Perms & Pegged Jeans

If either of those items struck a chord deep within you, then you probably were in high school/jr high in the late 80s. Those were the glory years: my thick, slightly wavy hair took to perms like a bee to honey (I could make those bangs STAND!), and my flat butt and undefined waistline were camouflaged under a big baggy sweatshirt or sweater - leaving only my chicken legs exposed in stirrup pants, or jeans that were pegged so tight that they had to be left open at the ankles to get your foot through . Ahhh. Those were the days. It's like fashion had been styled just for me. Nice high-waisted jeans, not the low-riders nowadays that are constantly falling off my "hips" and always creating the dreaded muffin-top. Oh, and the big hair that required cheap suave mousse and aqua net, not fifty bottles of different products and a $100 iron to get the waves out. The rain/mist in Seattle only made my hair curlier! Now it foils every perfect blow-out leaving my ends either flipped-up in Gidget fashion, or under, like the old Dorothy Hammel do's from third grade.

And why do I reminisce? Because my twenty-year reunion is this weekend. Whaaaa? It is truly hard to believe. I've been out of school longer than I was in it. I wasn't going to go. There's too much going on. There's too many shots to be had and moods to be dealt with. But the curiosity of it all is killing me! Old classmates are coming out of the woodwork on f.acebook. And I can't help but look. Like the toddler who's having a total melt-down in the cereal aisle at the market - you just gotta look at him, prostrate, writhing, around, beet-red, while his poor mother tries to decide whether she's going to wait it out, or throw him over her shoulder and haul his sorry-ass to the car.

But what to wear! What to wear! I'm HUGE! Well...huger than high school. I'm bloated! From the year+ of fertility meds, of course (not the lack of exercise at all). If I could just wear some leggings and a big sweatshirt, I'd be fine. But no, I need to look hot, and classy, and young (all at the same time) and find article of clothings that pawn off my thai-food-pizza-m&ms regime for tri-weekly sessions of pilates. This means a mad dash to N.ordstrom where I will attempt to find a salesperson who isn't twenty years old and who won't laugh at every outfit I try on. On a T.arget budget of course. Ideas anyone?