It's the little things...

It's been a while since I posted, because I have been busy with other more important things. Like arranging a wedding which is 3 weeks away, in Crown Heights. Like cooking for Pesach, seeing as we will be coming back a week before, and not to mention arranging cleaning for my GIANT house. Like getting Purim together, which was going to be doing the Purim Seudah for about 80 people; my mother-in-law bestowed the honour of the Seudah on me last year, but this year I begged off because of the wedding and other responsibilities, and ended up deeply offending her; so we thrashed that one out in a phone call from Jerusalem a few weeks ago. So now it's just putting together Mishloach Manot, and I can't believe I am writing this, but my husband, He Who Must Be Obeyed, doesn't want me to do cards for Tzedaka, he likes my original and cute gifts. I do it to myself. But thank G-d I don't have to worry about kids' costumes. Or the giant Purim bashes we used to have when my uni-student/graduate girls were home, for 300-500  20-somethings so they could hear Megillah, eat and drink and trash my house and garden. (Such a mitzvah! Yeah, so you do it then.)
So much stuff to do. Newlyweds coming here to stay for a year or so, so I have to find them someplace to live. Every rental I have seen is yuk. After I saw one place I actually berated the agent and told her to tell the landlord that he had an absolute cheek asking the rental fees he did for a place where the kitchen was worse than my mother's, and she's been gone 27 years. Hadn't been touched for 40 years. So he offered to sell it to me, so I could have the joy of renovation. Yeah, right. I'll find something. And furnish it. And hope that my new daughter-in-law will like it!
OK, step back; sure, the wedding is in NY, and it's my son, not my daughter, and thus I will not be doing the lion's share of the work. But here we have the call-up and the kiddush and the family lunch, and then a Le'Chaim when the young couple comes to town.
And I am arranging all this, and lots of other stuff regarding hosting several speakers who are coming for the Feb-March UIA campaign, and this includes house guests who are pretty illustrious - so I decided I needed to buy new beds for the guest room (and the old ones will go to the new couple, ha ha!)- and I did that too.
And then my shvigger asked me, in all pleasantness, whether I had an outfit for Shul for the call-up.
Shit.
No, I didn't.
Well, yes I did, but I've worn it a lot already.
Shit.
I hate this stuff.
So yesterday on a 35C degree day, of course, I took myself off to Malvern Rd to look at 2 boutiques - because forget going to a normal shop for me, nothing ever fits, (and that's why I shop in Bloomingdales whenever I get the chance, with a personal shopper who forced me to change my style from Greek Widow Black to something more stylish)- and found myself in a shop selling clothes of the odd sort of quasi-Japanesey style, with shop assistants looking like they were on their way to a gallery opening, in unstructured monochrome layered clothing and chunky bangles and beads.
I tried stuff on- layer upon layer, like a Sara Lee Danish pastry- and I reflected that, a few years back, I would have been ecstatic to find these clothes! But now, after 30kg weight loss 6 years ago, I was finding it to be a retrograde step to be in all these unstructured floaty bits and pieces, which I explained to the (very helpful!) assistant. In the end I bought 3 pieces- grey skirt, little black summer jacket and in-between sort of long greyish-charcoaly printy layer top so I could maybe eat something and not show it. So not a black shroud. Cost enough but I hope my mother-in-law will be happy.
(She usually does this thing where, on the day, she tells me how nice I look, and then several months or years later, she mentions that the skirt didn't fit so well, or the neckline was wrong or the pantyhose was the wrong colour or something. If I were made of more delicate stuff I would be wounded and wary, but I don't give a crap, in fact, I laugh now when she does it. It has been going on for nearly 33 years after all!) (By the way, my mother-in-law is extremely stylish and always well put-together and she knows a thing or two about clothes, but nothing about being bigger than a size 10.)
Shul outfit. TICK.
NOW I need to make sure that I fit into the gown for the wedding. Oy. Bye bye carbs.