The third part of Pamela Aidan's Pride and Prejudice from Darcy's point of view. Darcy has a cousin named D'Arcy. Darcy's best friend is not Colonel Fitzwilliam, whose first name is Richard, or Charles Bingley, but someone else whom I would expect to see in other Aidan books if I were ever forced to read her further, because he and his other concerns are so damn random.
This book had to pack in everything from a month after the ball at Netherfield to the denouement since the second had fuck-all to do with our Jane's book. It was longer, about which I feel sort of like Groucho Marx's two restaurant patrons: "The food here is so bad!" "Yes, and in such small portions!" Aidan, for all her length, didn't treat everything she should have, nor treat as well as she should have what she did address.
The first book left Darcy in no doubt of Elizabeth's feeling for him, and I wondered how Aidan was going to manipulate him into believing her desiring and expecting his addresses. Answer: clumsily and insufficiently.
Col. Fitzwilliam might have been a flirt, but he did honestly like Elizabeth. His comment to her about younger sons not marrying where they might prefer is to warn himself as much as to explain to her. But Aidan reduced him to only being diverted by Elizabeth.
Aidan did not escape the anachronisms that plague this sort of thing. Don't make Darcy say "I'm going to be ill" just because that sounds more highfalutin to Usan ears. He would have said, if he were nauseated (not "nauseous"), "I'm going to be sick," just as contemporary Brits do. It's only in Usan English that "sick" has come to be a slangier synonym for "ill"; British has retained the vomiting connotation. She did try to place the book in its political context, but aside from Boney's rearing his little man's head and the war of 1812, I am too ignorant to know whether she did so successfully. That's nice. But there's no reason to write "o'erspread" instead of "overspread." It's prose, not poetry, and it's the 21st century, not the 19th.
And because it's the 21st century, I read Aidan's plural possessives [Gardiner's] as errors. Jane can write [her's]. No imitator may, and I don't think even Jane wrote constructions like [the Gardiner's carriage].
Aidan skimped on the elements I was most looking forward to--Darcy's confession to Bingley and Darcy asking Mr. Bennet for Elizabeth's hand--and completely omitted, thus demonstrating an inability that should perhaps clued her in to keep her mitts off my book, any interaction between Darcy and Mrs. Bennet after the successful proposal. Plus she made the last wedding a single instead of a double.
Mleah. I am well shut of them. I am giving the three to the friend of a friend who Friday discovered she is gravely ill (see, I said "ill" instead of "sick" because it sounds more formal, as befits her grim prognosis) and whose father died yesterday. Happy happy! The gift of diverting, tawdry books to feel superior to is better suited to a hospital stay than a bereavement and I could have given them to her on Tuesday, when the third arrived and before the death, if I hadn't had to read it myself first. No gift without some touch of selfishness.
Well. This is a fine how-d'ye-do. From Pop Culture Junk Mail I learned about a site that uses facial regognition software to compare your face to those in a database of celebrity photographs and shows you the top 10 matches. I tried my Dot Org staff photograph from 1999, Haitch's wedding in 2004, Amsterdam 2005, and a short-hair experiment from last week (lots of pins). I know I don't have a girly face and that suits me fine, but holy shit, I don't know whether to call the software malicious or faulty or to draw a veil over the rest of my life.
The strongest resemblance the software found for the 1999 photograph was to John Goodman, at 64%. Jesus Christ! Which is an exclamation, not another match. We both squint when we smile, fine. Next, at 63%, Martin Scorsese--I didn't start waxing my eyebrows until 2000. Of the ten matches, not one of them was to a woman. I don't know who Christian Barnard, Lothau Mathaus, and Benjamin McKenzie are. But Adrien Brody? I'm sorry to say that my eyes are nothing like his, and glad to say that my nose is also nothing like his.
The least flattering of the other photographs, from last week, produced Holly Marie Combs first, at 68%. No idea who that is. Then Susan Sarandon! This might explain RDC's attraction to me, since his mother bears a strong resemblance to her; but in her it's the prominent, expressive eyes and in me it's the square jaw. Susan Sontag! There's a woman I'd like to resemble, even though I haven't read a drop by her. Alberto Santos-Dumont, whoever that is. A flattering photograph of Joan Cusack, which is problematic because to the extent I resemble his sister, John Cusack will probably not prostrate himself at my feet in adoration. (Interesting: it seems I think resemblance to a parent is attractive in a mate, but not resemblance to a sibling.) Ingrid Bergman! Life is worth living again! Preity Zinka? No idea who that is, someone from Bollywood whose trademark IMDb says is her dimples, which I don't have. Robin Gibb? Not sure whether that's a man or a woman. Aha, a man, in a "Transamerica" kind of way. Cate Blanchett! Robin Wright Penn!
A photograph of me in Amsterdam last year shows off my resemblance to my father. Does it ever: Martin Scorsese again at 70%. No women at all. Two fat men, though: Babe Ruth and Bill Clinton. Also, hooray! Kirk Douglas, in a recent, not Spartacus-era, photograph. Again, no women at all.
