What I learned from a pair of jeans…

Tonight I went to Kohl’s with my mother-in-law. She went with me to save me 20% and to keep me from committing a crime against eyes across America.

I’ve been lying to myself about what size jeans I wear. The truth is, I haven’t worn any REAL jeans in like 8 months. Maybe a year (the lies blur the dates for me). If you were around last summer when my blog went limp and dead, you might know that I spent the summer writing the text for an iPad app which is a choose your own adventure style book thingie. (You can get it on iTunes if you want to support the arts…or the arts wannabes. Search on ebook Time Machine and it will come up. Time Machine: Age of the Emperors. It’s not as weird as it sounds.)  During that summer, I was up to all hours every night, working on some pretty stiff deadlines. Looking back, I have no idea how I did it. I guess I did it with God’s help, the help from 1000 other people, and quite a few 3 a.m. pop tarts.

Which brings me back to the jeans.

If you sit at your desk long enough and eat enough pop tarts, you will part company with your jeans.

I did.

And then I began lying to myself about what was actually going on.

Tonight, I found the truth. Even after working out like a dog for 5 days and eating like a Jenny Craig poster child, I still haven’t lost enough to go shopping. And my jeans still don’t fit. Nor do most of the pairs I tried on at Kohl’s tonight.

I did find some that fit reasonably well. They did not take 20 pounds off me, as I had hoped, or make me look like an Olympic hopeful. Rumor has it there’s no shortcut for that.

They did teach me a thing or two about self-deception, though. You can tell yourself anything you want about what size you wear. But if that isn’t actually your size, you won’t have a fighting chance of stuffing those lies into a pair of Levi’s. I tried it.

And then I left the pack of lies on the floor of the fitting room and went home with a larger sized truth.

I wish I could say that I feel really honest and noble. But I kinda just feel like I own bigger jeans.