5/30/12 The Post About Me Shopping for Stuff

I bought a new summer purse today.  ZB and I were in the Mart of Wals, looking for staple gun staples and a few other odds and ends, and they had this lovely little crocheted hobo purse on sale for $10. The link doesn't have the exact pattern mine does, (which is brightly colored stripes in a fun summer rainbow of colors) but you get the idea.  And since it is bigger than the first purse I bought for summer (which is bright and fun but really too small for all the stuff I carry so I'm constantly having to mash everything together to get the zipper closed), I was all, "Well you just hop right on in the buggy here, pretty little purse".

(And they say you can't find high fashion at Walmart).

Now, if I hadn't bought the new purse, I wouldn't have been going through the old purse and found my super-secret (so secret I forgot they were even there) cache of Target gift cards.And as anyone who has ever found some unexpected gift cards can tell you, they will totally burn a hole in your pocket if you do not run out and spend them toot sweet.  So off I went to Target.

I started out in the swimsuit section, because I need to revamp my swimwear selection.  See, I seem to have hit a very tricky age when it comes to swimsuits.  When I was younger and perkier, my swimsuit of choice was the bikini.  Bikinis are the official swimwear of college students.  Your thighs are firm, your metabolism is high, and you finally have enough curves to fill it out and not look like a boy.  It is a good age to wear a teeny swimsuit and feel like you can take on the world.  Good times, good times.

But then I had a child.  And when that happens, certain areas of the anatomy (and by that I mean the boobular region) became more ample and you just come to a point where you need a little more support than what a couple of strings can provide.   Besides, strings are also not the best thing for coverage when you have a one year old using your swimsuit for footholds while she scales you like Mt. Everest.  So bye bye teeny bikini.

Normally, the next stage in the life cycle of the swimsuit would be the tankini.  They offer more coverage, but they don't go so far as to be an actual one-piece suit.  And there are some really cute ones out there.  But I can't do them.  See, I have a really long (freakishly long, really) torso.  So they all hit me at a really weird place.  Like around the 5th rib kind of weird.  And whereas you can wear the tankini and look cute, I just look like I stole a shirt from a six year old.  So my only hope is to go old school pre-tankini and see if I can find something like this:

Note the underwire, generous bottom coverage and industrial strength shoulder straps.   These are our friends.

Sadly, Target was fresh out of swimsuits from the '50s, and I was feeling really bummed that despite my best efforts, my gift cards would go unspent.  However, just when things were at their darkest, a beacon of light signaled to me from the shoe department.  And I did manage to come across these little beauties who needed a good home.

These look electric blue in the picture, but they're a very nice turquoise color in real life.

The bargain gods must have felt really bad about letting me down with the swimsuits, because after cooing over these adorable turquoise shoes for a while, I checked the price and  they were on clearance for...are you ready for this? Eight dollars.  Eight American dollars.  Seems they only had a size 5.5, a 9, a 9.5 and a 10 left, and they were ready to move them along.  And while I'm not normally a shoe fanatic, I could think of at least three outfits that I could wear these darlings with, and I just happen to be a size 9, so I really couldn't in good conscience not buy these shoes.

(By the way, I tried explaining this shopping logic to Tony when I got home, but he didn't get it AT ALL.  Sigh.  Boys. What can you do?)

Anyway, to sum up: Cute shoes, cute purse, unexpected Target gift cards.  On the minus side, no swimsuit, no time machine to go back to get swimsuit, and the regrettable knowledge that my time in front of a three way mirror and fluorescent lights is not over yet.

So in the mean time, I'll be the one at the pool wearing a poncho. But I'll be doing it with some cute accessories, so hopefully you'll be so mesmerized by my summer shoe and purse awesomeness won't even notice the lack of swimsuit.

That's the plan, anyway.