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10/28/2007
Apparently, I'm "Petite"...
This has been a crazy busy month, and if I thought October was bad, November is going to be ten times worse!
Two days ago at work, I got the news that they will be extending my current contract until January, when my boss will be putting in a requisition for a permanent position, with a raise. Yippee! So, since I've come to the realization that I won't be unemployed in December, January and February, it's time to beef up my winter work wardrobe, which is a bit sparse at the moment. (Good thing they're pretty relaxed about dress code where I work!) Yesterday, I headed to the shopping mall for my first serious clothes-shopping expedition since January, and it was interesting.
I still can't stand the retro 80s fashion trend that seems to be happening, but at least with the winter clothes, there are more neutrals and sensible clothing to choose from. What surprised me the most is how small I suddenly feel! I'm not short; at 5'8", I'm taller than nearly all my female friends, and as far as I know I'm the tallest of the 8 dancers in my Adult ceili team. Not only that, but the height really does come from "legginess" - I have long legs and arms. Or so I thought. Yesterday, I walked into a trendy type of shop which sold wide-legged jeans in both regular and tall lengths. I went to try on a pair of the regular length jeans, and found that I would need to be wearing 5" stilettos just to get the hems of the jeans to clear the ground. I just about asked the sales lady if these jeans came in petite sizes, but that was just too weird of an experience for me to handle so I just said they're way too long and walked out. I suppose the enormous length of these giraffe pants means the fashion trend must be to have the jeans dragging on the ground, so that you're constantly standing in a pool of your own jeans. This is fine and dandy for places like Florida. But for places like Ottawa, there's winter to worry about. If I bought those jeans, the hems would be dragging in the slush, and not only would the bottoms of the jeans be constantly wet, but when the started to dry, I'd have big awful white salt stains on them. So, no 40" inseams for me!!
I actually came home from my little shopping expedition with a lot of corduroy, and I've also found the perfect solution to my warmth vs fashion office woes: The casual blazer. I now own a black corduroy blazer and have a denim one on order. Hopefully it'll be a bit dressier than some of the sweaters I've been wearing!
All this to say, I went clothes shopping. I'm a bit reluctant though to spend lots of money on clothes, because the other thing I'm trying to save up for is a house. I want to buy a house this winter, somewhere closer to work (now that I know I'll have a job). It's going to be a tight squeeze, as there will be no significant other to help pay for the house, but on the other hand, I have no car and the only hungry mouth to feed will be mine. We'll see what happens. It's hard to find a detached or semi-detached in Ottawa for under $200,000 so I may wind up with a serious fixer upper that I won't have the cash to fix up til later. Still, it's an exciting prospect, to imagine I might have a place I can call my own, even if there is orange shag rug and dark panelling and harvest gold appliances.
Anyway, so that's October. November contains NaNoWriMo, the Eastern Canadian Region Oireachtas (irish dance regional competition), an orchestra concert, rehearsals for 2 more concerts in early December, and not a single statutory holiday in sight. It should be interesting! It's NaNoWriMo that's going to be the killer. While I love writing, and I love my characters, I have no clue where I'm going to get the time to write 1667 words a day for 30 days. Right now I barely have time to catch up on my emails!
I really do want to slow my life down and get more time to myself, but on the other hand, so many things interest me that if I pulled out of some of the activities I'm in now, I'd soon have them replaced with other interesting things. I guess I need to learn to strike some sort of balance. I'm the sort of person who gets cranky if I don't get enough time to myself, and these days I'm already verging on being unable to spend any time just relaxing. I hope in the new year things will calm down.
In the meantime, I need to find a plot for my NaNoWriMo novel, as I have to start writing in 4 days. Ack!
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