Cruel and Unusual Punishment

I was lucky enough to escape the house for a couple of hours, so I decided to stop by Kohl's and see if they had anything interesting. I wandered around aimlessly for a while. Well, not exactly aimlessly. I was checking out all the clearance items. I love Kohl's clearance. You can find some really good deals, if you know where to look. Any lucky me, since I worked for Kohl's for almost 4 years, I know where they tend to stash the good stuff. Helpful hint: troll the periphery. In almost every department, they will put their clearance items as far back as they can (excluding wallspace--that's prime real estate for retail), generally on an endcap. On my last visit, I found some Christmas wall art they must have found stashed in some dark recess of the backstock, for $2.00 each. During the Christmas season, they retailed for $34.99 (although you can generally get anything for 40-50% off at any given time). So now my new Christmas decorations are nestled in my garage, waiting for my second favorite season to arrive.

I went through pretty much the entire store without finding anything that struck my fancy. As I walked towards the front of the store, I passed by the swimsuit section. I must not have taken my medication, because I stopped to browse. I thought to myself, "Hmm... this is a really cute print. I've pretty much lost all of my pregnancy weight, so maybe it's time for a new swimsuit." In all fairness, I do need a new swimsuit (even though I go swimming maybe once a year). My current swimsuit I bought while I worked at Kohl's, even before I got married. Yes, that long ago. It has outlived its usefulness, but I hate swimsuit shopping, so I continue to use it, driving my husband to distraction.

So I peruse the "Juniors" section of the swimwear, because although I may be mother of three, I refuse to shop in the "old lady" section of swimwear. As much as I would like to wear a full-coverage swimsuit like they had back in the day, I have too much pride for that. So I start pulling off some two-piece suits.

You can tell that it's been a while since I've shopped for swimwear, because I figured I needed the size of swimsuit that I wear in my regular clothes. So I grab a few size 6s in several different styles & cuts and make my way to the fitting room.

I'm naively excited, because I really like the material & colors they are using these days. These swimsuits are super cute! And they I try to put the first one on.

I was fortunate enough to be facing the mirror as I began my attempt, so I got a full visual on my look of surprised horror as I squeezed my apparently-not-as-small-as-I-thought body. After I miraculously pulled it over my head and covered (part of) my torso, I had to check the tags again, thinking maybe I had grabbed a size 0 instead. No such luck. As I'm standing there with bulges and rolls of before-unnoticed fat protruding from this nicely patterned swimsuit top, I get the strange impression that I trying to wear one of Sofia's suits, all the while gasping for breath as this merciless scrap of spandex constricts my ribcage.

I glance at the matching bottoms.

There's no way.