This post originally appeared at The Parenting Post on July 10, 2006
This has never worked, not once. In fact, what I usually end up doing is staring at the clothing in rage as I eat ice cream with a you’re-not-the-boss-of-me expression on my face. Oh, no. Those Eddie Bauer pants were not the boss of me, which is why I had to return them for the same size I’ve been wearing since a year into my oh-so-comfortable marriage.
I love Dan, but it’s really hard to lose weight when someone is constantly telling you how hot you are. (Note to Dan: This is not an invitation for you to “help” me lose weight. Please continue telling me how attractive I am at any time you feel the need…starting…now.)
With my own clothes, it’s pretty clear that I buy the wrong size because I’m not happy with the way I am right now. I want to use them as a tool to force weight loss. It’s not even that I see my “potential.” It’s honestly more of an intense dissatisfaction with no real plan to institute change.
So I started thinking about my pants and my kids and my kids’ pants and wondering, what does this all mean? Possibly it means I am a shopping nincompoop. I hope it doesn’t mean that I will forever be planning my kids’ lives 2 stages ahead of where they are now, pushing them to grow up or change. I hope it doesn’t mean I’ll never be satisfied with who I am and with who they are at this moment in time.
Why can’t I just buy us all pants that fit?
Dan says it probably just means I am aware that children grow and I’m trying to plan for that inevitable occurrence.