Fun with the Sears Catalogue

This was the view out my back door last week:

It has been cold and snowy forever, I think.  In reality it has been more like three and a half weeks, but it feels like forever.  At least the sun came out yesterday, which makes me feel less like stabbing people who complained about the summer heat, and more like taking the kids sledding.

I am someone who is hyper-organized when it comes to winter gear.  All outerwear is tried on, and necessary items purchased, by the first week of September at the very latest.  This is normally a very good thing: I am ready for when the weather drops twenty degrees overnight, I am not scrambling to find matching mittens, I know that my kids will fit into their designated snowpants.  But recently it backfired: the children’s feet had a sudden growth spurt in late September, and it was difficult for them to get their giant flipper feet in and out of their boots.  Rather than search the mall and become frustrated at the lack of sizes, choices, and temperature ratings, I always order winter boots online from Sears.

I went to pick up my order on the weekend, and there was a lovely cross-section of Sears shoppers at the catalogue office: a young couple buying a bedroom suite, a woman talking excitedly about the arrival of a new grandchild and the need to purchase a crib, a crotchety old man, and me.  The old man at first endeared himself to me by referring to me as “young lady” but then made things uncomfortable by lighting into the lady at the counter about an $0.81 discrepancy on his bill.

It was minus 24 with windchill last Friday, and yet I allowed myself to be peer pressured into walking my dog with my much hardier friends.  I felt somehow that I deserved some sort of medal for trudging through the heavy snow in the cold.  Or maybe I just need a better coat.  The one I have right now is very warm and huge; wearing it is like being wrapped in a comforter, as shown in this (old) picture:

but yet it isn’t quite long enough.  I was mentioning this to my friend, who suggested that perhaps I have reached the stage of womanhood of wearing ankle length, pastel coloured puffy coats, with ruched sleeves.  It occured to me then, not for the first time, that clothing really goes in stages of life, and I am sliding down the slippery slope from “fashionable” to “practical and I don’t care what I look like.”  The next step after that is wearing caftan-type nighties and matching velour housecoats.  

Although maybe not.  I’m more of a pajama girl, anyway. 

It’s funny, though.  I was thinking about my teen and university years, when I would wear miniskirts and crop sweaters year-round, with light jackets and no scarves.  Now I’m wearing the down-filled equivalent of a burkha.  I saw a young girl walk by my house last week, in the bitter cold, with an open jacket, a skirt and BARE LEGS.  I had to hold myself back from running outside and bundling her up.  I see girls like this and I say things – out loud, and directly to said girls – like “Oh dear, you look cold.  Don’t you have some mittens?”  In other words, I have turned into my own grandma.  I sure hope the next step isn’t wearing these:

The first sweater is advertised as a “face-framing” sweater for ultimate face-framing flattery.  The other two are called “fooler” sweaters, and I would like to know why.  Wait.  I just answered my own question – it is due to the “double cross-over collar” which “fools” people into thinking that you are wearing two “shirts”.  I got a little crazy with the quotation marks there, but can you blame me?  That poor blonde woman is staring at me with angst, probably because she is modelling a sweater with cardinals on it.

I’m pretty sure I’ll never wear one of those sweaters – they don’t come in black – but I can’t be sure I won’t be rocking the nursing home in one of these:

That model is WAY too young for a leopard-print tunic blouse.  I can see myself wearing this, with my bleeding lipstick and my super artificial red hair, my open-toed pumps, and these slacks:

There are a lot of pluses to being in the “slacks” stage of life, the biggest one being elastic waist bands.  Although that’s kind of a moot point for anyone who is often found to be wearing yoga pants.  The only difference between these slacks and yoga pants, really, is the fabric.  Another plus to these slacks is that you would never have “whale tail”.  Of course, I’m not sure thongs would be the undergarment of choice once the slacks stage of life has been reached.  I’m guessing the appropriate panty would be more like this one:

Those are touted as “anti-static panties” which I find very, very amusing for very, very inappropriate reasons.