Skirting the issue—or not

I'm sure I wrote a post about this a couple of years ago, but I can’t find it, so I’ll just have to start from scratch and explain why clothing simply doesn’t fit me.  To put it in plain English, I’m short, short-waisted, and pear-shaped, with scoliosis (curvature of the spine) in back and a pot-belly (from SIBO—look it up) in front.  Any dress that fits well across my hips looks like a potato sack across my shoulders.  And fit-and-flare dresses, which would seem to be the obvious solution, are not made for short-waisted women—the waist is at least an inch too low and hits me right across the pot-belly.  As for skirts, let’s just say that the combination of being short-waisted and having a permanent pot-belly is terrible when it comes to clothing.  If I don’t tuck my top into my skirt, I don’t look as dressy as I’d like to look for synagogue, but if I do tuck it in, I look like a 74-year-old pregnant woman, which is ridiculous. (That's what happens when you have no midriff.)

And so, after some 70 years of dressing in a relatively traditional fashion—I didn’t wear pants even to the office, much less to synagogue—I’ve come to the unfortunate conclusion that the only outfit that fits me is an untucked top over pants.  This has recently become my new shul outfit—I dress it up with a necklace.  I’m not crazy about it, but it’s the best I can do with the body that G-d gave me.

Slightly-delayed kvetch, from July 20, 2023: Stripped-down rental car

No E-ZPASS (for paying tolls) and no radio. Bring your own everything. We're unpleasantly surprised.  😡  And our charger cables don't fit the car's USB ports, so we're afraid to listen to radio on our phones lest we run down our batteries.  😠  Next time, we'll bring a good old-fashioned pocket radio.

Just grin and don’t bare it 😊

I’d love to be able to tie up my tee shirt and get some “air conditioning” on a hot day.  But I’m so short-waisted that the distance between the bottom of my “tops” and the top of my bottoms (my waistline) is only about two inches.  Midriff?  What midriff?!  😊

Anniversary mix-up: We've now been married for forty-*six* years, not 45

I lost track of the count, and my husband the retired CPA did, too! Double-oops. Here's the real deal, dated 2022.