Oh keh.

Am searching desperately for a new bathing suit since we’re going to Miami this summer. Miami = beach = hot and sunny = need bathing suit that nothing pops out of. Maybe I should say a bathing suit instead of a “new” one, since I don’t even know if I have one (that’s how sad it is in my world lately).

Looked at Target, my catchall shopping mecca, and some fit too tightly (rubber band) some pooched unattractively in the front (like I am missing man-parts or something). I try on at least a thousand bathing suits a year before I either:

a. break down and cry or
b. give up and go get some french fries

No one looks good under fluorescent lighting, we all know that, but super-pasty-God-I-need-a-tan chicas like myself look positively ghastly under fluorescents. When your veins stand out against the bathing suit, you look more like an extra in “Night of the Living Dead” than someone who might possibly ever consider themselves in any way attractive.

That’s shopping in a store I can afford.

Online shopping, though, Jesus, can you imagine buying a bathing suit online? One that’s not custom-made, I mean. Between brands, a size 10 can vary from cutting off the circulation to my thighs to being unsafe to wear around children. Since one of my biggest nightmares is the possibility of my sister-in-law’s kids clinging to my legs and accidentally dragging down my bathing suit, methinks buying a suit online without ever having touched or tried it on is ridiculous.

Does ANYBODY buy bathing suits online?

I plan to spend about $100 on a suit, seeing as how it will be worn about once a year and, other than niece and nephew hazards, rarely be exposed to anything more strenuous than my dresser drawer, it’s not a bad investment. Last almost a lifetime, I betcha. But online?

Scenario: OK, I get the damn thing in the mail, rip open the box and voila! not my size, almost guaranteed. So I have to send it back. Ten wasted dollars later, do I buy ANOTHER one online and then send it back? Final cost of said bathing suit would likely approach $200. Actually, I’d probably get tired of spending money and just keep the one I had most recently purchased and call it a day. Fierce resemblance to rubber band notwithstanding.

That’s how I got my last bathing suit. There was a party and I HAD to have a bathing suit (sister pressure, trust me) so I went out and tried a bunch of them on, cried a little bit, and bought the one that I’d tried on last, because I look the same in all of them. That’s why I don’t know if I have one now, well, probably have kept that one somewhere for another one of those “MUST HAVE” occasions. Blech.

Am actually looking for THIS bathing suit (haha, wish me luck) and since I can’t find it anywhere online except in this article…