“Girl, your pants are baggy!” my coworker Leslie said as I walked by.

“Yeah, I’ve lost a few pounds, and I probably need pants.”

“A few pounds?  Girl, you’re disappearing before my eyes!  You gotta get some new pants!  It’s time!”

“Okay, yeah.”

It was a warm, sunny day when Leslie and I took our lunch break and walked across the street first to Target so I could pick up a prescription.

“Hey, they’ve got a huge sale going on at Kohl’s that just opened and it’s right across the street.  Wanna go?”

I agreed to go even though I’m not that crazy about clothing stores, but maybe I could find a pair of jeans that would fit better.  That would be cool.  So we walked across the street towards Kohl’s and Leslie told me about how her mother loves Gloria Vanderbilt jeans and we should find some of those ‘cause they have them all different cuts.

As Leslie talked about the Gloria Vanderbilt jeans, a feeling of dread washed over me – that all too familiar feeling.  How do I explain to Leslie that I’m an overweight person and no way am I ever going to be able to wear those regular-cut jeans – no way!  I was used to it, been there done that for many years.

“My Mama just swears by Gloria Vanderbilt – and she likes the flares like you do!”

“Cool,” I said, feeling the heat on my face as I blushed.

So we walked into Kohl’s which took the place of Mervyn’s, and we were both amazed at how different Kohl’s looked and how many better deals they had.  I found the coolest pair of purple suede boots for only $30.  I knew those would cost like $100 at Nordstrom’s or someplace like that.

“C’mon let’s go check out the pants.  Follow me!”

I followed Leslie, but I was nervous – she was talking Gloria Vanderbilt – not those “stretchy” type jeans that I normally got.  We’re talking regular cut, low-rise and all that.  I guess I had just accepted the fact that I would always be overweight – even though I did box up all those old Size 18 jeans because they got too big for me.

I didn’t even like being in a clothing store that much.  I could feel the fluorescent lights burning down on me as I looked around at all the racks of clothing, most of them designed for someone who was thin.  I found myself dreading the whole ordeal and wishing we could just leave right now.

“Maybe we should head back,” I said.

“Noooo, you’ve gotta check out some jeans!  C’mon!  Ma’am where are your Gloria Vanderbilt jeans?”  A sales lady pointed to a whole shelf section with nothing but Gloria Vanderbilt.

I saw a sign that said “tapered” jeans, then I saw “boot cut and “flares.”  Yeah, now we were on the right track, but then the big question was – would any of these pants even fit me?

“Okay, let’s see.”  Leslie looked me up and down – Leslie who was so tall and thin and elegant looking without an ounce of fat on her.  “What about a Size 12?”

“Hahahaha!” I laughed.  “In my dreams!”  I grabbed a pair of Size 16’s hoping for the best, and Leslie threw a pair of Size 14 jeans on top of the pile.

“Try those on too, and I’m going to be waiting right outside!”

“All right, I’ll do it.”  I slowly walked into the fitting room and found a free room.  Okay, here we go, I thought, sucking in my stomach the best I could to at least squeeze into the Gloria Vanderbilt designer Size 16 jeans that were on sale for only $17.99.  Okay, pull them up – wait a second here.  Something must be wrong – these were obviously mis-sized – these are actually too big for me, no way.

Maybe they’re sized bigger, I thought, grabbing the Size 14 jeans and pulling them up next – and miraculously, they fit.  But they not only fit, they weren’t snug – but a little loose.  It seemed too good to be true.  I walked outside and showed Leslie.

“Those look real nice on you!  I like them!  But, I think I was right.”

“What?”

“You need a size smaller.  Here!”  Leslie handed me two pairs of Size 12 Gloria Vanderbilt’s, one black and one dark blue.  “Try these on!”

“Okay, but there’s no way…”

I obediently went back and tried on the Size 12 jeans, pulling them up, holding my breath in and…and…wait a second, I can zip these and they fit!  They actually fit!  No way, I couldn’t believe it.

I looked at myself in the mirror with the cool new jeans and when I did, I felt like a teenager again trying on clothes.  Who is that person in the mirror, I thought?  That’s not even me anymore!

“Hello in there?”  I heard Leslie calling and I slowly emerged from the dressing room.

“I can’t believe it.  I wear a Size 12.  I just can’t believe it,” I kept saying over and over, and suddenly I could feel a wave of emotion sweep over me as if this huge load I’ve been carrying around for so many years had suddenly lifted and the floodgates opened.

“Yep, I knew it!  And you look soooo wonderful and hot!” said Leslie.

