Monday

August New Year’s

      School’s started, new church activities, new friends and opportunities. It seems like this time of year is more like Spring than Spring, and more like the New Year than New Year’s!. For those of us with kids or around kids, I think this has always seemed like the New Year. I find myself wanting new school supplies and new clothes, and it’s been ummm… a ‘while’ since I was in school or had a child in school.

     Does every state have a weekend or more a year where there is no tax on school supplies and clothing? Ours was this weekend, and I got a pair of jeans and a new shirt, plus some pens, markers and a notebook. I’m ready just in case I find a class I can take. I’m taking a free Spanish course online…does that count? I really needed new jeans for that.

     As usual, the clothing I tried on was made much smaller than last year. I don’t know what it is, that every year the sizes shrink. Five years ago I was a size 7 or 8 jeans, or a size 29 in guys. The pants have gotten so small I’m now a size 12 or 13. I took a size 11 in juniors with me, and did get them on…well, they were stuck around my knees, and even hopping up and down tugging on them didn’t make them budge. I kind of fell against the dressing room door while hopping around, and scared the daylights out of the people waiting, good thing it had an actual door and not those curtains a lot of them have, or I would have come through the curtains and ended up on top of one of the ladies from the senior citizen group that had come in on a bus, who were all waiting to try on their beaded, glittery butterfly shirts. (54 is NOT a senior citizen, just because she belongs to the Senior Citizen Center downtown! I don’t even get a discount at McDonald’s yet.) So then, after I recovered, I did get a 12 on, but it took me a long time and I actually laid down on the bench in the dressing room while buttoning and zipping and for some reason my face turned red and I was feeling a little woozy. I may have done permanent damage to my tummy. So, anyway, I got a 14 and felt fine. I don’t want to talk about the shirts.

     Does everyone have their new #2 yellow pencils sharpened??