Shopping and Ballet

Not at the same time, thankfully.

I've never been a huge fan of clothes shopping. Odd, considering that I like clothes, and like to make clothes. I can spend hours in a fabric store. But rtw clothing stores just annoy the heck out of me. However, it's been (literally) a couple years since I've done any major shopping and I was down to two pairs of jeans with holes in the right knees, my black hippy pants from Belgium, the pair of Agent khakis Seth got me, and a pair of black pants I got to excersize in at BYU. Scary, isn't it. So today was the great and scary trip to the mall and after much suffering, trials, tribulations, and visiting every gosh dang store in the freaking mall, I managed to suppliment my wardrobe slightly and walked away with five pairs of pants and a really cute silvery grey poly charmeuse shirt.

I'm not kidding on visiting every store in the mall. Well, every women's clothing store at least. My complaints about ready-to-wear clothing are many, although you can't beat the convenience and cost. My number one complaint, however is sizing. At some point in history, the number used to identify a size actually meant something. Now it's an arbitrary number that the store clerks fully expect you to know how it relates to you.

I have a 29" waist, 38" hips, and a 34" inseam. These numbers have translated to everything from a size -2 (yes, size 0 was too big for me) to size 16. It's frigging rediculous! And then even if a store has a chart that translates real measurements into their sizing system, their sizes aren't always consistent within themselves! My prime example of the night, although by no means a rare case, was in the Levi Store. A big brand name like Levi should be consistent, right? And they were the only store that labelled women's pants by the inch. I thought I would find something - even if their pants do cost $70. Well I found a pair that was 29"x32" and tried them on. Too short, but the waist fit as it was supposed to. So Seth finds me a pair that's 29"x34", and while the length was right, it was a good 4" too skinny! Yes! FOUR inches too skinny when the waist was supposed to be the same! Who the heck is doing their math? It's a simple measurement of the waist! It can't be that hard to get and label correctly!

Dressy-ish slacks were the easiest to find, but jeans were a real pain. We'd almost given up for the night, but there was one store left so we decided to try it. Delia's. Bless store clerks that don't assume you know their arbitrary numbering system and who actually do their job of helping a customer. She found the right shape of pants for my figure and then pulled a couple sizes for me to try. Then because I got the last pair in the long size on the shelf, she went out hunting in the back until she found a second. Yay! They were even having a buy one, get one half off sale. ^^ So $60 for two. Go me. I ended up spending $175 total, but since I hadn't been shopping in two years, I kinda needed to.

Ok, Ballet. I'm really excited about this. This summer I'm going to start taking it from a company here in Alexandria that holds lessons at Landmark mall across the street from me. I would have liked to take ballroom lessons from the same place, but standard ballroom is a bit intimate and I wouldn't want to dance with anyone but Seth now that I'm married. ^^ Was half hoping Seth would be up for it after catching the celebrity ballroom show on the other night, but he didn't seem too enthusiastic about the idea. heh.

So ballet! It's an adult class, which is nice. I won't be there standing next to little six year olds, and it'll get me out moving and trying something new. I've been watching my weight lately, after I noticed I'd gone from a 30" waist to 32," and started eating better and stuff. Being down to 29" makes me happy. Anyways, I like dancing, and ballet is something that will be fun I think.

And it reminds me of the anime "Princess Tutu" that I watched about a year ago that was really cute. It was based off the Swan Lake ballet as well as other assorted fairy tales. Heck, maybe if I ever get good enough, I'll do a Princess Tutu costume and dance for the presentation half of a costume competition.