The good news is ...

I got a job. That's right - strike up the band - I got a job. It's part time and temporary, but it's doing what I want to do, so Yippee!

Now for the bad news: I had to buy new clothes. Ugh.

I am a remedial shopper at best, hindered further by a curvy body in world designed for less lumpy shapes. To me, time spent trying on clothes feels like a time out. For the past year and a half, I've been getting away with, what I like to call "Mommy Casual," which is maybe one step above the gowns they give you to wear in the hospital. I have one pair of super-looking grey slacks that I wear to every interview and adult-type occassion, but what happens when I have to show up looking respectable two days in a row? Fortunately for me, I have a friend with a sense of style, and our kids are in school at the same time, so we took a little trip to Nordstrom.

I like Nordstrom. Sure it's overpriced, but you can walk in and say to the saleswoman, "I need something pretty," and she will take care of you. The last time I went I was looking for a dress to wear to a wedding, and the saleswoman pulled something off the rack I thought looked dreadful on the hangar - something I would never have given a second look except to wonder, who would wear that? But dutifully, I tried it on, because the woman handing it to me was not my mother, and it looked fabulous! In fact, I got many unsolicited compliments on it at the wedding.

Fast forward to my most recent trip to Nordies and the search for slacks. With the help of my friend and the solicitous sales staff, I managed to find some nice-looking - dare I say fashionable? - pants. Yippee! But there was a black cloud in my sunny sky: unsightly panty lines! Ugh.

"Have you considered a thong?" the sales woman asked. I looked to my friend. "That's all I wear," she said. "Well, ok then," I said, and we headed over to the lingerie department. We searched through the racks, and my friend held up a few pair with buttons and bows and things. "I'm thinking more Ernest Hemingway and less Jane Austen," I said. She had no idea what I was talking about, but we managed to find some minimally adorned styles to my liking. I'm used to buying my underwear in bulk, so there was a little sticker shock at the counter, but in the end, I went home happily with three sleek pairs: my thong starter set.

If all this is too much information, you may want to skip the next paragraph, in which I take my first thong out for a test drive.

The saleswoman at the lingerie counter told me I should give it at least a week, that thongs take a little getting used to, but I had no problem with them whatsoever. The thing that always bothered me about wedgies was not so much the feeling of my panties all in a bunch as the knowledge that they were forming a hideously visible bulge on my backside. No such worries with a thong! Sure it's a little weird having that narrow piece of fabric running up your butt, but it's easy enough to ignore when you think of the how nice your butt looks. The hardest part for me was keeping my own hand off my ass, as I kept wanting to run it over the smooth, unlined expanse of my new pants. That wouldn't play well in the workplace. But all in all, I'd have to say the great thing experiment was a big success.

Yippee!