Elizabeth's Excellent Adventures -- 11/2/2011

One of the many joys of regular therapy -- how many t-blog posts begin like that? -- is that it takes me to the Big City on a regular basis.  Well, it takes me to Birmingham, Alabama on a regular basis, and that's a reasonable facsimile thereof.

And when I go, I always try to get out and about some, either before or after the appointment.  I don't go to the session in female mode because even though that's what the counseling is largely about, as well as coping with my adult ADHD (yes, I am a basket-case), I don't want to stampede the, er, patients in the waiting room before hand.


Unfortunately, things didn't quite work out that way.  The first thing that went wrong is my hip padding.  That's right, my hip padding.  Though I don't wear a waist cincher -- this is supposed to be fun, after all -- I pad my hips, otherwise I'd look like an inverted pear.  I use a wonderful product from Underworks that I enhance with some homemade pads. Padded garments made for women assume that the customer has at least some curves, and those made for men who want to look like women tend to be crap.

Anyway, I have zero curves in the hip and butt region; in fact, if it were possible to have negative curves, that would be me.  So I add home made hip and butt pads that give me two and a half inches on all sides, which seems to be good enough.  Problem is, they are very hard to insert, and the pads are different, and I hadn't planned ahead to put them together beforehand (have I mentioned I have ADHD?), so I spent fully 20 minutes stupidly trying to insert the right pads into the left pocket.  And, of course, vice versa.

So, that was 20 minutes of shopping, down the tubes, or rather the pads, and as I went through my routine -- a bit of MAC Morange to red-out a tiny bit of shadow on my upper lip, Maybelline Mineral Power in creamy natural (tap and swirl, tap and swirl), a couple of sweeps of blush and some plummy-natural lipstick, and I was good to go, make-up wise.

And then ... the closet, and things come to a screeching halt.  One of the problems with having time, is that I take the time.  I'm a past mistress at staring at a closet at my tops, trying to figure what will go with my jeans, or capris, or shorts ... is it this gray burnout?  If so, what do I wear as accessories?  My black and white bracelet is in need of repair ... maybe I oughta wear something blue, I have a nice blue necklace and bracelet set ... jeez, I gotta get some more jewelry.  I'm supposed to match the accessories to the outfit, not the other way around.

By the time I settle on a simple rose-colored tee, jeans and ballet flats, the extra time has pretty much evaporated.  I drive to B'ham, fill the car up with gas, and change back out of the light, into the darkness once again.

And so it goes.