confession 3: i got jeggings.

i have long believed that leggings and tights cannot pass as pants, and recently, they've been masquerading as such. every time i interact with someone who is wearing them, especially tights, with a regular shirt, the following conversation plays through my mind:

"oh, hi, there you are. oh, and there's your labia. glad the three of us are meeting here as equals."

imagine my dismay when i went shopping yesterday and came home with my very own pair of jeggings, which are ridiculous for the aforementioned reasons AND have a silly name. they were on sale, though, and i couldn't help noticing that they had an elastic waistband. (don't worry--i bought a ball-gown length shirt to go with them, too.)

i am a hypocrite. i wore them all day long, and now i'm looking for a long enough shirt to justify wearing them tomorrow, too. if you see me strutting around wearing jeggings and a nightgown this weekend, that'll be your clue that i've finally got it all figured out.

confession 2: let it go

beauty, that is. i am in the process of completely letting myself go. i am actually terrified of what i will look like in 5 years, but that's somehow still not motivating me to try very hard. in the past month, i have stopped wearing makeup altogether, leading well-intentioned friends and coworkers to ask about my health. i haven't had a haircut since last june. i painted my toenails this week for the first time in three months. i think i've been to the gym twice since the school year started. i still do the basics, like bathing and brushing my teeth, but forget about shaving my legs. sometimes, i'm even too lazy to brush my hair.

i used to pride myself on having the confidence and depth of character to not worry about shallow things like my appearance. "natural beauty" was a kind of moral high ground. let's face it, though: i'm too old for that sh!t now.

this is all on my mind because, come saturday, i will be visiting a wedding dress boutique with my sister, and i'm worried that:

a) someone will think i'm the bride's grandmother

b) someone will think i'm the groom

c) the snooty ladies will refuse to let me in the store, a la pretty woman

d) all of the above

D. the answer is obviously D! i am really going to have to repress my miss congeniality/mama june/homer simpson personality in order to survive in this setting. i don't have any deep thoughts or life philosophy born out of this dilemma; i'm just rushing to do what i can to appear both female and younger than 80 for an hour-and-a-half window on saturday (moustache waxed, spanx located, etc.).

i really feel like i can pull this off. i HAVE been to bridal shops before. i'm not the one who will be trying on dresses. hopefully they will feed me champagne like in the movies.  surely someone will remind me to put lipstick on.

until saturday afternoon, though, i won't be able to shake the scene that keeps playing in my head: we walk into the bridal shop- sister 1, the bride, looks like carrie bradshaw. sister 2 looks like a homecoming queen. i walk in behind them, radiant with sweat/face grease/allergies. the snooty lady behind the counter picks up a lace-covered walkie-talkie. "hello, security?" she shrieks, her face panicked but still pinched. "the zombie apocalypse has started. yes. yes. YES, DAMMIT, I'M SURE. she has purple circles around her eyes, her hair is matted together, and i can see her leg hair through her sweatpants. get down here fast before she bites someone! and bring your gun!!"

at that point, folks, the security guard will likely be faster than i am, so it's been real. if i make it out, it might be time for an intervention.

confession 1 (for real): the big one

my first confession is by far the worst one. it caused me the most pain in my childhood, and it's time for it to just come out: i stole.

    

it really wasn't on purpose. it was a misunderstanding. i was just holding it for a friend...i have all of these classic excuses lined up, yet no one has ever heard my shameful story. here goes...

as a kindergartner, i, like many children, enjoyed the daily routine of going to centers: the home center, the listening center, the puzzle center, etc. one of my personal favorites was the math center, not because i liked math, (i have sided with the female stereotype and opted to despise math for my entire life.) but because of the tiny, colorful blocks called "unifix cubes" that we got to play with.

remember these???

