The dreaded dressing room.

Yesterday, in preparation for my upcoming trip to visit Heather and our vacation to Yellowstone later this month, I went clothes shopping at TJ Maxx. I have been avoiding buying any new clothes for oh, it’s gotta be over a year, now. I have a bunch of cute clothes that I long to wear, only they mysteriously shrunk in the closet. And I kept telling myself that I would NOT purchase more clothing until I could fit into the stuff I already owned. I didn’t want to – still don’t want to – be a person that had half a closet of “fat clothes” and half a closet of “skinny clothes”.

So I existed on a few pairs of jeans and a handful of shirts, and wore and washed, and re-wore and re-washed, the same five or six outfits for a long, loooooong time. To the point that Calvin was all, “Aren’t you sick of that shirt?” On the one day, recently, that I dressed up a little for work (I found a pair of dress pants I’d forgotten about, stashed waaaay back in the darkest corner of my closet), my boss and my co-workers and EVERYBODY asked, “What, do you have an interview or something?” Which made me fully understand, finally, that I really needed to just suck it up (suck it in?) and buy some new clothes, already.

Enemy in a Jar

The more I pay attention to what I shove down my grocery hole, the more surprises I get.

I’ve written before about the many challenges of eating healthy while living in the South. More specifically, the ongoing test of trying to lose weight while having who I have as my mother-in-law. She is a star pupil in the Paula Deen school of cooking and I’ve been enjoying the hell out of her food for thirteen years. It’s only been the past two I’ve been eating it on a very regular basis, and hey, what a coincidence – it’s been that exact same period of time I’ve gained forty pounds.