The Dress

Recently I bought a dress from SmartBargins to wear on New Year’s. Mike’s band is playing at the Riverside and he said it would be a dressier occasion so I got this dress, but in a steel gray color. Buying clothes online is always a guessing game in terms of size, but I figured I came pretty close.

The dress was delivered yesterday and after a lengthy phone conversation with my friend Jen I tried it on. By the time I was done talking to her Mike had gotten home from work as well, so I wanted him to give his opinion.

When I tried it on I was immediately disappointed. I came out of the bathroom to show Mike.

“Oooh,” he said, looking up from the electronic components he was sorting. “I like that.”

“What?” I said. “What do you mean, you like it?”

“I like it,” he replied. “I think it looks good.”

“It makes me look fat!” I wailed. “Or, rather, it shows off the fact that I’m fat.”

“It doesn’t make you look fat,” Mike said patiently. “What makes you say you look fat in it?”

“The fact that I do,” I said grumpily. I wandered back into the bathroom to consult with the mirror. After awhile I figured out what the problem was. The dress has a ruched bodice and a floaty skirt, and on me the hem between the bodice and the skirt falls almost at the widest point of my hips. It’s like someone holding up a yardstick and saying, “Let’s measure this!” It really emphasizes the width of my hips.

I came back out of the bathroom. “I figured out what I don’t like,” I said. “This hem makes my hips look big.”

“Yeah,” Mike said, glancing up from his sorting. “That’s what I liked about it.”

My jaw dropped. “You like the fact that it makes my hips look gigantic?”

“Not gigantic,” Mike said, “but it shows them off. It shows you have curves. Like, woosh,” he said, tracing a C-shape in the air with his hand.

I’m not crazy about how I look in the dress, but I’m not going to return it since I don’t want to shop for a new one (I'm really lazy that way). The dress looks okay. Besides, the only guy there that I’ll be trying to impress will be Mike, and he seems to enjoy it. I’m just lucky that I have a husband who ignores silicone breasts and bony models, and thinks that my huge hips are a sign of sexiness.

Holding

One of my cousins recently had a baby, and to me that means one thing this holiday season - avoiding holding him.

I successfully dodged that bullet at my wedding because he was asleep, but I'm not sure if he'll sleep through all of Christmas too. I really hope he does somehow, because I really get nervous holding babies. My friend Meghan's brother once said that babies should be encased in Tupperware until they're older, and I tend to agree. I have nothing against babies - I actually enjoy them - but I'm sure that if I was ever asked to hold one, I would drop and break it immediately. They're just so small and fragile. They don't even have hard skulls! There are days I can barely navigate my own body around the environment safely, I can't imagine I'd be very successful at sheilding someone else's.

Now, normally people can understand my discomfort. They laugh, sure, but they understand that my basic feeling is one of not wanting to hurt the little guy. However, there's one person that can't understand...the mother. It doesn't matter how much I smile at the baby, or how earnestly I tell her that I'm perfectly content to sit beside my sister or mom and admire the boy, that mother can't understand why I wouldn't want to personally cradle her bundle of joy. Some people get insulted. Years after my refusal to hold her firstborn, my aunt still brought up my "fear of babies." You'd think that the fact that I willingingly cuddled and played with her kids once they were at the wiggly stage would tell her that I didn't hate them, but no.

So instead I pass trays. I hold drinks. I keep my hands busy. And I bite back jealousy whenever one of my male cousins says, "Nah, I can't hold him," and everyone laughs and says, "Ahh, he's such a guy! That's okay. Hey, Chris hasn't held the baby yet!"

Maybe I can fake a wrist injury this year. I wonder where I could get a sling in time for Christmas.

Holy shit...

This evening I was pretty ticked off. I stayed late at work, was extremely late getting home, and after a thorough perusal of the internet Mike and I were heading off to Target and Schwartz to run errands. I knew that it would probably eat up the rest of the evening since my bedtime is so early these days. I was pretty grumpy.

Then as Mike and I walked through the Target parking lot I realized that if someone had told me two years ago that I'd spend my evening running errands with a great man that I loved and who loved me just as much, I'd think that was a pretty sweet deal. That bit of perspective loosened me up and I regained my good mood by the time we were ready to leave.

When I got home I called my parents' house and talked to my dad about Christmas plans. My mom is visiting my grandparents this evening to finalize things, but it sounds like this will be the first Christmas in my lifetime that my mom's side of the family won't be getting together. It had to happen sometime, but it was weird.

The other bit of news my dad gave me was worse. My little sister is getting divorced.

It's...really weird. My baby sister is getting a divorce after just two years of marriage. I was just thinking recently about how my siblings and I were all sort of launched. Karen and I were married, Rob and I have jobs, Karen was going back to school...we all seemed so stable. And just recently I was thinking that even though Karen and her husband had gotten off to a rocky start, they seemed to really be on their feet. They seemed to be in such a promising spot.

I can't believe my baby sister is going to have an ex-husband.

So now I'm worried. I'm worried about the problems on my mom's side of the family. I'm worried that the divorce will bring back Karen's depression. I'm worried that I'm at an age where my friends will start divorcing.

I'm going to go give Mike a hug.