It happens every Christmas

Every year, once Thanksgiving is past, a strange feeling comes over me. I’m filled with a desire for knowledge, a quest to expand my horizons, a need to expand my boundaries and improve my being, body and soul.

I speak, of course, of an extreme — and uncharacteristic — interest in fashion.

Every Christmas, man. Like clockwork I know this is coming. I page through Vogue at the supermarket. I pick up In Style and consider getting a subscription. I love it when my hairdresser is late for my appointment because that means I have that much more time to page through the catalogues and magazines laying around. I start watching What Not To Wear again and wish someone would give me $5000 for a wardrobe spree, dammit. I make lists of things I want to buy at some point, like leather boots (why in the hell would I buy knee-high leather boots?).

Why does this happen? I have no idea. The catalogues? Having to go to the mall to do some shopping and actually seeing what’s out there? Anticipation of spring and wanting a new beginning? I have a closet that is not at all filled with clothes; we dumped some ridiculous quantity of clothing on Out Of The Closet when we moved from LA and I’ve never gotten around to replacing it. I have an unfortunate uniform at the moment: jeans and some kind of over-the-head top. It used to be jeans and a t-shirt, until even I got tired of the way that looked, all shapeless and asexual.

And, of course, the other moms at kindergarten and preschool are snappy dressers. (I swear, the moms are thinner, blonder, and more fashionable here than they were in LA.) I feel so out of it being such a lump. I don’t want to be the Dowdy Mom.

We’ll see if anything comes of this — I’m one of these women that says, “When I lose weight,” and considering the amount of running I’m doing, that’s not an idle proposition. And given the amount of planning that’s going into my Christmas celebrations, buying new clothes is the last thing on my list! (Buying a rotisserie pan for the prime rib was number one, but I went and got that today.)