The picture for which I had the greatest hopes, of me at Haitch's wedding in 2004. Rubens Barichello? H. David Politzer? Benjamin McKenzie? James Horner? Roman Abramovich? I have no idea who any of these people are. Zamfir?! There really is a master of the Pan flute? Also, Haley Joel Osment, and two pictures from maybe the early '80s, Debra Winger and Sigourney Weaver. That last I can live with.
Susan Sarandon and Ingrid Bergman and Cate Blanchett and only two men out of 10 might mean that perhaps last week's is not the least flattering photograph of the four, but that's just too damn bad. I'd rather like how I look, Martin Scorsese or not.
So glad that's over with. Maybe one day I'll read it actually, but for now I have listened to it, metaphorically holding it away from myself dangling from my fingertips because ick, Frederick Davidson in a Blackstone production was just as bad throughout as I dreaded at the start. Now I am clearing my brain with Aimee Mann.
Nicole Krauss. It's mostly really good, and I love the premise, and for a woman in her 30s Krauss writes a really good old man. But certain things rattle me out of the book's world--when the clocks move forward and darkness falls before [he's] ready, when people refer to a Russian astronaut, shrimp at a bar mitzvah? I know the first is wrong; maybe there's a reason it's called that and not cosmonaut; and you don't have to be kosher to want a bar mitzvah but at a bar mitzvah wouldn't you make the least attempt to choose appropriate food? And "kosher cow's blood"? I asked Jessie about that, and she said no way no how; but it occurred to me later that maybe Krauss deliberately put such an error in a random person's mouth. In between the things I notice--some of which, in my ignorance, maybe aren't errors?--I love reading it.
Kal suggested it for bookclub and was to have hosted tomorrow night, but instead I am. I have to remember that contributions to the defunct Invisible Library are not a reason to like a book (The Remedy, How to Survive in the Wild, Words for Everything, Life as We Didn't Know It, and others). Instead I will suggest discussion of parallels between Leo's story and Alma's--e.g. Leo having words for everything while Alma's mother told her there's not a word for everything--and whether a kiss or laughter is a question to spend your whole life answering.
Good lines:
"If someone had told me then that Eve had eaten the apple just so that the Grodzenskis of the world could exist, I would have believed it" (83).
"His room was tiny, and every morning he had to squeeze around the truth just to get to the bathroom" (156).
"When spring arrived, he began to watch the bush obsessively, half expecting it to bloom with news of his secret" (187).
Unfortunately there were things like "you're" instead of a "your"--the reverse of the usual mistake; does that count for anything?--and "among the two," and these jarred me out of the story. Then there's "Through the window I saw her...planting flowers in what little light was left." Me, I plant flowers in dirt, but perhaps I lack sufficient imagination. Maybe I am being fussy, because there wasn't an article: "planting flowers in the little light" really would have been off.
And yet. I loved it.
My favorite dress: Meryl Streep's. Least favorite: Charlize Theron's. The latter's no surprise because she does nothing for me. She was no less attractive to me in "Monster"--where I admit she acted--than in "Cider House Rules," which I regret wasting my time on. That thing on her shoulder and just way too much black; without the bow the dress had a chance. Or Naomi Watts's--the thing on the waist was no good. Thank you, Meryl, for not wearing black, for showing just enough cleavage, and for wearing a train.
It's not just personal, whether I like someone's dress or not, because I liked Jennifer Aniston's filmy overskirted train. Salma Hayek is heat on two legs as ever. A rubenesque woman winning, I don't remember, art direction? succeeded with a one-shouldered dress; Kiera Knightley did not (and a ponytail? yii). Mm, Ziyi Zhang's dress is yummy too, stiff but flowy, sparkly. I shock myself by saying that Jennifer Lopez's dress has some excellent points--its flow as she walks, and the immobility of her breasts beneath it--despite its nauseous color and who is inside it. I am pleased that Michelle Williams is more attractive than Alma and it's probably just my conservatism that questions her dress's color but I am confident that the ruffle around the neckline is wrong.
I love Jennifer Garner's smile so it does not matter that I do not love her dress. I love how she recovered from her stumble.
Waiting for the Oscars to build up, I watched last Thursday's "ER." I saw Maria Bello and I thought it was cheesy of her to return to her old show in a different role just because her current series is being canceled. Then I bothered to look her up, and it turns out that there is someone named Mary McCormack and that she and Maria Bello are two different people. We just re-nth-watched "Harold and Maude." JGW had asked me what my favorite scene was, and it will always be when he says "I love you! I love you!" and she says "That's wonderful, Harold! Go and love some more!" But I do love as well when he says, "You sure have a way with people," and she replies, "They're my species!" Sometimes I wonder if they're mine, because so many of them look alike to me.
