I am off today, and I am sitting at home in what, sadly, might be my favorite pair of jeans.  I say “sadly” because after close to five years of denim-y good times, they need to be retired.  They were a gift from someone who couldn’t wear them for some reason, but they fit me perfectly. And perhaps because I knew that they cost almost ten times what I normally pay for a pair of jeans, I have come to believe that my ass looks ten times better in them. 

No doubt this is why I have held on to them for so long.  In places, they’ve worn away to a few strings struggling to represent basically the idea of pants, but I’ve still been wearing them.  Their slow demise has come about at a time when I’m having trouble finding pants that fit well.  Too tight, too baggy, too short, too long.  I found a pair that fit ok, but they are four inches too long.  I’m not that short, which begs the question: What kind of mutants are they making pants for these days?  And all this time, my favorite pair began to erode more and more.

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I stopped wearing them for a few weeks when I spotted the hole on the upper, inner thigh, but eventually I pulled them back out of the closet figuring that the hole was small and in a weird place, so maybe no one would notice.  Besides, I wear swimsuits in the summer.  People have seen my upper, inner thigh.  Big deal.  The hole has since grown, moving towards my upper, upper inner thigh, so last night, when I wore them out, I made sure I wore cute underwear, lest they be visible at the fringes of the ever growing rip.  I told myself that this, too, was not that big a deal since I used to buy and show off my cute underwear all the time in college.

Sometimes I lie to myself.  I usually know when I’m doing it, but I believe my own lies anyway because I’d really like them to be true.  Usually, it’s promising that I’ll get up earlier or cut back on caffeine or start eating more vegetables, but I’m reaching a point where I can no longer keep convincing myself that it’s okay to wear these particular jeans.  I’ve seen What Not to Wear, and I know Stacy and Clinton would not approve.

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But look it, I also have a pair of $12 flip flops that have tried to kill me twice, and I still have them. 

They’re plotting against me at this very moment.

My best friend calls them The Flip Flops of Death, but they’re only dangerous on rainy days.  When they get wet, their smooth bottoms become slick and caused me to once slip and crash into a door jamb before sending me crashing to the floor, where it is possible that I may have bounced a bit.  My solution is to wear them on sunny days with no chance of rain.  Because the shoes have molded to my feet, and when I slip them on, it’s like their soft, rubber wraps my toes in a warm embrace and caresses my arches.  It’s very comforting, which is sometimes what I want in a pair of shoes.  I need to intimidate someone, I go with the high heeled boots that put me right at six feet tall.  You’ve had a rough day, you want these shoes.

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I’m slowly accepting that the jeans and the flip flops, and all right, a pair of red belly dancing shoes with a hole in the bottom are going to have to go.  I’m ready to look for replacements, but until I have a new favorite pair of jeans, I’m not quite ready to let the old ones go.

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