whilst shopping for pantalones...

OR a rollercoaster of emotions at the outlet mall OR too big for my britches.

on the way home from a weekend out of town, i convinced john insisted that we stop at the outlet mall. i have been parading around town in work pants that are at least 2 sizes too big, and i have needed to purchase a few new pairs for quite some time now. john was less than thrilled about the detour, but i promised him he could buy a few t-shirts, which seemed to appease him momentarily.

first, i went to the gap. the last time i went shopping at the gap, they had a bunch of rows of pants. it was like size 0 (short, regular and tall), size 2 (S, R, T) and so on and so forth until my size. apparently now, there are many more options. there is the hadley, the harper and the audrey. i have never been a fan of naming pants after people as it tends to both annoy me and complicate further the process of purchasing pants. each style of these pants was off in some way because the design concept was for a very exaggerated body type. the curvy style (which should have been up my alley) had an excess amount of fabric in the hip area. and i have never been known to not fill out the hips portion of a pair of pants. it was a little outrageous. the straight-no hip version was obviously not going to work for me, and the somewhere-in-between harper's (or were they hadley's?) were very awkwardly fitting in the waist. after 40 minutes of trying on approximately 20 pairs of pants, i gave up.

i moved on to ann taylor. ohhh, ann taylor, you devil woman! with your rows and rows of spring fashions and your shiny, glittery accessories and your camisoles and cardigans and skirts and pants, i can't decide where to begin. i grabbed some pants that looked promising and was helped to the dressing room by an attractive girl wearing a party dress and army boots. because they go together very well in magazines like vogue and on the runway, i am told. i had a renewed sense of optimism. after trying on 10 pairs of pants, i realized that in petite sizes, i am one size, regular sizes i am THREE sizes smaller, and in particular styles, the sizes fluctuate within that range. i would try on one pair, and REJOICE! all is right with the world... it's like 2009 up in the dressing room, and i emerged to flaunt it down the dressing room hallway to the three-way mirror, priding myself on fitting back into a pre-pregnancy pants size. moments later, i was deflated when i switched to a different style and realized i'm now three sizes larger and back to the size i wore when i returned to work 2 1/2 months after giving birth. ANN TAYLOR, I CAN'T RIDE THIS ROLLERCOASTER OF EMOTIONS WITH YOU! not unless you're going to start serving hard alcohol at the outlet mall. i'm up, i'm down, i'm skinny, i'm fat, i'm elated, i'm going to slit my wrists. can we just stick with a style and a size? is that so much to ask? it's not really the number, but the uncertainty of it all, and after a time, i became so disgusted that i handed the whole pile to army boots, settled on a nice cardigan and a couple work blouses and called it a day. (john, who had been waiting in the car reading ernest hemingway for the entirety of this jaunt into PANTS PURCHASING HELL, was noticeably unenthused that i didn't even buy one. single. pair. of. pants.)

to whom it may concern in the fashion industry:

can we just get a nice store with a bunch of nice pants that fit normal sized people? just rows and rows and rows of pants. they don't have to have fancy names or distinct personalities. they just have to be... pants.

yours most sincerely,
me.