Bathing Beauty
I just bought a new bathing suit.

I got my first bikini when I was twelve. If I recall correctly, it was this godawful dark green plaid thing with padding in the chest AND an underwire. (Is that a contradiction in terms?) It fit me horribly and at the time I was putting on more weight than was aesthetically wise for an awkward, gangly teenager in a two-piece. After my mom told me how bad I looked, I gave up on bikinis entirely...

Until my freshman year of college. I snapped out of that awkward phase, lost the "freshman fifteen," and treated myself to a little number from Pineapple Kiss, a great local bathing suit store. It's lasted me five years, but the fabric has started to pill. Stupid me for putting it in the washer/dryer a few times. And it's gotten so old that it has begun to literally come apart at the seams.

So today Rachelry and I went shopping for bathing suits, as I decided it was unsuitable (yuk yuk) for me to show up in Jackson Hole with a tattered bikini. One of the perils of shopping for a two-piece is that you generally have to buy the pieces separately. And they're expensive. But Old Navy had some cheaptacular bargains for $10 a piece. So I got one. Then I decided it sucked and got a real bikini-- by the makers of my original Freshman year suit. For forty dollars more.

It's expensive being a girl. But with luck it'll be another five-year investment. It's even bloody warrantied since they make them there in the store. (Guess they have a sweatshop in the back?)