Hippo Suits and other Water Wear

Seems that Husband thinks it’s a compliment to tell me my butt looks dumpy in the bathing suit I have been wearing exclusively ALL summer.  If you saw me in a setting with water, be it at swimming lessons, the seaside, the lake, a neighbor’s pool or a Vegas hotel pool, I was wearing this suit which is why that compliment seemed a bit prickly.  As in, the hair stood up on the back of my neck, prickly. 

In all fairness, I have been a bit sensitive lately.  I believe it has to do with all the time and energy I have spent bargaining with God.  It is exhausting!  This is a habit I picked up early in life.  I would secretly bargain with God about grades, treats, feelings, friends, snow days, whatever, but never really acknowledged that’s what I was doing…even though it was.  Recently I had been in some serious negotiations with the big man because here I was thirty-five, mother of two and…over a week late.  COME ON!  I’m like the damn national institute of standards and technology calendar – my cycle is steadfast.  I am a MACHINE!   You know, except this month…which, of course lead to the whole bargaining with God thing.  It started off small.  “I’ll be better making my bed in the morning.”  It got bigger.  “I’ll spend more time thinking positive thoughts.”  And bigger, “I’ll spend an hour a day doing something incredibly unselfish”.  For a while there I wasn’t sure if I would be having a baby or be putting on the next Passion Play.  So yes, I have been a bit sensitive – and self absorbed.  I didn’t realize how much I didn’t want to be pregnant again until day seven came and still Aunt Flo had not arrived.  OMG.  My youngest starts kindergarten in a couple weeks! 

When I was pregnant with my girl I got a bathing suit.  It was blue, had a tulle overlay and was altogether hideous on my baby boulder.  (Some people have a baby bump…I had a boulder.)  I was ginormous (and that’s being kind).  So, I looked a little bit like a blue hippopotamus in a tutu in my fantastic maternity bathing suit.  HIDEOUS!  Of course my current bathing suit is green and two pieces and it is in the eye of the beholder to decide the water animal I resemble, but nonetheless, I was sensitive and the dumpy butt compliment didn’t register even close to being a compliment as I mentally was changing into a hippo in ballet wear.  Now, a man has never been menstraully late or functioned under the hormones and stress that are associated there with so it is understandable that Husband was a complete jerk…at least in my hormone induced, self-absorbent state of near hysteria.  He called my butt dumpy AGAIN and assured me it was a compliment.  I cried.  I also cried when I put milk on my kid’s cereal and when I folded the wash.  I cried watching poker on TV and cooking dinner.  Oh, it was like I had been turned into a one woman version of the Hallmark channel.   

Turns out 8 was the magic number.  Eight days of torture.  After which I decided I had saved a load of cash on maternity clothes so I went to the shops and bought not one, but three new bathing suits with the crazy brief Italian butt.  I likely will never be able to wear these suits outside of Italy and I’m okay with that.  Also, because the buns are trimmed in so thin, and I have been sun kissed in an altogether different style, I sort of have white girl highlighter on the sides of my suit.  I imagine my butt inserts will be burnt crispy the very first wearing, but hey – no dumpy butt and, no baby bump.