Unready To Wear

I have a uniform which I wear, a set of clothing that works for me. My required wear is, of course, my underwear; I prefer boxers. The next requirement is my compression socks. Thus I only wear black socks, because that is the colour I can get. Either that or some ugly beige that is supposed to resemble some sort of flesh tone for a broad cross-section of a multi-racial population. The top layer consists of blue jeans and either a polo style short sleeve shirt for warm days or a similar style long sleeve shirt for cold days.

There are three reasons for choosing this clothing plan; durability, flexibility, and simplicity. In terms of durability, jeans take a real beating, and my clothing can get pretty beaten up. Since most of my hand work is just above my lap, almost every activity from eating to doing the dishes involves some level of spillage onto my pants. I need pants which can go through a lot of washing machine cycles. In addition, transfers are hard on my pants as either Katherine or I am pulling on them somehow. Jeans can take it, so I wear them a lot.

The other nice thing about jeans is that they are accepted wear almost everywhere these days. If I am going to a show or a nice restaurant, blue jeans with a nice dress shirt can work for me. If I am going out shopping, blue jeans and my standard shirt will work for me. They are comfortable for long travel days, and mostly, somewhat easy to get on and off when I dress, although that is getting harder all the time.

Then there is simplicity, and a pull-over style shirt is the simplest thing going when it comes to getting dressed. Just pull it on and there you go. No buttons. In all of my dressing efforts, slipping on a shirt is the easiest thing to do. So this wardrobe is maintained, updated regularly as I ruin shirts and jeans along the way.

But every once in a while, I like to dress up. Today Katherine has invited friends over for dinner. This is something she does rarely. In fact the only other people she has ever invited to my place has been her sister and brother-in-law. So today is a first. For this, I wanted to put on a nice pair of dress pants and a nice, casual shirt. I grabbed same from the closet.

This is the moment I realized that I hadn't worn these pants for several month, nor this shirt since last summer. Since then, my body shape has changed substantially. The dress pants are now about 4" too small and the nice shirt barely holds in my belly, bulging at the gut, straining the buttons so they look like they are going to pop. I tried, but I gave up. It just wouldn't work.

While my weight has changed only a little since last fall, only a few pounds, my body continues to slump south, with all of my fat ending up around my belly. Pants which once fit, fit no longer. Shirts which were once loose are loose no longer. I am going to have to get rid of all my dress pants and start over, only this time with only one or two pair. Mostly I am going to stick with blue jeans and a shirt. It works, and they still fit.