one serving

Did you know that one serving of oatmeal is one packet. Just one. I promptly poured too much water into it and so now I have oatmeal soup. How in the heck is a person supposed to survive on one packet of oatmeal. Yes, I know lunch will come around in a couple of hours, but one packet of oatmeal. Trying to eat the proper serving size is difficult. I know gradually I will get used to one packet of oatmeal but I always ate two. And that explains why I gained so much weight over the last few years.


A couple of years ago I bought a pair of fitted black pants with a slight flair at the bottom and a subtle pinstripe. I wore them to Alinea, which was one of the best meals of my life and a very lovely gift from a friend. Then I gained weight and they didn't fit. I pulled them out the other day and lo and behold they fit so I wore them to work and felt kind of funny all day. I realized it was because they were more fitted and I've been wearing wide leg pants. I don't have the same problem with jeans, but for some reason wearing fitted dress pants made me feel exposed. I'm nuts, I know.

I never really believed when I read in magazine articles that people only wear 10% of their wardrobe, but now I think I'm one of those people. Because so many of my clothes didn't fit I limited myself to the same old thing, but now I have a whole rediscovered wardrobe and I am still doing the same thing. I stopped doing laundry and it is forcing me to wear more of the clothes in my closet. I'm at the end of week two and except for having to wash some necessaries and gym clothes I've got another week of clothes. I have also started picking my outfits out the night before and I noticed when I do that I am more put together. Last night I pulled out a cream sweater I hadn't worn in years, my black and white pinstripe secretary skirt, a new pair of black plaid textured tights (I can finally fit back into 'regular' size tights), my black lacy scarf for around my neck and I've topped it all off with my new red shoes. I've been trying to mix things up a bit and taking small elements from Vogue and infusing my wardrobe with them.

One last clothing neurosis! I make myself wear my black boots once a week and my brown boots once a week so I force myself to mix up the colors. It would be so easy, and I think somewhat comforting, to reach for the black clothes but I've been trying really hard to infuse color into my wardrobe so I wear my brown boots to make myself use other colors in my closet.

What's your clothing neurosis?