Change of seasons

One of the items on my spring break to-do list was to clear out the kids' dressers and closets, getting rid of clothes they've outgrown, and replacing them with the warm-weather clothes in larger sizes I bought at the big consignment sale a few weeks back.

Sometimes I go about this half-heartedly, leaving too-small clothes stuffed into the bottom and back of dresser drawers.  That portends the inevitable moment when one kid or another is down to the end of the laundry cycle, and I try to put them into an item that is just embarrassingly inadequate -- jeans that don't cover the ankles, shirts that expose the belly.  And I wonder why I keep putting those clothes back in the drawer so it happens all over again.

The reason, of course, is that I have this irrational sense that I ought to do the job thoroughly -- purging all the outgrown clothes at once and finding a reasonable way to dispose of them -- rather than piecemeal, pulling only the item that I've now noticed doesn't fit anymore.  At some point I usually get motivated or frustrated enough to do that.  The fact that I did it today rather than sometime in June or July has to do with the amount of time since I did it last.  If I hadn't filled up garbage bags with old clothes today, I wouldn't have had any place to put the summer togs I got at Rhea Lana at the beginning of the month.

And it's time to break out those summer clothes -- the shorts, the tank tops, the sundresses I love so much for Cady Gray to wear.  While we are still in the realm of the occasional cool snap (today's high was only in the sixties), we're no longer in danger of needing coats or anything made out of fleece.  The sun beats down warmly, and promises to beat down hotly very soon.  The clo thes that fit last August are few; if I want my kids to be appropriately clad,  I have to take the tags off the new purchases and find places for them in the closet.

Interestingly, I don't go through any version of this process for myself.  I know some people make quite a production out of changing out their wardrobe from winter to summer.  For me, it's just reaching to a slightly different spot on the hanging rack.  Maybe if I bought clothes in any significant quantity for myself on a seasonal basis, I would have a good reason to rotate them more intentionally.  But unlike my children, I don't tend to outgrow my clothes so much as I simply wear them out, a process that takes far longer.  If someone would invent adult clothes that gradually shrink over the course of a year, so that when you put them on again the following winter they would be too small, I might get more variety in my wardrobe and do a better job at changing with the seasons.

In between

We all have certain holes in our wardrobes. Ninety percent of the time, they don't bother us. But then come those days or occasions when it would really be helpful to have a particular item -- and we don't have it. We think to ourselves: "Selves, next time we get a chance, we're buying that thing. We're not going to have to go without it next time."

But then the moment passes. When we get that chance to buy it, we think to ourselves: "Selves, do we really need this? After all, ninety percent of the time we have no use for it. Surely we can do without it." And so the cycle continues.

Earlier this year, I conquered one of those pesky holes when I bought my boots. Now I'm thinking about another one. It wasn't always a hole. For the last several years, my preferred outer layer when the temperature ranges from about 50 to 70 degrees has been a Talbots slightly cropped corduroy jacket (actually a petite size) that my mother got for me once upon a time. But sometime in the spring, I lost it. And ever since, I've been frustrated on those days when it's not cold enough for my fleece jacket, but too chilly to go without all together.

I think the answer is a jean jacket; the late lamented corduroy jacket was jean-styled, and perfectly casual yet structured. But my shopping demons always strike when I'm in a position to browse for such a thing. Do I really need it? Don't I have other items already that would do? Then I get back home and remember -- nope, I don't.

So here's a gift idea: Classic jean jacket or facsimile thereof in leather or cords. Women's size 8 or medium oughta do me. You'll be saving me not only from spring and fall in-between temps, but also from my own inability to provide for myself.

If it weren't for bad luck

After recovering both my lost items last week, I thought I was done with losing things -- but no. This time I don't think it's my fault, but nagging doubts remain, causing me to enter obsessive-retracing-my-steps mode yet again.

I took the kids to JumpZone this afternoon for an hour to give Noel some peace to finish up his work and make dinner. While I sat and knitted, they played happily until ten minutes before time to go, when I took them to the arcade to play their beloved air hockey.

