Quite Possibly The Least Sexy I Have Ever Been

Yes. The least sexy I have ever been. Do you have any idea how unsexy that's got to be? I should have been escorted out of the grocery store. GROCERY STORE. The bar is LOW at the grocery store and yet still.

Oh, where do I even start with this one?

Okay, so. You know how I'm all going gangbusters about losing weight finally for real I swear?

(And then you know how I haven't written anything about it in a couple weeks? Because it turns out that after I lost almost 10 lbs right away EVERYTHING stopped and I'm in the No Man's Land of weight loss. More on this later.)

Today's point is that I lost my holiday weight, thank God, because I have ONE pair of jeans that fit me with my holiday weight and I hate wearing them and now they are too big. Which is good.

Except yesterday as I was trying to figure out what to wear to storytime at the library, I realized (with dismay) that they are the only jeans I have that fit super comfortably and -- more importantly -- are the only jeans I have that are clean.

Thus, the First Element contributing to my Explosion of Unsexiness: wearing giant, unflattering jeans that are a little too big.

Moving on, we have the fact that it's that time of the month. This takes any general feeling of unsexy I may have had and multiplies it by about nine hundred thousand million. Especially because, whatever, I wear underpants I don't really care about and that aren't attractive.

And that don't, it turns out, fit.

But in this case, it's not that the underpants don't fit because they're too big. They are too small for my achey, bloaty body.

The Second Element in the Explosion of Unsexiness: wearing giant, unflattering underwears that are a little too small.

In this get-up, I go to the library with Eve, and then make the disastrous decision of going to the grocery store.

Let me just say that most things about being a mom are still completely puzzling to me. I see parents all the time who have the exact same carrier/carseat that we have who manage to set the seat in shopping carts as though they were designed with this use in mind. And yet 9 out of 10 times that I try to "pop" the seat in the front of the cart, it doesn't fit even a little, and I'm left standing at the cart, in the parking lot, balancing an ever-increasingly heavy baby and carrier, trying to figure out what the hell is wrong with me. It's mortifying.

I gave up trying this entirely for a while. I either just popped the carrier into the stroller and then had to buy less (as much as I could fit in a shopping basket) or use the built-in baby seat they have on the carts at Whole Foods. But all my shopping needs are not met at Whole Foods.

Last week I decided to attempt the carrier-in-cart again at Safeway and it fit perfectly and I had no idea why. But you can bet your ass that I sashayed around the store like a smug know-it-all mom.

Yesterday, I assumed I'd have no problem again -- HAHA -- and that is why I ended up lumbering around the Safeway parking lot for 20 minutes, carrying Eve in her 800-lb carrier, trying to find another magic cart that would fit her again. I tried at least 8 different carts in three different locations around the store, until I finally gave up and decided I had hallucinated my entire smug shopping trip from the week before and reverted to using the goddamned stroller.

Except I had a week's worth of shopping to do.

So now, I am frustrated and sweaty and exhausted at the start of my shopping expedition. That's Element Three of the Explosion of Unsexiness.

About 30 minutes of aimless grocery shopping go by. I try to pick up only the "necessities" for the week, as determined by what will fit in the handheld basket. Eventually the basket gets way heavy and I decide to balance it on the top of the stroller's handle bar. Now I'm no longer walking like a lopsided caveman dragging a giant stone up a hill, but I do still have to keep one hand on the heavy and unsecured basket. This also means I can no longer see Eve in the stroller below, and she cannot see me.

This makes Eve a little uncomfortable, so I periodically have to make soothing sounds, which -- I can't help it -- tend to be very sing-song-y.

And now the stage is set.

Imagine, if you will:

I am heading, finally, tragically, defeatedly, from the produce aisle toward the check-out. My basket is balanced precariously on the stroller, overflowing with "a week"'s worth of groceries for the family. As I scootch along slowly, SINGING inane baby songs, I realize that my jeans are kind of sliding off.

Yes, off.

I have to hold the basket AND stroller with one hand, careful not to let any of the oh-so-delicately balanced food items fall onto my infant or crash onto the store floor while CASUALLY reaching down to grab the waistline of my jeans so that I don't moon all of Safeway.

THEN? At the EXACT SAME TIME -- I AM NOT EVEN KIDDING A LITTLE BIT -- I feel my too-small underwear gently rolling downward.

Rolling. Literally rolling. Roll. Ing. The elastic has given up on my mighty belly, and is rolling down...down...down...

Down until the "waistline" of my underwear is now actually lower than my crotch.

And the crotch? Is only being held in place by my jeans. Which, as you may recall from like 4 lines ago, are sliding off of me.

And while I'm still SINGING to my child, I realize: my one hand desperately clinging to my jeans' waistline is all that separates me from being a crazy woman blogging this story and the crazy mother who flashed Napa her cooch WHILE SHE HAD HER PERIOD.

(You wouldn't even believe me if I told you that I made it to the check-out and yet had to stand there forEVER while the couple in front of me accidentally broke a beer bottle and then everything came to a standstill so I couldn't even put my basket on the conveyer belt -- to allow myself the two-handed underpant-hoisting I needed -- for several loooooong minutes. But it's totally true.)

Frankly, I don't know one recovers from this unsexifying experience.

Do you? Like, ever?