Defending The Empire

So far, I think the transition from student back to working woman has been smooth. I had forgotten how nice it is to actually have some degree of separation between workdays, and my evenings/weekends. I went to visit my parents over Labor Day weekend and it was so nice because, for the first time in 4 years, I felt like I could truly relax and not feel like a school assignment was hanging over my head, or feel guilty for not doing schoolwork. Hello adulthood! Hello real world! It's been so long and it's nice to see you again!

It's probably easy to figure this out based on what I've said before, but, given that I have a family member scheduled for major surgery exactly six weeks, and given that I was loathe to leave Charlottesville just yet, I'm happy that this position came about when it did, buying me at least this year here while I map out the future beyond that.

I've always heard that autumn is a good time to clean your house and organize, though the same can be said for spring. What I do know is that it felt incredibly liberating to get rid of at least some of my school-related piles of paper and clutter and return unneeded books to the library while dropping big garbage bags full of unnecessary papers off at the recycling center.

The question is what to do with the clothes that I...unexpectedly "outgrew" during grad school. I'm loathe to give away the outfits I had banked on being able to wear, never imagining that my endocrine system would rebel against my healthy ways and curse me with porous fractured bones, out of whack hormone levels, and a weight gain that from outward appearances, probably is indistinguishable from the type of weight gained by a lot of my grad school classmates through late-night pizzas, sedentary lifestyle, or pregnancy.

Speaking of which, how bad is it if your mom laughs and remarks to you while you're wearing your favorite empire-cut shirt, "If you're not careful, that that shirt could make people think you're pregnant".. Well, whatever. Yeah, I can see where one could potentially garner the "is she or isn't she?" speculation while wearing and empire cut shirt or dress, but I believe that to be true for most women unless they have have Twiggy or Kate Moss' waif look. It's one of my favorite shirts. So there. There are tons of worse types of cuts of clothes a person can wear and the empire shirt does not, in my humble opinion rank up there. (Think instead of high-waisted jeans. And yes, I also still hate "skinny cut" jeans. I will not be buying any of those and would not even if I was 90 pounds with boots on).