Five minutes until dinnertime -- right on schedule -- we went to the front so they could get their shoes and coats. Shoes, no problem -- but where were their coats? Archer had been wearing his black microfiber jacket, and Cady Gray her tan corduroy jacket. I was paying at the register while they were taking them off, but Cady Gray told me they'd thrown them on the bench that sits in the middle of the check-in area. Certainly I'd seen the two of them going into the play zone, and they weren't wearing their jackets, which means they took them off and left them in the 10x10-foot area between the door and the inflatables, which is lined with cubbies and hooks.

There were few people at JumpZone, so the distribution of children's shoes, backpacks, and other paraphenalia in the space was sparse. The kids' jackets were nowhere to be seen. I asked the two workers, who had been at the register overlooking the region since we arrived, whether they'd tidied them up, seeing as the items were left on the bench instead of put away. No dice. We walked around all the other paces where they might have ended up -- stools, benches, along walls, in corners. Nothing.

I'm left with the unpleasant conclusion that somebody snatched them up while leaving with their children. There seems little chance such an action could be accidental -- the jackets were hardly generic in appearance. Did some parent or grandparent really steal my children's coats on purpose?

I gave the staff my name, phone number, and a description of the coats in case they turn up or get returned. But I'm mostly questioning myself. I know they arrived with the coats, but I don't know what happened to them afterwards. Did I look everywhere I could? Why didn't I stay in near the front desk on a stool instead of going into the play area to sit on a bench? (Answer: I thought about perching on a stool, but last time I did that, my back got tired.) Is this somehow my mistake, in a way I can't quite fathom? Because I'm having a difficult time accepting that what seems to have happened, happened; it's more conceivable to my mind that I've pulled a Donna yet again.

Decorate yourself

I went to the semi-annual Rhea Lana children's consignment sale this morning to put an initial dent in the kids' cold weather wardrobes. Normally the sale lasts a week, but this time it's only a few days, so I couldn't pursue my normal strategy of waiting until after the first weekend rush is over.

Although I arrived fifteen minutes after the opening bell, hoping that the midweek opening would limit the number of moms who could spare the time to shop, the parking lot was full. Inside, though, there were so many racks jam-packed with clothes that they all but swallowed up the shoppers and the kids they were toting or pulling. As a savvy long-time customer, I knew to bring a Tub-Trug to fill -- the arms tend to get tired holding stacks of pants, shirts, and sweaters for as long as it takes to get through every rack of the appropriate size.

When I got home with my purchases after school, I told Archer that I had gotten 29 items for $128.50. "How much did each item cost?" I asked. "That's going to have a remainder," he announced, before disappearing to tap it out on his calculator. "Each item cost four dollars and forty-three cents," he said when he came back. I confided in Noel that if you took out the red and gold princess dress I got Cady Gray for Halloween, which cost $10, that average would be even less.

It's strange to pick out clothes for your children, particularly when you've quietly discouraged the development of any particular style or color preferences on their parts. You're left with what you would like to see them in. Stripes? (Yes.) Pink? (Acceptable if small doses.) Ponchos? (If Cady Gray wants a poncho, I'll knit her one. Until then, no.) Corduroy? (With some trepidation.)

Essentially, you're decorating your children. This is fairly easy to live with when they're babies. The older they get, the weirder you feel about imposing your taste on them.

A few days ago I bought the justly-celebrated second Mason-Dixon Knitting book, Mason-Dixon Knitting: Outside The Lines. These ladies feel about clothes the way I do: "nothing too out there." Anything that will be wearable fifteen years from now has a place in my closest. A skirt with an interesting silhouette? An asymmetrical top? Too now! Too timely! Better boring and safe than exciting but possibly momentary.

But they, and I, are trying. One chapter is titled "Decorate Yourself." Now there's a concept. Not just cover yourself, not just fade into the background. Open the closet door and think not "what will function?" but "which of my many fabulous looks will adorn me today?"

Luckily, for now I can get Cady Gray excited about the new clothes I got for her just by telling her how much I love them. I wonder when the day will come when she will open her closet and think about how she wants to decorate herself?