About Saturday (but really posted on Monday)

Of Wal-Mart and Whitney Houston

I went to Wal-Mart last night for such essentials as salad, tomatoes, soda, a can opener and hand soap. Having an all-in-one store like a Super Wal-Mart makes for some interesting combinations in the shopping basket.

Wal-Mart, past a certain time, doesn't play the canned music that they play for their daytime customers. They have a live call-in show for their overnight employees, and it, too, can be an interesting combination of light or '80s rock (Journey, for instance), followed immediately by something that gives you a headache of a different kind (i.e. Rammstein). It's just part of the late-night shopping experience that I like -- that, and the complete absence of kamikaze soccer moms with three screaming, whining kids hanging off the basket that they're wielding like it's a tank, all for the sake of making sure they get to the reduced-price Cheerios before you can even see them. Shopping during the day -- especially on the weekend -- is not shopping. It's a lesson in survival. It's a commercial-level Darwinian experience.

But last night, I was apparently there too early for the interesting music. The whole time I was there, from the salad cooler to the canned meat aisle to the beverages and all the way over to the personal care aisles .... it was the Whitney Houston Hour. Old-school Whitney. 1980s Whitney. It reminded me of elementary school, and thinking that my parents would know that I had been listening to "rock" music, because I just knew it was going to seep back out of my ears or something. I felt very rebellious listening to Whitney Houston and her contemporaries. I think I prayed about it a few times, because that's what a guilt-ridden 8-year-old prays about. I've since accumulated other, likely more important, things to pray about. But it cracked me up to see all these crusty, tough-looking overnight employees shelving cans of beans and mopping floors to the sound of Whitney Houston asking "how will I know if he really loves me ..."

Jeans, honesty and spacious fitting rooms

I had an epiphany in a fitting room. Some people get them in the shower, some while they're driving down the road ... I got mine in the fitting room at Maurices. (I need a new pair of jeans -- I have another, much-abused pair of jeans from Maurices that have lasted about a year and a half ... The bottom hem is very, very frayed and starting to come off in places ... I suspect that I have stretched them beyond their original dimensions ...)

Off the subject: Maurices has wonderfully spacious fitting rooms. It's like having, well, a room to try on clothes in. It's fabulous. I don't bruise my elbows knocking them against the two walls that are 3 feet apart, and I have little risk of ramming my head into the door when I lose my balance trying to hop around until I've squeezed myself into a piece of clothing. I appreciate things like that. I like having room to hop, flop and flail.

And as I was hopping, flopping and flailing in this very spacious fitting room Saturday, as I (barely) buttoned the button on a pair of size-10s, that triumphant little voice in my head shouted "AHA!! They fit! I fit into this pair of size-10s!"

Which was not exactly accurate. I could button the jeans. I could even (kind of) breathe in the jeans. As long as I was standing. I could not sit in the jeans and breathe at the same time. Details. But they fit! And they were on sale! (as were the jeans in next size up ... but whatever) The voice and I had an argument, and that is when I had my epiphany. When asked what size I am, I answer, instead, by telling myself the size of the clothes I'm wearing. Clever. Sneaky. And a lie, if only to myself. The voice flatters my ego -- these jeans, designed for teenagers and college students -- fit. My reason, which has supposedly been improved by a $40,000 college degree, reminded me that I am no longer a college student and am far, far past being a teenager.

Women do this all the time, though. It doesn't matter that we had to jump, jiggle, wiggle, do a little dance, lay on the bed, hold our breath, suck it in, swear off food and water for the day and pee three times before we finally got it on ... if we're able to get that last button buttoned, that zipper to the top, then that's what size we are. For that day, at least.

I sighed, folded up the pile of denim that had accumulated in my cavernous fitting room and put it all back where it belonged ... and then I left. I ate an apple after that and thought about my pilates DVD collecting dust in my apartment. Walking to the paper after that was as much of a workout as I got that day.