This “flash memoir” is for those of you who enjoyed the Baden Baden piece. Remember how that whole thing began with why I don’t have a pierced belly button and went into why I don’t have a tattoo? Well, speaking of my tummy, one night I was reading to my son. He had his head resting on my stomach.
“Your tummy makes such a good pillow, Mommy. It’s all wooshy gooshy.”
“Thanks, buddy. It’s actually called subcutaneous fat.”
I have upon occasion entertained the thought of liposuction but I decided it’s not for me. I’m too much of a chicken to have elective surgery. I’ve had mandatory surgery and believe me, it’s no picnic. It far and away surpassed my estimate of how much of a drag it’d be.
I’ve heard that after getting liposuction you can’t do anything for a couple of weeks. That’s not real practical for a mom, not for me anyway. I’m always going, going, gone. Besides, I think for the rest of my life I’d feel like there was a sign on my back that says, “Outer beauty is so important to me that I paid someone $5,000 to make my tummy flat when in twenty years my butt is going to look like swagged drapery treatments.” And then when that happens, would I have elective surgery to fix that too?
Instead, I just do more sit ups and when I’m wearing a snug dress I don a pair of suck-the-wooshy-gooshy-out-of-me undies and/or panty hose. This does the trick every time!
Stay with me. I’m still on the wooshy gooshy subject but I’m transitioning slightly.
Low rise jeans with flare legs have been fashionable for quite some time now. The trend is heading toward skinny jeans but I'm guessing it’ll take awhile for it to really take hold here in West by God Virginia where I’m pretty sure The National Enquirer outsells InStyle magazine.
I panicked when low rider jeans first came out. I didn’t like them at all. They exposed my woosh. They exposed my goosh. That was before we did the presto change-o thing in our family’s diet (Thank you Pappy—that’s what we called my father-in-law. He died of stomach cancer five years ago and we changed our eating habits quick like a bunny!). When we did that, I lost a bunch of weight. Thank you, Jesus! Suddenly low riders looked good on me. I love ‘em now. Not the super lows, just the kinda lows.
There’s a down side to low riders though. Now, with the whole low rider craze, chubby plumbers aren’t the only ones experiencing crack attacks. Personally I have no desire to reveal my bottom cleavage so I made it a point to buy really long shirts and tuck them in. Then my daughters told me that tucking in screams of “old lady.” So I bought a couple of long, thin tank tops in various colors. If I’m wearing a shirt that isn’t real long I wear one of the tanks under it. This way even if my “main” shirt is a bit on the short side, I won’t expose the world to my wooshy gooshy in front or my heiney (just how do you spell heiney?) cleavage in back. I’m always thinking, always problem solving.