on finding tops you are comfortable with. Comfortable with being the key word. I know you dont like going around with one boob, and flaunting it. But a few of the things you wear to "mask" that are very baggy and make you look much heavier and frumpy than you are.

Somewhere in the middle is probably about right."

Maybe it's just a poor selection of words on his part. Better would have been, "I do like that style of skirt on you! Let's spend a night at the mall and see if we can find you some pretty tops to go with it."

I bit my tongue. I failed to get it off my chest. I didn't even respond. What I would have liked to have said, was, honey, I know you like comfy clothes. I know you love those shorts with the holes in them and the tacky Hawaiian style shirts. I know how much you like to eat. But, you know, if you'd just stop eating so damn much, lose about 50 pounds and get some clothes that fit you, YOU TOO MIGHT NOT LOOK SO HEAVY AND FRUMPY.

If only it were so easy.