Shopping with Ditz.

When women are depressed, they eat or go shopping. Men invade another country. It's a whole different way of thinking.-- Elayne Boosler

Ditz & I are abnormal. We do not like to shop ~ with exceptions. Ditz would happily invade & takeover a large music shop while I'll settle for anything that has a book in it. We couldn't do an Imelda to save our lives. At this point in my life I don't even own a pair of shoes & shoes shopping is my numero uno hate. I have odd feet. Nothing ever fits properly & I can look for weeks with no success. Ask my mother. She used to dread the *back to school shoe shop*. We'd both be in tears. My mother would be getting desperate & I'd be getting angrier, condemned to another year of shoes that slopped around my heels & pinched across the toes. I hate shoes.

Ditz is getting that way about clothing. Maybe it's the fashion just now. Maybe it's Ditz. I am at my wit's end. I gave Ditz plenty of warning. I told her it must be done, we had to shop for clothing. Ditz wiggled & squirmed. She begged & pleaded, she argued & when that failed she procrastinated but we were on a boat this morning headed for a section of town that houses more than one smallish clothing shop.

My feet are killing me. My knees are aching. My hips need replacing & Ditz still doesn't have clothing. Ditz wasn't being unusually difficult but everything was too uncomfortable or too ugly or too immodest & we came home with exactly 2 camisoles, 2 bras & 1 T~shirt for 6 hours frustration. Poor Ditz was in & out of clothing in a vain attempt to find something. The child may be only 13 but she has a grown woman's body; too well developed for the children's section, or even the teen section & no 13 year old wants to dress like somebody's grandmother! I really wanted to get her some good long shorts but we tried & tried with no luck. Anything wide enough across the beam swam round her waist. Ditz has a Marilyn Munroe figure & Marilyn Munroe figures aren't fashionable anymore. They don't make clothes like that.

I have offered to make Ditz shorts. I can sew & shorts is one of the things I actually make well; I got plenty of practise with the boys but Ditz has no faith in me. She doesn't want to look that homemade. I couldn't even buy a good plain T~shirt! Questionable slogans were the least of it. What's with cutting the sleeves so you can't move your arms freely? Try playing a flute or violin in one of those monstrosities. It can't be done. Or those smock like contraptions that make everyone look pregnant? Or how about bunching up the sides so you just look fat? That falls where Ditz is widest & does not make her a happy shopper. Plunging Necklines? Eeew! From both Ditz & I.

We settled for a camouflage T with Felix on it ~ which is a tad better than the Morticia look Ditz is fond of. She's trying not to draw attention to herself at present but then went & bought fluorescent underwear. She reminds me of some of the early Quakers, all sober on the outside but wearing a concealed thread of bright colour somewhere on their person!

I guess we're back to checking the shops every time we're in town but I was really hoping to update Ditz's wardrobe before choir resumed. Talk about prolonging the agony! This could drag on for months yet. Maybe we should just consecrate her to a nunnery & dress her in sack cloth?