A good day shopping for jeans is better than a bad day winning the lottery

I will sleep well tonight knowing no matter how much education or testing or work experience I have, there are some things I'm just never going to learn. Tonight after work, instead of going home, walking the dog, cooking something for dinner and doing other productive things that wouldn't mess with my head I went shopping for jeans!

Could I be more stupid?

I mean, when you're not running and your body is used to running, what's the smartest thing to do? Go try on eighteen pairs of jeans in a sweaty mall, that's what! I have no idea what I was thinking. I'm feeling fat and huge and enormous and lazy and all the walking and weight lifting in the world is not making it better so why not go try to stretch the unforgiving fabric of denim over my squishier-by-the-minute waist. So. Stupid. I don't know what made me do it. Probably my bad habit of day dreaming.

I sat at work today trying to concentrate on writing a report and my mind kept drifting to my closet. What do I need? What do I want? Where did that girl at Starbucks say she bought her jeans? (Sidebar: This girl is my new BFF because she had the most fabulous outfit and she told me where everything came from and I told her about sugar-free chai. We are thisclose now.) So by the time the end of the day arrived, I was not only set on buying new jeans but I'd actually planned my route in the mall. Start here, store A, they have your favorite. If you don't find anything there, go to that other cute store B. If you still can't find anything at B, you can always go to that old stand by, store C. It was an action plan and if there's anything I find impossible to do it's fail to follow through with a plan. I had to go, the power of jeans compelled me.

I was not lying when I said I tried on eighteen pairs of jeans. Oh yes, I did. About ten of them actually fit which, in girl world, is victory enough. Then I noticed some of them were on sale. What? They fit AND a sale? It was like a little faded-blue, slightly bootcut, just-below-the-waist angel had floated right down to Park Meadows, scooped me up and took me to that little place in the sky where everything is right with the world.

So, there is a silver lining to the dark cloud of sedentary life: good luck when shopping for jeans. Am I the size I dream I could be? No. Are they as comfortable as my college jeans? Of course not. But they fit, and they were on sale and, somehow, they were the thing I needed to make me feel like I haven't gained the equivalent of a small hippopotamus in my mid-section. Thank you, fitting room angel. Thank you, luck. Thank, you sugar-free chai!