I am going through an unusual shallow phase. I think I short circuited my brain a little bit at the march against gun violence on 3/24. Plus, the past 3 weeks of holy morals I was flying have been a bit exhausting – not because it’s hard to maintain morals but it’s hard to be so stuck to them when so many people around me are not. And, those types of people make fun of me for having them…an experience I completely skipped over in high school so bullying is a little more Alien to me than you might think. Don’t get me wrong….there was a huge fat shaming period in my junior high days. Fat bullying follows me everywhere but I haven’t ever really been bullied for who I am on the inside so I don’t know how to deal with that….even at 43 – an age when if i had kids I would be teaching them how to handle it. Lucky for the kids I don’t have.

I have been obsessed with the dumbest podcast ever. I am listening to all episodes of “Straight Up With Stassi” from an equally vapid tv show I love, VanderPump Rules. I think it’s like this….I am the deepest mofo you know so I need to have an upside down world that runs sky high the other direction to balance me out. Bravo reality tv provides that balance. In fact, it’s the only reason I haven’t yet canceled my cable tv. You can’t see current season on any of the streaming apps.

This podcast actually can be very funny. And I hear a lot about clothes, skin care products, beauty issues, etc. I check out so many of the products and clothing websites she recommends even though they are recommendations from 2 years ago as I am only to spring of 2016. It’s what has spawned my recent renewed interest in clothes shopping. Last year in Europe I decided to simplify and stripped down my skin care routine and vowed to not buy much in the way of new clothing. I even wore sneakers with dresses. Less than a year later I feel dowdy and that I want to step up my wardrobe a little bit. Hence the recent online splurge where I bought around 10ish items and am sending everything back but one top.

I hate the shape of my body. It’s a real pain in the ass to make it look good. It takes hours of walking around stores with multiple dressing room trips to find a few things which fit and don’t reveal stomach bulge. But I don’t mind doing it because I know I have a bag full of things going home with me which I can wear and am already accessorizing in my head as I drive back from a mall. Online shopping is addictive in terms of scrolling, scrolling and scrolling and adding things to my cart which I will convince myself later not to buy. Unfortunately, I should have let last week’s online cart disappear because it was so depressing for so much of it to not fit.

Some dresses which fit right in the waist are too tight in the boobs. Some dresses don’t even zip all the way up. Others drape in the wrong spot and amplify my over 40 spare tire which no amount of maidenform spandex can truly flatten down. Shirts….anything in a T-shirt material clings to the spare tire and my back fat. I can only wear loose T-shirts covered by blazers which make me look even fatter than I am. Pants…don’t even get me started. I have always been a size smaller in waist than hips so to own pants means to have to buy tops long enough to cover over the gap, the bubble of fat or visible cellulite section of my ass. If you look in my closet you will see tons of tops but very few pants. I go with jeans, skirts or dresses. Dress pants hardly ever work for me.

And lately, this stuff is all I think about. I check for stray eyebrow hairs and blackheads in the car where the light shows them best. In fact, today I was sitting in Cape bridge traffic so bad, I had time to squeeze a few chin blackheads in my car while listening to Stassi. Then I moved on to wondering what good face masks might be out there because I am bored with my pumpkin renewal one that I have had for awhile. I also bought new nail polish over the weekend because I have been feeling baby blue lately. Thing is, I have baby blue already and wore it 2 weeks ago but it’s just not the right shade of it so I bought another one. Really? Who needs 2 baby blue nail polishes? I guess that’s how far over the edge my life has pushed me. I am obsessed with a “look” and the planning it takes to establish it. But I guess it’s a better numbing mechanism than drinking which was my anesthetic of choice 5 years ago.

Maybe this deep level of shallow thinking is something I shouldn’t over judge. Maybe I am being too hard on myself. Maybe it’s ok that instead of my regular Cape weekend jeans and flannel I went with the faux leather leggings yesterday which my mom thought were super cute but probably a little fancy for food shopping. But I felt better about myself in the frozen dinner aisle I guess and maybe I need that right now. Maybe it’s ok for the deep to have a little low tide on occasion.