   

i never did any math with them, but we built some magnificently long chains of them winding through our kindergarten classroom. after one such afternoon of chain-building, the teachers called for us to clean up our centers and get back to our seats. another thing compassionate readers should know is that i have a crippling fear of being reprimanded. we cleaned up our chain almost instantaneously, motivated by the terror that goes with "getting your name on the board." i was on my way back to my seat when, much to my dismay, i saw two lonely unifix cubes sitting off to the side, far from their rightful bucket home. panicked by the thought of my teacher noticing that we had left anything behind, i picked up the cubes, one blue and one orange. i put them in my pocket with the intention of returning them to the bucket later, when no one was looking, because god forbid anyone thought i had stolen them. that was my actual thought process.

side note: then and now, practical people everywhere might second-guess my mom's decision to dress a five-year-old in guess jeans. my theory is that she was suffering from that beautiful feeling where a young person feels like they have money for the first time. it's the same phenomenon that allowed me to feel okay about paying full price for target shoes back in 2007 ($24.99, y'all). whatever the case, i have to say that those guess jeans served me well back in kindergarten. too well...maybe better than regular jeans from k-mart would have...because i got home from school that day, reached into my pocket, and pulled out two unifix cubes, one blue and one orange.

imagine the abject terror that i, the child who was afraid of what would happen if all of the cubes weren't picked up, felt when i realized that those cubes had made it all the way home. my heart is racing right now just thinking about it. the back of my neck is sweating. i am 100% telling the truth. and since i was apparently raised to believe that making any mistake could get you scorned, smacked, or both, i chose the safest route: dishonesty and deception. 

instead of telling my mom that i had accidentally taken them, instead of sneaking them back into the bucket the next day, instead of throwing them into the garbage and forgetting about them, i hid those two unifix cubes in my closet. FOR THE NEXT FIVE YEARS. thoughts of my secret being found out consumed me. my most vivid daydreams included my mom finding the cubes, by then stashed safely in an old backpack, and/or my old kindergarten teachers realizing that the two cubes were missing and hunting me down. i don't want to be dramatic, but i'm pretty sure my accidental theft of those two unifix cubes destroyed my childhood. consumed by feelings of guilt, i withdrew into books and avoided forging new human friendships. instead of playing outside with the neighborhood children, i would stand inside that closet of my deepest shame and reach into the front pouch of that retired backpack, checking to see that my secret was still safe.

my most recent memory of panicking over my criminal past was when i was in fourth grade. i don't remember details; i just remember that that was how long it took for the guilt to subside. one day, i guess, i just decided that i was a bad-ass and didn't need to worry about it anymore. thank god for that delusion of grandeur because i really do have the kind of personality that could still be beating myself up for that one. 

there you have it: my darkest secret, which has never been shared with another living soul. as i come out of my very literal closet, i thank anyone who has heard my confession in it's entirety and still feels like they could be friends with me in spite of my cheapening the mathematical education of the thousands of kindergartners who came after me. peace be with you.

confessions: part 1

i have something to get off my chest. well, 40 things. you see, as recently as last november, i was reminded of the facebook tradition of posting something you are thankful for every day for THE ENTIRE MONTH OF NOVEMBER. as i read the posts of my morally superior friends, i decided two things: 1. i will never be warm-hearted and gracious enough to think of 30 things i'm thankful for. 2. what i CAN do, and i think it's in the same vein, is think of 40 confessions during this season of lent. that's the same, right?

admittedly, i am a little behind thanks to family hospitalizations and run-of-the-mill job loathing, but i solemnly swear to catch up. if you care to come with me of this journey of self-disclosure and absolution, welcome. if you think i'm tastelessly offensive in my mocking of the purer souls who mustered up the energy to give thanks when i point-blank refused to do so, you are probably right, but you also probably don't know me very well. i am only doing this because of a concept i learned about in an interpersonal communication class in college: when one person shares personal information, the other person feels obligated to match that with the sharing of equally personal information. so basically, you are all welcome in advance for the sensitive material i am about to reveal, and also, i win...because i promise that each of these forty lenten confessions will be more personal and embarrassing than those facebook posts about being thankful for low-carb tortillas and sunshine.