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?




Comments

  1. Oh dear. I -

    No. That's all.

    OH DEAR. My sympathies.

    Also?

    hahahahahahahahahahaha

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  2. You don't recover, but the next time you feel sexy you feel extra sexy because of the contrast.

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  3. Yoga pants and alcohol. In fact, you can wear the yoga pants to the grocery store and they'll stay up while you buy the alcohol.

    Also a sling or a baby bjorn. You'll knock stuff off shelves because the baby's sticking out, but you can buy a whole bunch of stuff at once, and by the time you have to go back, they'll have forgotten you.

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  4. And here's a thought to add to what must be a litany of awful thoughts at these moments: when you wear the worst underwear you own...do you ever imagine this might be the day you have some sort of accident... not big enough to harm you horribly, but big enough to end up in an ambulance where the paramedics and/or the ER staff will most definitely remove your clothes and see the private shame known as your bad undies? Oh, what, you never thought of that? Oh. Sorry. It's a bad neighborhood, inside my head.

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  5. I have no words.

    (If you knew me then you would know how remarkable that is...truly.)

    P.S. *follow* ;)

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  6. I can't remember the last time a blog post made me laugh so hard I actually and literally cried. I am sitting here with tears streaming down my face. Oh God. Whew. Snort.

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  7. Oh. Wow. You can't make this stuff up! I mean, yeah I guess you could, but I choose to believe you DON'T. Because damn girl. You give all of us who sympathize with your moments of breezy elegance (which I submit stands as one of the best phrases EVER) and suffer from our own...well you give us a moment to not feel so alone. And yes, I have been there. But I'm still laughing.

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  8. oh, i so wish you'd been able to snap a photo of this scene...! too, too funny.

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  9. I have seen parents plop their baby's carseat in the wagon part of the shopping wagon when food shopping. Then they put all their food in the little basket (where toddlers sit) and all around the carseated baby.

    Also, what happened to you? Happened to me, but with my stockings while I was wearing a dress. To an interview. Which I walked to. In pouring rain. Yeah.

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  10. Post some pictures of your new house and neighborhood after you move, 'cause surely you're gonna move after THAT, right?

    Nah, it was just blog fodder (delicious, too funny, tragic and awful blog fodder) and you will survive!

    After all, if I can survive walking out of a public bathroom at a medieval faire while in costume, with a clean wrapped tampon poking up out of my cleavage, you can make it through this. (The backstory? It was the only place I had to put it while I was in the tiny bathroom stall and attempting to get said costume out of the way to do my lady business, then I didn't need it after all and I FORGOT to take it out of said cleavage and put it in my little waist pouch before I left the restroom. Forgot, I tell you. Who does that? Me, evidently. Sigh.)

    Thanks for sharing your pain with us all!

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  11. 2004. I lose almost 20lbs in hospital over the course of a week, and have no clothes to wear home except those I came in with (long story).

    Point is, as I rushed into a packed gas station on my way home, I too felt my now-too-big jeans making their descent, but with a credit card in one hand and set of keys in the other, I couldn't securely grasp the waistline.

    So, there they went. Not slowly, either; one minute they were holding on to my hips for dear life, the next minute they were down by my ankles.

    Causing me to fall. On my face.

    I was the lady with no pants on, with the scraped face and knees, belongings scattered about, surrounded by truckers and other assorted gas-station-type perverts who had rushed over to "assist".

    Did I mention I wasn't wearing any underwear?

    So yeah, I think you'll be fine.

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  12. Thanks for sharing you story, it was wildly entertaining.

    Go buy a new pair of sexy underwear (that fits), a flattering pair of jeans and a bottle of wine and you'll bring your sexy back. :)
    - Shannon O | Confessions of a Loving Wife

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  13. I'm so sorry that happened to you. Does it make you feel better that you've brightened everyone's lives immensely by sharing it? I laughed out loud and that's not something that normally happens in the morning.

