Things I Want

Oooo, lookie, it's the weekend, and that means it's time for more fluffy posting from Alison.  Our current topic is Things I Want.*

Just before my brain surgery, I did something that at the time felt completely random--although deeply necessary--but that I've since learned is quite common:  I gave a bunch of clothes to Goodwill.  A bunch.  Like, three garbage bags' worth.  Full sized black garbage bags.  Catherine and Marguerite reclined on the bed in the bedroom, and I hauled out shirt after shirt, pair of pants after pair of pants, not to mention sweaters and scads of underwear, and away they all went.  Catherine and Marguerite would occasionally insist I keep an item, but generally they were on my side and let me get rid of stuff.

Much of that was stuff that truly needed to go.  As I've said here before, we Piepmeiers are a packratty bunch, and I had things in my closet from high school.  From which I graduated twenty years ago.  But it's meant that my wardrobe is now severely limited.  Which leads to Things I Want:

• Jeans.  I have one pair of jeans, and since I'm on sabbatical, I'm wearing them almost every day.  The right knee has probably another week on it, then it's going to dissolve, and they'll be jeans I can't even wear in sabbatical mode.
• Chinos or khakis.  I have none.  Not one pair.  I had a pair until mid-summer, when I took them out of the closet and observed that the butt had ripped apart.  I'm not always great at observations, so it's possible that I wore them a time or two with that huge butt rip.  Let's hope not.
• Fancy black pants.  I have a pair I got about five years ago, but it no longer fits, so it's going in the next round of Goodwill stuff.
• Work shirts!  I have five.  Yes, that's actually the case:  five professional shirts, two of which I wore on the job interview which got me hired at the College of Charleston.  Now, technically this means I have one for every day of the week, which is pretty good, but I'd like a little variety.
• Shoes.  I love my work shoes (I have a brown lace-up pair and a black chunky high-heeled pair, which I bought at a used shoe store and wore to my CofC job interview), but they're getting scuffy enough that they don't really look like work shoes anymore.

Let's get one thing clear:  I really do want these things, but it would be a very bad idea for anyone reading this to think they'll be nice and go buy me items on this list.  I hate shopping, but I am also impossible to shop for.  If you buy me something, there's a very good chance I won't wear it.  I'm not sure what the solution is, but generously buying me a pair of jeans out of the goodness of your heart is bound to end in tears.  Generously offering to go shopping with me might work as long as you don't make me stay in any store longer than eight minutes.

One more thing I want that's not related to my clothing purge:  a bike.  I ride a very streamlined, expensive racing bike to school every day, but it's actually Biffle's bike that he let me "borrow" when I was having to bike back and forth eleven hundred times a day to breastfeed Maybelle, when I'd returned to work but she refused to take any sustenance that wasn't coming straight from my body.  While I'm not having to do that any more, I'm still on Biffle's sweet, sweet bike. But it recently occurred to me that this isn't fair.  So I need a bike.  The bike needs to be

• Somewhat zippy, although it doesn't have to be a racing bike.  I do like the slick, speedy ride of this one, though.
• Able to hold a Wee Ride.  Starting in fall 2011, Maybelle and I will be biking to school together, because she'll be in preschool at ECDC (assuming that Trinity Montessori doesn't successfully seduce us away).  In case you're looking for me, I'll be the one with a 40-pound backpack on, a 30-pound baby sitting in front of me, and a bag of baby gear in the basket on the front of the bike.  We will be the coolest.

*I.e. gifty things, not big things like the Eradication of Sexism or the Recognition of the Full Humanity of People with Disabilities.