Well-Ordered Chaos » shopping

Travel Planning Update

Addy — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 16:25:55 +0000

Last week I wrote about my upcoming trip to France. I was going to try to prepare ahead of time, doing little bits at once, so I could avoid my usual ADD drama wherein I run around like a decapitated chicken for the last three days before I leave. I thought I was in pretty good shape.

Then, due to some inexplicable corporate reasons, my partner was informed that the entire company will be shut down for the third week in February. Everyone has to use vacation time whether they want to or not.

So, we will be going to France the week before my husband’s industry meeting, instead of the week after … instead of leaving on the 20th we’re leaving on the twelfth … and I spent Monday in hyperdrive trying to make sure I could get everything accomplished that needed to get done before we leave. I realize that having to go to Paris a week earlier than I planned is a pretty good problem to have. But I gotta ask, Universe, really? I have attention deficit disorder. I have trouble getting anywhere late. And you decide I have to be ready eight days early? Thanks for that. Thanks a lot.

Anyway, here is my list so far, with line throughs on the items that are completed:

Things to get done before France:

Set up cat-sitting

Make Dr’s appointment for scrip

Get meds

Buy small storage containers for seeds

Shop for clothing:

two more quick-dry tops (one in ivory or cream, one in green?)

two pairs travel pants WITH POCKETS (one black, one brown)

one pair of jeans?

comfortable walking shoes that aren’t too fugly

warm hat

gloves

Buy travel jewelry bag?

Have pants hemmed

Choose guide books and phrase books

Practice French

Find reading material for plane

Clean house

Pack

Check CQ(OL)ZBOS* and top off any liquids

Sell all that stuff on Craigslist I was supposed to deal with in November

The first thing that occurs to me is that the Craigslist items are just going to have to wait. There’s no way I can deal with posting an ad and dealing with Craigslist flakiness while I’m trying to do everything else. So that one is off my list.

My cat sitter was able to change her dates, and I was able to get an appointment to see my doctor. I’ve ordered the shoes, hat, and gloves, officially with plenty of time for them to get here before I leave. We’ll see about that.

The seed storage container is for an art project (long story) for which I needed to sort some rainbow corn according to color. I don’t want to undo all that sorting, so the corn has been sitting on my studio table for … let’s see, two months now. If I get a place to put it I can finally clean up my studio. I can combine that errand, along with finding a pair of jeans, with my doctor’s appointment next Tuesday. Once that’s done I’ll be able to fill my prescription, and hopefully by that point I’ll be able to focus on getting myself ready to leave by Friday morning.

Wish me luck.

Stupid pants.

Addy — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 16:00:18 +0000

I’ve been hanging out on the Women with ADHD Ning, and recently one of the members mentioned that she’d never really fit in with “the girls”. Several more of members chimed in about how they’d never felt “feminine”. It seems that a lot of women with ADD are just no good with the girly stuff.

It’s not surprising, really. A femme has to be organized. She needs to get her hair cut regularly, and she needs to leave time to style it every morning, and then she needs to do her make-up. She needs to shop for coordinated, fashionable, flattering outfits, which can mean buying more bras than I’ve ever seen in one place to go with different necklines and silhouettes. Then she has to get up in the morning early enough to put all of this together. If you have ADD, you’re lucky to be heading off to work with matching shoes. We need to keep it simple just to stay sane.

For instance, take my wardrobe (please!). Clothes are one of the areas of my life that I streamline for time-management purposes. I don’t spend a ton of time shopping or dressing. To this end, my couture consists of five t-shirts and a single pair of jeans that are all way too big. But what the heck, I have a belt, which means my pants stay up. It’s all good.

Most of the time, this works pretty well for me … except that I’m going to France next month, and people there dress up a little more, and I don’t want to stick out like the Ugly American. On a more practical level, I need some clothes that dry quickly, and my giant pair of jeans is not that.

And that means it’s time to shop for Pants. The dreaded, dreaded pants.

Allow me to digress into an anecdote. I used to work for a major outdoor retailer. Many of the women who shopped with us were marathoners, triathletes, and century cyclists. What I’m getting at here is that they are not your stereotypical chubby Americans. They are not marshmallows. They are athletes in prime physical condition.