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  14. Oh Kristy, my sympathies. I can completely relate to the whole "my carrier/car seat doesn't fit the cart like everyone else". And it has made for some awkward situations.

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  15. Lol, oh thank you so very much! I hate to take pleasure in someone else's mishap, but you write it so wonderfully that I can't help but laugh, a lot.

    I had a long, sad day at work, sat down in front of my computer oh-so-gloomily, and now I'm giggling a little insanely. I'm sure, eventually, the wounds in your psyche will heal... but in the meantime, thanks for sharing!

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  16. Thank you! I haven't laughed like this hard in a long time. I needed it.
    Sadly, though, I think it is so incredibly funny because I can totally relate. I thought only awful things like this happened to me. I love that you share your stories.
    Okay. Now I have to quit typing and massage my jaws because they're aching from laughing so much.

    P.S. What's worse is when you get your car seat *attached* to the cart. Do your shopping (a bit arrogantly), but find that when you have to remove the baby and car seat from said cart, it won't come off. What do you do?- It's not like you can finally give up and leave it. You need it to transport your child safely home. I thought I'd die.

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  17. Even less attractive? I laughed so hard while reading this that something flew out of my nose. THERE YOU HAVE IT.

    This post? Made me love you even more.

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  18. LOVE IT. Have enjoyed the same experience with the pants/underwear debacle, only was holding a baby and a coffee and had to choose - drop the baby or lose the latte?? It's a hard choice when it's early in the morning, but no one was at the park with us. No witnesses. And the fresh air down there felt great.

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  19. Oh...and I thought the worst was when you had your wisdom teeth out. That was pretty grisly but doesn't compare with this. I remember my clothes not fitting right after birthing my kids..one at a time, though. However, they are grown and gone and once again find myself over the limit. *sigh*
    I had several sets of clothes, but gave the size 8s to the GoodWill. Pretty sure those aren't going to fit for a long time.

    The baby carrier/grocery cart people must be in cahoots with those hot dog bun people and the weiner folks. Everything a little off.

    Smile...you will remember this more fondly later...much later...like when Eve gets married or has her first child.

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  20. I am crying from stiffling the laughter at my desk. You are awesome.

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  21. Oh honey (girlie hug). I'm with everyone else ... I hate to take pleasure from someones pain, but THANK YOU for the Monday morning laugh!

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  22. It's times like this when your only recourse is to break out into a rousing rendition of "I Enjoy Being a Girl!" In the middle of the grocery line. It would be awesome. :)

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  23. You totally made my day! I think all my co-workers now think I am insane though....lol

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  24. Oh My! LOL

    What about those grocery cart protectors that everyone sells now that lets your little one sit in in the cart w/o the carseat and no need for a stroller? Or how about putting Eve in a baby borjn while you shop? Then you'd still have a hand free for future pant dropping. :)

    JL

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  25. Thank you for posting this! I've had the most horrific weekend and you gave me my first genuine smile in days :)

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  26. *OMG* you are totally my blogging idol. Even though I don't want you to be because I have written you several emails and you never wrote back, but you must have a lot of fans. You are very funny and inspire me!

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  27. AWESOME, Kristy, awesome. Well done! To be a mom...it's so..."romantic." Doesn't it make you want to have another one???

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  28. I definitely thought I was the only person who couldn't manage any of the "basic" baby activities that everyone else can - well, without nearly dropping the baby and, most likely, shoplifting from safeway because it turns out those walnuts fell under her car seat and I forgot. And after the ordeal of getting her back into the, no, I'm really not going back in. So glad to meet a fellow survivor

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  29. I kept thinking you were going to run into an ex-boyfriend. In fact I was tensed up the whole time, waiting for it. So all things considered, this wasn't so bad. And we all love you even more.
    xoxo

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  30. I should not read your posts at work because everyone knows I don't laugh this hard at anything that happens around here!

    Ass cracks FTW! I love you, Kristy!

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