“I wear Size 12 – I haven’t worn a Size 12 in years…since before Megan…”

That’s when it all came back to me, when I realized that all the heavy weight I’ve been carrying is finally disappearing…it’s hard to explain what my kids and I have been through for the past twenty years – the pain, the struggle, finding our way and starting over a few times.  “I can’t believe this,” I said, choking up.

“Well I can believe it.”  Leslie hugged me while I cried in the dressing room at Kohl’s.

A lady with short blonde hair emerged from one of the other dressing rooms and said, “Congratulations!”

Then we all laughed.

I bought both pairs of jeans today, Size 12, Gloria Vanderbilt.  Leslie and I high-fived each other as we walked across the street and back to work.

I'm sitting here at work and I didn't get much sleep either...I was on the phone ‘til like 3:00am!!! hehehe, what’s up with that?  Megan kept walking into the living room saying, “Mom, why aren’t you in bed asleep?”

And when I walked into work this morning bleary-eyed 'cause I didn't even get a chance to drink coffee before arriving, I found a lone shoe sitting on my desk right next to my computer.

What the heck?  Where did this weird-looking obviously worn shoe come from?  It's a black suede moccasin-style shoe.  There was no accompanying note, nothing.  Just a shoe.

So I sent an email to the entire office asking, "Did anyone lose a shoe?" -- something to that effect.

People wrote back asking if maybe Cinderella left it?

Finally, I got an email from my coworker Vikki whom we borrowed a suitcase from for my trips to Maui and ..New York.. and Megan's trip to ....Colorado.....  She said that it was Megan's shoe that got left in the suitcase.  that was like last July!  I mean, like I didn't even recognize the shoe.  who'd have known?

..am still recovering from the FABULOUS Beatles Fest that I attended all weekend in ....San Francisco.....  Imagine being surrounded by hundreds of Beatles fans from all over and meet Beatles fans as well as the people from world-class Beatles tribute bands from all over the world -- and I even got to meet Caroline and her mom there on Saturday evening!!!!  That was cool...  Hey, Caroline, what'd I tell ya about those Sun Kings? hehe!

at least I know I'm not alone -- Beatles Fans Unite!

And stay tuned for fabulous photos of the Beatles Fest (of course on my computer at home and I’m at work now) and of other exciting musical adventures happenin’ right here where I live.

“Something bad has gotta happen! Make them suffer!” Floyd Salas shouted in the classroom, pacing back and forth. He shouted often, not just because he was passionate about all this stuff, but because he was hard of hearing as well – but this poor new student probably didn’t know that. I knew it because Floyd and his wife Claire were my good friends. But in the classroom I was still the student and Floyd would always be my teacher. It would never change over the years.

He’d yelled at me several times – “You’ve got good stuff here! This is fun gossip – put it into FORM! Use the five-point plot plan!!!”

I don’t know how many times Floyd would yell at me about the five-point plot plan. I knew it by heart. You start with a problem/conflict, then there’s the first crisis, and then the second crisis, the climax and the conclusion. We talked about it in my graduate creative writing classes even – at least variations of it, but always pretty much the same.

One time Floyd ran right up to me and looked me right in the face and yelled, “Don’t forget the five-point plot plan!”

But do I remember the five-point plot plan when I first awake in the morning and stumble to my computer to write? Nooo, of course not. I just pour the words on to the white screen and hope for the best. Later, I can think about the five-point plot plan and picture Floyd yelling about it in the classroom – or hear all my wonderful teachers offer their input. Sometimes my muse is stubborn. She doesn’t like form much – she’d much rather just go with the flow. She’s just a kid, that muse of mine, and she doesn’t like structure or that a word, what is it? “Authority.” So I have to keep feeding her with all this knowledge about five-point plot plans and rising action – over and over again until she gets it right.

“Make the main character mean – he doesn’t hit his kid just once and feel bad – he does it several times and then he feels bad! Make lots of bad stuff happen! What you don’t want to write, we wanna hear!”

In Floyd’s weird way, he got it right. I was reading over Aristotle’s Poetics the other day for my teacher’s aid stint I’m doing in my master’s program – I’ve gotta read all the same stuff the students do. And even though Aristotle wrote Poetics at least a couple thousand years ago, he kinda got it right when he said something to the effect that everything that happens in your story, each part of the story, must be a part of the entire story – that is, if you can take a part out and it doesn’t change the story, then you don’t need it. Aristotle thought plot was the most important element needed in a poem (which were stories back then – no novels or movies, just verse and made into plays).

Guess things haven’t changed too much in a couple thousand years.