It wasn’t the rain-dampened dog sloshing mud on my new carpet or the trail of size 10 pine-needle-encrusted shoe prints leading to the refrigerator. It wasn’t even the freshly flowering bulbs. I knew it was spring because my favorite jeans were too tight.
My favorite Saturday-Only-Holey-Kneed-Wear-Everywhere-Except-Mass-and-Parent-Teacher-Conference-pair-of-jeans. They fit fine at Thanksgiving. And last spring and summer. Beyond that it’s a blur, but I’m pretty sure they fit last winter too, before they developed the holey knee. I do remember my husband saying, “Why don’t you just buy two more pairs exactly like those since that’s all you wear?”
Spring for me began on a Signature Saturday, waking late to the smell of turkey bacon and voices of children that don’t belong to me. I brewed coffee and settled down with the paper. It’s not hard to hog the paper when everyone else read it two hours ago. An overly energetic voice broke my serenity.
“Hey honey, I figure today I’ll run down to Lowes, exchange the shower head [my birthday present] then come home and finish scraping the wallpaper in the bathroom [my birthday wish].” Somewhere deep inside my groggy self, domestic chromosomes woke up and I heard myself say, “Great. I’ll get dressed and go with you to pick out the paint.”
“Oh I’m not going to get paint today. I’m just going to exchange the shower head then come home and finish scraping the wallpaper.”
And the bathroom would sit unfinished for another two years…and he’d pick out the wrong shower head for the second time…unless I went along to pick out what I wanted in the first place plus paint for the soon-to-be-bare walls. I logically thought all this through but said nothing. If I verbalized the obvious, it’d become a battle of wits and chromosomes and ruin the weekend. If I said nothing, my husband, being a male, would eventually come to my desired conclusion and there’d be peace and harmony in the world because whatever unfolded would be His Idea.
Half an hour later I decided breathing was a good thing and freed myself from the physical and emotional pain of my tight Formerly-Favorite-Jeans. I put on sweats and looked in the bathroom mirror. Even by Saturday standards, I looked like a blob. Who let me buy this shirt? And just how many boxes of Thin Mints did I eat this winter?
My husband walked in as I whined, “I should just stick to my uniform and forget it.”
“Your uniform?”
“My Fat Jeans and brown sweater.”
“Oh, right. You look great in that. By the way, we might as well go ahead and get the paint while we’re at Lowes. That way we can get this room finished and forget it.”
“Great idea, dear! Just let me get changed….”
Karen Rinehart is a magazine humor columnist, public speaker and the creator of The Bus Stop Mommies, a newspaper. She is also author of Invisible Underwear, Bus Stop Mommies and Other Things True To Life. You can read more of her work at karenrinehart.net. Karen lives in Concord, North Carolina with her two kids, one husband and goofball dog, where they attend St. James Catholic Church. (Well, they leave the dog at home.) She enjoys hearing from readers across the States and as far away as Australia, Japan and England.
