Sunday, October 9, 2011

Mom jeans and the kindness of strangers


Today I was feeling pretty decent so decided to check out Old Navy’s maternity section.  I don’t typically shop at Old Navy – not for any reason other than I’ve been out of the habit of shopping at all ever since my income took a dive a couple of years ago and wasn’t really an Old Navy shopper before.  But on Googling maternity clothes Old Navy seemed to be at the top of the list, so I went. 

Boy, what a disappointment!  The maternity section of this store was just a tiny little corner – completely picked over with like four things on offer, and most of it pretty unappealing and badly made.  I’m a big fabric person and manmade fabrics just turn my stomach.  Of course shopping late on a Sunday probably wasn’t the best idea – I’m sure the section looked a lot nicer at the beginning of the weekend.  However I wasn’t there for cute clothes; I have plenty of tent-like items already that I wore in my pre-pregnancy era.  I needed just some basic things.  A decent pair of jeans, since it’s starting to get nippy around here and I can’t just wear dresses forever.  A couple of long tanks and long shirts with long sleeves as layering pieces, since the ones I have now look more like crop tops.  Luckily the first pair of maternity jeans I bought fit great other than being about six inches too long.  So I got those, two long sleeved shirts, and two tanks.  That ought to hold me for a while.  Later on I will need some warm pyjamas (I don’t know who can sleep in these little cotton tank tops in the middle of winter – brrr!), a pair of black pants, and a decent black wrap dress I can wear to sing when I get too big for any of my 40s stuff (luckily I have one 40’s wrap around black dress with sequins which I’m hoping I can wear right up to the end – apparently women in the 40s didn’t so much hang around in nightclubs when they were nine months pregnant).

When I got to the checkout counter I was shocked that the very young checkout girl asked if I was expecting, and I said yes, and she said was this my first, and I said yes, and asked if I was excited, and I said yes.  When I left she said, “congratulations!”  Now,  I don’t know if they’re trained to do this when a woman buys maternity clothes or if it was just her sunny disposition, but I loved it!  There’s something so honest about a stranger’s happiness for you.  No mixed feelings, no agenda.  Just hey, you’re a total stranger to me, I don’t know what’s going on in your life, but you’re having a baby and I’m happy for you.  Awesome.

It reminded me of the last time I was in a store and someone was nice to me.  It was shortly after my mother and I had our “break up”.  I was an emotional wreck and very raw from the experience.  I was buying a sofa at a JC Penny, and when it was time to pay with a credit card I casually mentioned that I hoped it went through because my purse had just been stolen and all my credit cards were on high alert for unusual purchases.  The sales lady took both my hands in hers, looked at me earnestly in the eye, and said something along the lines of how sorry she was for me and how things would get better for me, she promised.  I was completely taken aback, and touched.  Remember, my own mother just a week or so before had told me my purse being stolen was all my fault, that bad things don’t just happen to people, we bring them on ourselves with our thinking.  And here this complete stranger was able to muster more sympathy and love for me than my own mother.  Sigh!  I hope that lady got a raise.

When I got home I had a little burst of energy and decided to FINALLY clean my frickin’ house.  I’m no neatnik, believe me, but I notice I do feel bothered when the house isn’t clean, and feel very content and relaxed when it is.  I scrubbed the bathroom from top to bottom, unclogged the sink drain, vacuumed the whole house, and dusted everything.  The place smells of cleaners and is so shiny – and it’s such a pleasure to walk on my thin rugs and not feel little bits of stuff get caught on the bottom of my feet.  Every time I clean I think, “this is great!  I need to do this more often…” or “I need to just set a schedule so I do one thing at a time and everything just stays clean,” but none of this ever seems to happen.  Will it when I have a kid?  I sure hope so.  I will certainly be more motivated to keep the filth at bay when I have a baby shoving things into his/her mouth and crawling on the grimy floor, for sure. 

I have decided to cancel my current expensive YMCA membership and replace it with some (more) expensive prenatal yoga classes.  I miss yoga like the dickens but am afraid to take up with my old class because it’s pretty hard core and does a lot with you on your stomach or on your back lifting your legs and such, and both of these are not good for pregnancy.  I keep not going because I’m afraid I’m going to hurt one of us.  But I could really get into prenatal yoga if I felt it was safe and helping me to strengthen necessary muscles, work on breathing techniques, etc.  So there are a couple of studios nearby I’ll start checking out.  One has a course in Hypnobabies I’m very interested in, so we’ll see. 

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