And yet, every single woman who shopped at the store where I worked would come out of the dressing room with a dozen pairs of pants. “I’m really sorry”, she’d say as she handed them to me. “I don’t want to make you restock all these, it’s just that none of them fit. I’m sorry. I must be a mutant or something”.

At the time, I was a good sixty pounds overweight, and pants shopping was a nightmare. I assumed that it was because I was fat; for some reason, a lot of stores — my employer included — seem to assume that fat people don’t exercise or go outdoors. By their standards, I was the mutant. Right?

But if that were true, why were all these fit, athletic women struggling to fit into pants?

The answer is that Pants are Evil.

Pants, you see, don’t fit any woman, at all ever. At least, not until her spirit has been broken by trying on the 30th pair in four hours, and even then, only if she’s lucky. It has nothing to do with how fat or thin a woman is. It has to do with the fact that she’s a woman who dares to shop for Pants.

Back then, I was a size 20. When I started working at that store, nothing we sold off the rack fit me (I had to go to the website for extended sizes, and even then it was a maybe). Shopping for pants was a miserable, horrible experience that made me feel like a short, fat blob of blobbiness. I was sure that if I could get into shape, lose some weight, everything would be different.

Now that I’ve gotten into shape, shopping for pants is a miserable, horrible experience that makes me feel like a short, fat blob of blobbiness. I’m a size 8, or 10, or 12, depending on who’s asking. There’s actually one retailer’s size chart where I’m an 8 in the hips, a 10 in the waist, and a 12 in the bust — except of course that size 12 shirts haven’t fit me in six months. Except that one time, when it did. And I recently had to return a size 8 I ordered because it was too big. Of course, it should go without saying that whatever pants I get are 5 inches too long.

Talking to those athletic women who came out of our fitting rooms with armsfull of pants should’ve given me a clue.

Now that I’m an athletic woman myself, I have ordered pants from a travel website in size range of 6 to 10. I will try them on in the comfort of my own home to prevent a destructive pants-induced public rampage. And I will pray to the God* of Pants that at least one of them fits.

*No, there is not a Goddess of Pants … a female deity would never, EVER do this to us. ever.

How to Avoid Shopping Overwhelm

Addy — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 22:36:05 +0000

I’ll give you a hint: make someone else do the work

I detest shopping. I especially detest shopping in malls. They seem deliberately designed to be mazes, made all the more confusing by the fact that each one of them, nationwide, has all the same stores only in different configurations. I actually have a recurring nightmare in which I am trapped in a mall, unable to find the exit.

When I finally find the store I’m looking for, it’s no better. I get overwhelmed by hundreds of product options, narrowing those down to something I don’t hate, finding something in my size, and then finding something at actually fits.*

So I was not looking forward to shopping for bras last night. And yet, it had to be done. I haven’t been fitted properly since high school, and my size has fluctuated quite a bit since then; for several years I think I was wearing the right size, but it was probably a fluke, and I’ve lost weight since that time. The last time I bought bras was at TJ Maxx about a month ago, and they do not fit well at all. I decided I needed professional help.

Most of the women I know, whether or not they can afford to shop at Nordstrom for anything else, have told me that it’s THE place to get fitted for bras. And so I gritted my teeth and headed to Nordstrom …

… and had a surprisingly stress-free experience. I found someone to help me, she took me into the dressing room, and measured me. Turns out my band size was one size smaller than I thought, but my cup size isn’t, hence my ill-fitting bras. She asked me what sorts of bras I needed — every day wear, fashion colors, evening wear — and then went and got me some. She explained how they’re supposed to fit and how to tell if they don’t. Based on how those worked out, she went and got me a few others.

All I had to do was stay in the fitting room and try things on. I didn’t have to bump into other customers, I didn’t have to sort through racks of bras trying to find the numbers and letters that correspond to my size, I didn’t have to wander the department to find what I was looking for. Granted, I still got sick of bras after awhile, and it was still shopping so it still sucked. But it was the least stressful clothes shopping experience I have ever had.

*If you’re a guy, you’ll just have to trust me that these ARE NEVER THE SAME THING.