The Exchange

My mom always tries hard to get Ken and I nice gifts for Christmas.  In fact, her packages are often the only ones we open on Christmas morning.  Ken and I don't buy each other Christmas gifts, or if we do we don't wrap them up all pretty like my mom does.  We  don't exchange gifts with friends or other family either, with the exception of a World Vision gift exchange with a few special people.  So my mom, a Bat Mitzvah-ed Jewish lady, is our Santa Claus.

I have exchanged 99% of all the gifts my mom has ever chosen for me, mainly because she tries to buy me items of fashion without a grasp of my personal style.  For many years, it became a joke among my friends that my mom would always buy me a pink sweater, because she really likes it when I wear pink.  Every pink sweater was traded in for another colour.  Eventually she gave up on pink, but she's still not hitting much closer to the target.

The current problem is that my mom loves "feminine" clothes, which to her means things that are frilly, lacy, pleated, and pouffy.  She gravitates towards styles that would complement a rounded figure.  I am not rounded.  I am a skinny thinnifer made mainly of planes and bones.  My mom picks out sweaters and blouses that I would be happy to wear if I had an ample bosom.  My bosom, while quite satisfactory to me, is decidedly not ample.  Madonna circa 1986 would have looked great in the little top my mother picked out for me.  I didn't even bother to try it on.

Off I went to The Bay to play the exchange game.  I also had Ken's gift sweater with me.  He can't be bothered to browse, so every year he lets me take back his sweater and put it towards something for myself.  It's his little Christmas gift to me.

The Bay carries all the top designer clothing lines.  I spent over an hour wandering through the vast ladies' wear department searching for decent, attractive clothes.  I tell you, there were moments when I almost gave up all hope in that wasteland of expensive garments.

Here are a few of the reasons why none of the clothes appealed to me:

• Lack of colour.  Grey, black, and purple are trendy at the moment, as I'm sure you've noticed.  95% of all the clothes in the store were grey, black and purple.  Now, I like these colours as much as anyone, but my wardrobe has enough of each.  I don't want to wear variations on the same outfit every day.  Would it kill the designers to add a little variety?
• Sizing.  I am 5'4", right on the dividing line between normal clothes and petites.  (Contrary to the popular use of the word "petite" to mean frail and delicate, in the clothing industry "petite" just means short.  You can be size 16 petite no problem.)  You would think this would open up both types of clothing to me, but sometimes neither is right.  I tried on petite shirts whose cuffs did not cover my wrists.  The normal shirts' cuffs hung past my knuckles.  *sigh*
• Extremes.  The clothing was either crazy-trendy or boring as paste.  Very little middle ground there.

I did finally pick out a stylish, serviceable cardigan that will do nicely for work, and a pair of flattering, boot-cut jeans.  The jeans are "distressed", which means that someone in a sweatshop attacked the right thigh and the back pockets with sandpaper.  I think it looks a bit stupid, but it is the trend (I could not find a non-distressed pair of jeans in the stack), and they are otherwise so slammin' hot that I will agree to overlook it.  Not to mention that they are super-comfy.  All in all, although I had to put in some sweat equity, my Christmas gifts turned out well.  Thanks mom!