I made a very big mistake

yesterday. I went shopping. Silly silly silly. Note to self - do NOT go shopping on the first day the shops are open after the Christmas break.

I thought I would just "duck" in and get myself a dress for the wedding next week considering the body I seem to recall having in the past is nowhere near congruent with the body that giving birth to three children in a short space of time has become.

First and foremost I had to get a parking spot. I opted for rooftop parking because the covered parking seems to be more sought after. So after three or four rounds of the table so to speak, I found a spot and in I went. Good start.

I got to the first store. I looked at the dresses. Hmmm. Those dresses that weren't a size 6 or a size 8 were certainly not dresses that were a) appropriate for a wedding or b) anything I would ever try and squash myself into, even if I WAS a size 6 or 8. So that was a massive fail. Onto the next store, and my decision to try on anything at all in my size. However what "my size" is in my mind as compared to reality are, it would appear, two distinctly different things. Upon reflection, from three different angles, in the dressing room I have come to the conclusion that I no longer have a human body, I have a collection of lumps placed in random spots around a skeleton and stuck together with some very stretched and pale skin, sagging in places it should be taut, and taut where it should sag. Interesting.

So once I got over the shock of seeing what I actually look like I gave myself a talking to and said "just get this over with and squeeze yourself into something". So I did. And then I unsqueezed. It was horrible. Truly horrible. I even tried colour just for something different. Now I know why I always tend to get black. The red dress made me look like a genetically mutated cheerio on steroids. The aqua one, well, let's just say it's lucky I was nowhere near Sea World.

I did eventually settle on two dresses. One black with gold detailing (sounds awful but it wasn't too bad), and the other black with a grey kind of bodice thingy. So I lined up. In the hideously long line. Again. As I had the week before. And by the time I got to the checkout visions ran through my mind of the sight of myself in the black dress with the gold detailing and I realised that I was deluding myself if I thought it would look okay so I nahmated it before even starting. Good work.

So then I had to grab a couple of things, was hoping to get lunch for the girls but the lines at the takeaway outlets were enormous, even the healthy ones (surprising yes), so, having the image of an enormous cheerio firmly burned into my mind, I thought that would do for the girls for lunch, so into Woolies I popped, grabbed some cheerios and out I popped, courtesy of self service checkout. Not bad. First time ever I have managed to make it work without needing assistance.

Now comes the tricky part. Firstly finding my car (because I was so rapt to have actually found a spot I didn't actually pay attention as to where that spot was), and secondly, getting out of the car park. One thing I did discover is that because they are building some extensions on to the mall, the exit that used to be at the far end of the lot is no longer there. So after taking a good 10 minutes to find my car, I proceeded to drive towards what was essentially a brick wall, and then have to turn around and become stuck at the end of the line of folk attempting to escape. I was in that car park for nearly half an hour trying to get out. And once I got out I felt like every muscle in my body had just done a workout. It is amazing just how tense the body gets when in a position that is completely uncontrollable by any action on the part of oneself.

So yes, I got out, I made it, I got home. The kids had cheerios, they were happy, I even had a couple. Nice. But I'm too scared to try the dress on. So I am going to opt for a celery and water diet (or at least some variation thereof), I'm going to cut down my carbohydrate intake on a massive scale (no more home made bread toast with plum jam), and I'm going to inhale to within an inch of my lungs. THEN I will try the dress back on.

And in the time it has taken me to write this, Tabitha has managed to scale the sofa and perch herself in order to be able to reach the remainder of Angus's bottle, which I had purposely put out of her reach, and she is now skulling it while Angus has a little whinge because, I believe, he knows she took it.

And another day begins. And it's raining. Again. And if you're like me, as soon as I wrote that you started singing "woooooo it's raaaaaaaining again".............