Like a single minded squirrel scanning for a nut, my head swung wildly from left to right while I slid surreptitiously between the racks, my arms loaded with the delicate items of the season, my mind filled with forty-something optimism – which belieeeeeve me, wasn’t much.   The hunt was on and I would soon jet pack myself into an impenetrable depression right where I stood. I do it every year and frankly, it’s wearing thin on me – though nothing else seems to be wearing thin on this pasty winter body of mine.

I swerved to the right, narrowly avoiding a head on collision with a suspiciously lurking sales girl. She watched from beneath raised eyebrows while I gathered more and more, and seethed while noticing the racks hemorraging steadily. After my frenzy, she’d be the one to put them all back.

She nodded disapprovingly. I frowned back at her.

Though clinging to physical fitness and youth by a fraying thread, I wasn’t ready to give in just yet. I had to find one and she was beginning to piss me off.

I entered the room and disrobed, involuntarily sucking in my stomach, smoothing over my pasty winter skin with my hands. Compliments of the weather, my hair was frizzy and wild, the strands pointing horizontally from the sides of my head. I stared into the mirror in horror.

The items hanging precariously on the hook were taunting me, toying with me, urging me to try them on, but the fluorescent lights and fun house mirrors that decorated the walls told me to stop – before it was too late.

I fantasized about hunting down the cad whose idea it was to install the damn things and slapping the crap out of him. I know for sure it was a him;  no woman in her right mind would even consider installing floor to ceiling mirrors on all sides that were guaranteed to suck the sale, and most certainly the self esteem from someone in a single gulp.

Exhaling purposely, I stepped into the spandex, pulling it up over my winter body, tugging, pulling, scraping, and then finally exhausted, I found myself panting like a dog.

It wouldn’t work. The thin strips of fabric designed for the top part of a woman’s body resembled a thong stretched over my ample flotation devices.  Melons in miniature hammocks; you get the picture.  Torn between sexy and decency, I was forced to throw it down – there are kids at the pool after all, and well, grown ups too.

Looking for something unspeakably dazzling, I continued my search but the smell of defeat began wafting through the air, rendering me panicked. Ruefully, I looked back at the stream of holiday festivities and bad weather that got me where I am – five pounds heavier than last fall, then looked over at the sales girl; her arms crossed, her shiny red talons tapping piano like over her lithe 20-something biceps.  She punctuated the scene with a huff.

I frowned again; the smartass, before violently spitting out the Hershey Kiss I’d been sucking into the palm of my hand.  I dreamed of life-flight taking me straight to Jenny Craig. Nothing like a dressing room house of horrors to launch my spring physical fitness routine.

Anyway, dozens of suits later, I slithered away empty handed hoping the now rabid sales girl wouldn’t somehow track me down and slap the crap out of me. Last year’s suit isn’t looking so bad after all. I don’t think I can do this again, really, I don’t.

 Ahhh, the rites of spring, and in Texas; it is here.