Here we I go again.  Next to shopping for the elusive pair of perfect jeans, swimsuits for the win on the hell-o-meter. One of these years I’m gonna be prepared to rock the bathing suit. This is not my year. If  if it’s your year, no hard feelings—I’ll still share my cocktails with you on the beach. I will. I really will.

This post bears repeating for all those who suffer in silence with my muffin top and me! Good luck! And may the best woman (with the highest credit card and patience limit) win!

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Sooooooo. It’s that time again.

Tell me what’s worse than bathing suit shopping?

That’s what I thought.

I’m going away on family vacation/relocation in a few weeks. (We know it ain’t a true vacation with three little kids in tow. I’ll be lucky if I get to read a cereal box never mind a trashy mag–but Imma dance a jig and be grateful because it’s a change of scenery near the beach and the kids love it. If I every play win the lottery, you’ll know where to find me–some beach. I might get off my beach chair if I find out one of my sons becomes President or there’s a 50% shoe sale. Other than that, nice knowing you! My muffin top be planted til I kick it!)

Anyway, since I’m not a lottery winner and have to share the beach with tons of other stanking in shape Tony Horton disciples,  I’ve already hit the panic button, and ordered and returned THREE swimsuits from Lands’ End. Clearly, Lands’ End cannot be wrong THREE times. It’s painfully obvious I am the one who has the WRONG size, WRONG shape, WRONG mirror!!! (Or…. Lands’ End is in a vicious plot with perfectly nice buff strangers jerks in an attempt to undermine my healthy self esteem???????)

Nah.

It’s me.

Not them.

It’s time to get serious.

Alert, Alert: Break out the plastic—we’re in crisis mode.

I know what you’re going to say….why didn’t I just go to a store and try suits on in the first place?

Um hello—why would I want to go pillaging through picked over swimsuit racks (because, if you must know, I already put this super fun shopping excursion off til now because I was waiting to….hold your laughter….lose ten pounds) looking for mama suits and then have to try them on under the harsh glare of fluorescent scrutiny in a dressing room the size of my left butt cheek? This is to speak nothing of….THE SKINNY MIRROR. You know all those stores have mirrors that distort your shape for the better. How many times do I buy something and then get it home, and it never looks as good on at home as it did in the store. Scammers! Oh they know it, too.

SEE! SEE! EVEN THIS LITTLE GIRL GETS IT. THE MIRROR LIES! IT LIES I SAY!

I returned a skirt the other day.

“Reason for the return?” the saleswoman asked.

“Your secret skinny mirror got me. When I got it home, it didn’t look half as good on!”

She silently nodded as she handed me back my thirty bones. Woman knew damn right well what I was talking about.

I’m all alone. Sniff. The whole sitch is just a wrongity, wrong, mess of wrongness.

So now I’m in the 23rd hour. I have to throw myself on the mercy of the racks, and hope something will pan out, a miracle will transpire, that some uber geeks in some lab really did manufacture a material that will suck in my muffin top while still affording me the ability to breathe unassisted. And for this, I will pay the princely sum of whatever the hell the price tag says—probably what my first semester of college cost. Oh, and doesn’t that nerd herd know it, the rat bastards. (Look I’m sorry you got stuffed in your locker in high school, really I am, but like the chubby gals had anything to do with it. Take it up with the cheerleaders over in size 2, Urkel. I was nice to everyone!) Bottom line, pocket protector pals, you make-ie, I buy-ie. Save the sob story for group therapy. I’ve got my own problem here.

On bathing suit shopping day, all budgeting goes out the window. I will buy a different brand of something at the supermarket to save a buck these days, but on bathing suit shopping day, MONEY DON’T MATTER YO!!!

THE SUIT COSTS HOW MUCH?????

“Oh kids sorry…..you’ll need to eat mac and cheese every day this month…mommy got her miracle.”

Pri-or-i-ties. It’s good to teach the children young.

But let’s face it, for all my best efforts at gut cammo, the bathing suit trauma is just not fair. You go to any beach, lake or pool in America, and I lifetime guarantee it you will see many grown men who have no problem letting it all hang out. Pot bellies, moobs (moobs=man boobs…don’t say there’s no learnin’ going on here), hairy butt crack peeking out of saggy shorts—oh the guiltiest among them plod along without a second thought. A generic pair of swim trunks and presto—they are ready to rumble and get their swim on. And not a ONE of them has even given birth.

Do you think they wake up in a cold sweat at the very notion of putting something form fitting over their chubby, middle aged, hairy ass Gorilla bodies? No! They don’t even put anything on the top half of their bodies period, and though they’ll never be mistaken for anything close to David Hasselhoff in Baywatch, they preen like they own the joint.

“Hey Butch, toss me another Corona!”

“Here you go, buddy! Volleyball game at 2!” Oh dear God! NO!

The sheer audacity of it all.

A guy can walk into any store and buy a swimsuit off the rack, for a reasonable price, not even try it on, and just like that—they’re in biz.

So let’s review, shall we? Chubby mummy pored through two catalogs, tromped through bathing suit departments reminiscent of war torn Beirut in four stores, ordered and returned (and paid for postage and handling on) three bathing suits over a span of roughly four weeks and ultimately ended up with two bathing suits that cost WAY more than my first car but…Schlumpy O’Hairycrack is on the beach, in less than five minutes, for $14.99 or less shaking his floobie moobs and sucking back his Corona—–party.time. the.end.

WHAT! And we say there’s equality in this country? Oh, I don’t think so!

(And we didn’t even broach the delicate subject of waxing and shaving. I KNOW. I can’t EVEN bear to go there

either.)