Thursday, July 06, 2006

I hate shopping for clothes

Does anyone else hate shopping for clothes?

Okay, maybe not your prima-donna types that are the perfect size, shape and height or skinnier. You people disgust me. And the anorexics that think they are beautiful…you literally disgust me to the point of wanting to puke.

There’s nothing worse looking to me than some bulimic-looking persona (mainly females). It’s disgusting not to mention I can’t even fantasize about grabbing your ass because you literally don’t have one.

Anyway, back to my hating shopping.

I must say that I’m not a person that’s caught up on how I look or the size of my gut (you wouldn’t get that from my previous paragraphs, would you?). I am married and happily so. I’m in a comfort zone as a psychologist might say. I’ve been comfortable for some time…too comfortable the Surgeon General might say. I like comfortable feeling/fitting clothing. I don’t like to tuck in and as much as possible I avoid dressing up – my definition is anything above and including khakis and a polo-type shirt – which is mainly reserved for going to work. Speaking of work, I’ve had the same 7 (yes, 7) polo-type shirts for the past seven years – no, that’s not one shirt worn per year although I wouldn’t be against that! LOL! Anyhow, they’ve gotten to the point where the collars are no longer stiff and it seems like I have ring-around-the-collar before I put the shirt back on even after getting it out of the laundry. So, it’s been time for new shirts for some time. I did break down and buy new pants (6 pairs total over the 7 years) although I don’t particularly like them. I think it’s more that I don’t make them look good than they don’t make me look good. Ha!

So, I went to Wal-Mart two days ago to go shopping for new clothes for the wife and myself. I’m more secondary on the need for purchasing as you can obviously tell by how often I update the wardrobe but if I found something I really liked and felt good on, I’d buy it. Speaking like that makes me sound so…womanly…so…gay. I was in dire need of t-shirts. All my t-shirts are just as old and probably ragged because I used them often to play tennis, bum around the house, play hockey and anything else you can think of. Also, my kids like to wear my t-shirts to bed or around the house and they tend to drop juice drinks, food, or whatever on them which means that they are no longer wearable at informal gatherings such as lunch, brunch, or just hanging in public. Even I know when embarrassing is embarrassing. My wife needs clothes for teaching and since she’s the more respectable of us two, she deserves the newer clothing more than I even though I work five days a week whereas she may work in the “public eye” eight hours max a week.

Anyhow, we went to a Wal-Mart in Bedford, Texas which is about 20 minutes away from Dallas because the Wal-Marts that are close to us are shitty. Nothing against other diversities, but one Wal-Mart is in the “hood”. It’s dirty like the floors are nasty and the atmosphere is like you could get mugged IN the store at any time. It’s demographic is in the lower income bracket of Blacks, Hispanics and the Middle-Eastern types. Basically, ethnicities that are looking to get things very, very cheap if not free. They’ll bitch and complain about a pair of tennis shoes being $12.99 even though they could go to Target or the like and pay ten dollars more. The point is, is that the clothing is not as nice as at the Bedford Wal-Mart because even Wal-Mart will stock their shelves with items based on the demographic the store was built in.

So, the Bedford Wal-Mart had some pretty decent men’s clothes. I liked a few dress shirts they had. They have a label called “George” which isn’t too shabby. Hell, you can buy a short-sleeve button dress shirt for $10-$12 with similar quality as you would buy one at Dillard’s for $24.99 and above. I’m a believer in that it’s not the equipment that makes a person better; it’s the skills that person has to make even the “cheapest” equipment perform at the same level or better of more expensive equipment.

Did that quote have anything to do with this post? I’m not sure.

Anyways, to the point of hating shopping for clothes. I took a few of these short-sleeve button and some polo-type shirts to try them on. I picked large which is 42-44 in the chest. I tried them on in the dressing room by myself (meaning not coming out to show the wife) and they all seemed to fit fine. I met up with the wife later and she saw some other “higher” quality shirts—the George label—and wanted me to try them on instead. Of course, she thought I need the extra large which is 46-48 in the chest. WTF? I got broad shoulders, as my mom used to always tell me. It’s a pity the belly has gotten as broad as the shoulders. I tried them on over my t-shirt I was wearing and that’s what made her think I needed the XL. I told her the L was fine because the t-shirt was making it seem tighter than it was. I mean I wasn’t bulging in places that I shouldn’t have. It was just tight in the shoulder/arm pit area. I decided I’d go with the XL and return them if once I got home and they were too big.

The kicker is the pants. If there was any thing that could knock me off of my ego at cloud nine, it would be to try on pants. To grab a pair of pants in a size that you hope you haven’t reached but know you haven’t gotten above and find out that you can fit them but they are a tad too tight, is really disheartening. Who would have thought it would be hard to fit all 100% of my manliness (translated as spare tire) into a 38-inch waist. It is at moments like this that I feel my womanhood come out and I uncontrollably begin to wail, “Why!? Why!? Why!?” like Nancy Kerrigan did when she was clubbed on the knee.

Needless to say, I bought the shirts and vowed then and there that I would change my lifestyle and lose the “few” extra pounds that I have gained in the past 10+ years. To seal the deal, as I drove home, I reached into a bag in between the driver and passenger seats which contained my Sonic Burger #1 and wolfed it down in my agony. Okay, not so much agony as it was starvation.

I got home and in one of my moments of deep thought (usually occurs while I’m peeing for some reason) I decided that the first step is to change my schedule of when I do things before I go to work and when I get home. I’m always so tired that I have trouble getting up in the morning but that’s because I go to bed around 11pm or later each night. I’ve decided I’ll try to get up at 6am and ride my bike or lift some weights in my garage before 7am because that’s when my wife goes on her walk with her mother. Somebody has to stay home to watch the kids. We did think about taking the kids with us but I’m not sure if they’ll be up to doing something that early in the morning. They said they’d be excited but they didn’t wake up to do so this morning, neither did I.

So, we’ll see how things go. I can talk the talk but can I walk the walk? That’s left to be seen.

To be continued....maybe.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I quite enjoy reading your ramblings =)