big girl pants

In lieu of eating at lunchtime this afternoon, I will be pantshopping.

All one word.  Pantshopping.

Shopping for pants.

I do this once every couple years.  I go out and torture myself and buy three of the first pair that doesn't make me feel lessthan.

All one word.  Lessthan.

Less than a sum of my whole.

For the last almost eleven years I've been gainfully employed in the social service field, I've defaulted to sturdy khaki pants, with a brief stint of woolen and linen trousers for the year or two I had an Office Job that didn't require field work.  Wide legged woolen trousers.  Lined.  One pair I was particularly fond of was herringbone print. Light weight linen ones.  Unlined.  I stretched them all out when I was pregnant and refused to wear maternity pants until the last trimester so they got upcycled by a friend into handbags or coffee sleeves or whatever the hell else she was inventing down there in her basement.
I'm making a return to the Non-khaki Pant.  It's time.  I will most likely find myself in a job within the next two years that requires me to dress like a grown up.  It's just so hard to find pants.  Trousers.  Slacks.

Khaki pants are easy and come in a few color choices.  Though I've vowed never to buy light khaki colored khakis ever again when I posted a picture of myself online and someone thought my (wrinkly baggy) pants were my thighs.  MY THIGHS!  Now I can't look at anyone wearing pants within four shades of their fleshtone and not think they are half naked in a bad way.  As opposed to half naked in a good way, which should never overlap with the office if you are playing your game of Professionalism correctly. 
As I get a little older and my focusing abilities are backing their way out the door, I have a hard time mentally registering people wearing flesh tones colors in public.  I assume they are naked and deranged.  Then my eyesight catches up with me and I realize they are fully clothed.  Then I think of Silence of the Lambs and skinsuits and wonder if there are any active serial killers in the area that are targeting the demographic into which I fall.

There was a murder in my neighborhood a few months ago.  Brutal and nasty with throat slashings and dog maulings and stabbing and raping and electrical cord stranglings and an attempted home explosion via leaving the gas on and everything.  A man in his seventies and a younger woman, maybe in her fifties or close to them.  Right there on 13th below the Tasker-Morris subway stop. They made it sound like it was the crime of the century and the local paper worded everything like it was a nice old Italian man and his friend/nurse/daughter who were slaughtered by a calculating killer or maybe team of killers or even maybe some sort of deranged immigrant terrorist extremist group.  It was all over the news and everyone was scared for a long time.

Turns out they caught the guy who did it right away but they didn't really report the fact they caught him.  The old man was a life long scum bag, the lady was a cracked-out probable-hooker, and the guy who did it was some sort of thug and they all knew each other and everything was open and shut before the news came out that we aren't all in danger.
I love how the news does that.  If they tell us we are safe, we will stop watching.  Then where will they be?  Out on their asses, that's where.

Asses.  Pantshopping.  Right.

I have no ass to speak of.  Most pants are cut for ladies who are blessed with some shape back there, so 75% of most pants are totally not for me unless I like looking like my drawers are drooping.  It's a bad look.  I don't like it.  It reminds me of prisoners.

I have longer legs and a lot of companies don't like to use the additional fabric to make inseams more than 30 or 31 inches without charging you an extra $20 or so.  So that sucks.  Add extra dollars for that extra fabric too.

And I need a higher rise now that I'm closer to 40 than 30 and I've had a child.

I probably shouldn't be pantshopping today since I'm due for my monthly any day now and I'm a little bit swollen around the middle and I might cry at the drop of a hat (hat sat mat bat cat.  omg I miss my cat), but I think this is exactly the time to go.  If they look half way decent today, they will look AWESOME two weeks from now.

Sometimes I have feelings, depending on the calendar.  Last month around this time I bought some new eye makeup and when the lady at the make up counter stood back and said that she "wants to take a good look and figure out what she wants to do with my eyes because they are so doe-y" I heard that she wanted "to take a good look and figure out what she can possibly do with my eyes to make them presentable because they are so doughy".
Yeah, so what if I have a few more fine lines and less tautness to my lids and undereyes these days, who is she to call me effing doughy?
Oh.  Doe-y.  As in doe-like.  Big doe-ish eyes.
When I was little, my mom used to call me Bambi eyes.

I'm going to go to Banana Republic since it's right up the street.  Ann Taylor.  And her Loft.  I've been disappointed with the Gap lately, and J Crew is made for people who aren't made like me.  I think I've aged out of Express, I wish we had a Limited here.  I think I haven't aged into Talbots yet, plus I don't own a boat or a membership to a country club.  Zara and H&M make me itch.  Esprit might not be for adults.  I'm not sure what else is out there, but I'm on a mission.  Wish me luck.