Tuesday, November 20, 2007

raise your hand if you want ketchup

First snow!

Always exciting--when I was in middle school and high school I had a particular friend who I would go walking with in the first snow. She had her first baby this year, has been married for just over a year and owns a home not that far from mine--we don’t really talk much any more (other than when she emails to tell me about her latest landmark achievement: buying the house, getting hitched, getting knocked up).

I had this huge grey and black sweater that I used to wear instead of a coat. It was my fathers, but it was too big for him too, so I appropriated it and wore it instead of both a jacket and mittens, since the sleeves were more than long enough to cover my hands.

My dad still has it I think. He has another one, a brown and black version, that actually fits him as well--I think they may have been gifts from an aunt of his and she got the size horribly wrong the first time around but liked the pattern and tried again.

I’m still not much for coats--I’ve actually ordered one this year, a fleece from some “mountain goods online” place, to go inside the rain shell I wore last year in place of a coat. I don’t know why I can’t seem to get it together to have an actual wardrobe--some odd combination of laziness and thrift and bucking conformity at all opportunities prevents me I guess.

I used to (and still, to some extent, continue to) have a huge problem with jeans--as in the quintessential teenage uniform, denim pants--I hated the idea that life could be so conscripted as to have that single choice: wear it with t-shirts! Wear it with sweaters, but on pain of death, wear it!

So I never did. Although honestly part of this was most likely the fact that I couldn’t afford the nice jeans, I could afford the jeans from GoodWill or Salvation Army and that was about it. So I wore khakis or skirts or fatigues or (in place of that perennial ‘80’s favorite, the stretch pant) bright red long johns. I got a great pair of tight oil-stained jeans at a local dump store (literally a thrift store at a dump where people could drop household items that might have further use) and those are the only jeans I had through much of high school and college.

As a result, I’m still not very comfortable in jeans--its amazing to me how so many people put them on to show that they are “relaxed” or “casual” for a Friday. I have two pairs: one pair tight (my “hey its almost marathon time: check me out” pants) and one pair baggy (my “fat” pants). And generally when I put them on I feel like I’m putting on a costume, my I am a normal mid 20s girl hanging out casually--see me--see? Yes I am.

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