Suit Shoppin'

I'm not here to complain about what you THINK I'm going to complain about. You won't catch one word about wide hips or big thighs or small boobs. This year for me, it's all about fabric.

I do not love to swim-suit shop. Who does, right? I think once in my life I pretty quickly found a great suit that I looked FAB in and bought it. But then I had to hide it from my mother because it was a bikini.

The rest of my life has been spent in stores or looking at catalogues for hours trying to find just that right suit. I think a few years ago it was a little easier because I just needed something dark. Something to make me look not quite as big as I was.

This year has been a little trickier. I wasn't looking for something dark. I'm sick of dark. I wanted something printed. Something PINK. Nothing says, "I'm happy with my body," like a pink patterned swim suit (even if it's not entirely true).

Land's End is great for modest suits. Low leg openings, high necks, long tankini tops, lots of skirted bottoms. I thought I could certainly find one there.

So I found this great fabric in the Land's End catalogue. Pink, kinda paisley-ish, definitely out there. There were only two suits with this great fabric. One was a tank. Looked great, but I want a skirt now for (oooh, I wasn't going to talk about thighs, was I?). There was also a tankini set. Unfortunately, it had a VERY high neck. And being a person with a short torso, I can't pull those off very well. As it turned out, they were out of stock anyway when I went on-line. I guess lots of gals were attracted to that fabric.

This happened over and over. I'd find the great fabric, but it only came in a halter (those really bug my neck) or they only had a size 16. Or 4.

Larry, whose help I'd recruited for the search, finally convinced me to look at LL Bean. And guess what? I found one. Pink and patterned and camisole straps and skirted and in my size: Victory! I hope it'll look okay on me. It was a lot to spend on a suit, and that's the gamble with mail-order.

Larry got one too. It's a Speedo.

Speedo swim shorts, that is.

Two "Buns" Up: or How I Fell in Love with Harrison Ford

I was so excited that Richard at the Post Office knew my name that I wasn't even upset that he got it wrong. He'd called me out of the line because I was chatting with two friends, and hadn't seen that he was taking pick-up notices. It was a true small town moment for me. Later Christina came out from behind to give Richard a hard time about looking for my package when he'd already gotten it, saying, "See, I told you-- Johnny's coach's wife, with the blond hair." Yes, Larry and I have arrived!

Any way, the whole point of this post is really that I picked up some stamps after I got my package that day. I got one book of the "forever" stamps (which is the most ridiculous thing I've heard of--I mean are YOU going to stock-pile these things for the next rate hike? I guess I have different issues) and one sheet of . . . STAR WARS stamps.

Wow, are they cool. Have you seen them? For the first time ever, I'm not sure if I can bring myself to use them. Richard suggested I hang them on my fridge. I've done that, but they clearly can't stay there forever. I wanted to sit there and tell him all about me and STAR WARS, but it didn't seem like the right moment.

I was about 3 1/2 when I first saw STAR WARS. I loved it. I wanted to be Princess Leia in a big way. (Curse my blond hair!) And I was in love with Captain Solo. I remember coming out of the theatre and telling my dad I wanted Princess Leia to marry Han Solo. "Don't you want her to marry Luke? He's the hero." "No, Han Solo."

Now, I'd love to take credit here for being overly insightful at a precocious age, but I think it was just a tribute to great casting. Luke was never supposed to get the girl. And they got a very non-girl-getting type of guy to play him. And as for Han, I mean, come on, Harrison Ford. Little known at the time, unless you'd seen American Graffiti, but still, heartthrob and suave and funny all in one nice 70's hair package.

So Empire came out when I was 6, and we saw it the night before my brother was born. Somewhere around this time Darth Vader made an appearance at our local mall. After waiting in line to meet him, he patted my head and said, "Nice fur." Empire is, I think, the best of the three movies, and even then I had a sense of its greatness. I would have dreams about scenes in the Millennium Falcon, being myself a silent cast member-observer.

And then came Jedi, which at 10 years old I saw in the theatres an insane number of times like 16. I cried every time Luke cremated Anakin. I became, as a 10-year-old would, enchanted by the Ewoks. My brother and I would make big forts in the living room and play Ewok village with our big stuffed Wicket and Princess Kneesaa.

That trilogy had become very personal to me largely in a day before VHS or Blockbuster Video, let alone Netflix. It was an embarrassing thing for a girl to admit. And I never really did until Film 100 at the Y. The professor there was hugely into STAR WARS as well he should have been. Those films changed the industry. We watched a documentary on the "making of" (which I believe I now own along with my trilogy DVDs) and had a huge class discussion. It was a lecture hall full of hundreds of strangers to whom I could confess how impacted I'd been by these films.

It seems like not such a big deal now, I daily tell folks of my nerdiness. It's not so uncool to be a geek as an adult. Still not tons of women into the sci fi or the middle earth kind of stuff. But Harry Potter has created huge female crossover into fantasy epics of good vs. evil. And Orlando Bloom's Legolas has helped that along as well.

So if you get a letter from me soon, it might be stamped with Tatooine's twin suns or Leia recording, "Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi, you're our only hope." But don't count on it.