Ok kids
This week’s topic is about bikinis. Or maybe it’s about a one-piece. Or worse yet…horrors of horrors – a tan-kini.
The bathing suit dram-ah began one very hot August day at the tail end of seven days of omnipresent nausea. My shorts were feeling pretty loose (which cheered me up to no end!) so I decided to step gently onto the usually ‘damn this thing must be broken’ bathroom scales, eyes heavily squinted (as I am wont to do), with the unending hope that that bag of BBQ potato chips, ice-cold Pepsi, and scrumptious Mars bar- (c’mon it was only a mini) that I’d eaten the night before would somehow not affect my weigh-in. But this time the scales WERE working! I had lost 7.35 pounds over the past seven days-which just goes to prove -your mother was right- there IS a silver lining in every cloud.
Of course with this kind of result there was only one thing to do: check out the ‘end of season’ bathing suit sale. Now on! Today only! Imagine the excitement of being able to buy a bathing suit that was one size smaller and half price to boot. Of course at 50% off, any girl worth their salt buys two- then it all evens out. Yin to the yang and all that good stuff.
But ahhhhh….how one’s plans can so easily go astray. Those seven pounds? It didn’t take them long to come back from their ‘a-stray’, bringing with them a few pudgy little friends hidden in the Christmas pudding.
Fast forward to yesterday as I began packing my bags for our annual trip to Costa Rica. As I pulled out what now seemed to be two teeny-tiny bathing suits, I realized it was time to face the music, well actually the mirror. Delusional, I decided to wait until I got out of bed this morning, the time of day when my stomach- without food for 8 hours- is the flattest. I grabbed the first suit, stuck each leg in, then embarked on what can only be described as a marathon of sucking in, yanking up (ever so gently over the hips girlfriend-don’t want to pop the bionic hip) – then up as far as the waist…hard stop for two deep breaths- and to untangle my thumbs from stuck in-behind- one more gulp of air then pullllllllllll up and over the shoulders. It’s on! I thought triumphantly until I looked in the mirror and wondered who the hunched, slightly perpendicular woman in the black and white bathing suit was. And, how said woman was a) going to breathe at the beach and b) get the bathing suit off for her non-stop trips to the bathroom.
My daughter, seeing the look of total distress on my face said, “Mom what does it matter? Nobody’s going to see you but the monkeys.”
Well peeps, all I can tell you is this. If I hear one- even one – of those monkeys howl as I stroll along the beach I’m going to throw a big fat banana at him. Unpeeled. Hard.
Catch you next week ocean-side in Zancudo!
Until then, here’s a pic of the glorious night skies of Costa Rica (aka the time of day I plan to wear my bathing suit!)
Hasta Luego!