I haven't seen "Walk the Line" or "Hustle and Flow" and I am torn between Philip Seymour Hoffman, big love there, and David Strathrain. Oh Philip, yea. RDC said that "Walk the Line" was "Ray" with white people (and Jon Stewart said the same thing) except that he never believed Joaquim Phoenix was his character as thoroughly as he did Jamie Foxx. Hoffman's companion's dress was a poor choice.
Um, I will never see "Memoirs of a Geisha" but it had better have some unspeakable cinematography to have edged out "Brokeback Mountain." Oh, hooray, "Brokeback Mountain" got adapted screenplay and director. And wow, I have hardly heard of "Crash" but mostly confused it with the 1996 "Crash," and it beat the three others, all excellent, that I did see.
My favorite Oscar dress continues to be Halle Berry's the year she won for "Monster's Ball"--crisp taffeta skirt, mesh and embroidered top through which we could see skin, covered but exposed, and her waist, and especially that notch over her hip bone, zounds--and Oscar moment to be when Adrien Brody dipped and smooched her the next year when she presented his win for "The Pianist." Still this year, pretty dresses and good recognition for the bits of films I loved best.
I had bookclub tonight in Katie's stead, and we discussed History of Love and hated on My Sister's Keeper and Scarf brought the Mia-woof and Drums specifically asked for a doggy bag when he learned I was hosting--illogical except that he correctly expected that I had made cookies.
Saturday I decided on Enchanted Broccoli Forest's Green, Green Noodle Soup but today I realized that a staining green soup with fettucini is not a good lap food. So I resorted to my usual, tortellini with pesto. I used half from the freezer and half fresh; I would have made all fresh but the basil was sold in big plastic boxes and my panniers have only so much capacity. I added just a little cilantro, too, and that turned out really well.
Plus Friday I made Chewy Chocolate Ginger Cookies, froze some for JGW to bring home, boxed up some for Kal's aunt, and had plenty for tonight, both for here and for people to take home.
Mia gave me a thorough face-washing and a second coat on my twill pants. I have to admit that I do like a doghairless house. Sherry commented on the lack of dogfur tumbleweeds so I pointed out the confetti of splattered corn and millet on the walls in Blake's corner.
I played my crooning and covers playlists while people were here, and cleaned up to Cat Stevens on shuffle. Of all the albums RDC lost through years of partying, thank goodness he never lost In My Tribe, bought in its first year. I only just learned "Peace Train" was dropped from later presses so the Maniacs wouldn't have to pay Darth Stevens royalties. Listening to only a dubbed Maxell from 1988 is no way to live.
I have another load to run through the dishwasher, but Blake's earlier occupation of Erin's ankle, chosen because she had sexy socks, was not good for dozing because she kept moving in a way contrary to the cockatiel code of behavior, so now he's making up for lost nappage on my collarbone. So I think I'll sit here a while longer.
Two 3.6-mile city rides and one 3ish-mile run. This meant the chances of my going for a swim or to yoga were nil, and so it was.
Today I ran with the runners at work over lunch, their four-mile route. I was ready to walk when as we approached--I hoped--the turn-around point. I puffed, "People, I'm walking," and Tale said the turn-around was just ahead and they'd join me on the way back but someone else encouraged, "You can do it!" so I did it, trotting up to that point. Then I did walk a bit, started running again, caught up after about a half mile (they slowed, and Tale turned back for me), and kept kind of up until the last half mile. I need a new bra.
One 3.6-mile city ride. RDC picked me up to grocery-shop afterward and thank goodness, because it was positively frigid, in a not-really-but-unexpectedly 34-degree way.
Flirting indeed--casual adoring glances that, like Caroline Bingley's, show little understanding of their object's true nature. Unlike me, of course, who is Pride and Prejudice's ideal mate). Not all of them were that bad, but I guess I like my ruminating to be about Jane Austen rather than Colin Firth.
Grace Paley. Short, as short stories should be; often sad but at least drily humorous.
My hip feels a lot better--less like a labrador's--but I woke all crampy. There is nothing better for cramps than swimming, and I swam a mile. Then I did 20' on an arc elliptical trainer (the regular ones being occupied) at 40% resistance and 100% incline. I feel hugely better. Also the gym's medical scale registered me at three pounds less than the house scale.
Ana Castillo. Reminiscent of Barbara Kingsolver: Poisonwood Bible for the female relationships and Animal Dreams for the southwestern setting. Also not, because it's firmly Latina.
Two 3.6-mile city rides.
I have no excuse to whinge about my fat, because I eat crap all day. It doesn't matter if I bring a banana for elevenses and an orange for mid-afternoon because no matter what healthy food I bring I almost always eat crap as well. There are the people who put out the candy dishes and there are the people who raid those dishes, and I am the latter. Today I am actually proud of myself for not having a dozen M&Ms here or a miniature Reese's there.
Two 3.6-mile city rides and one 3.5+ mile run.
I ran at lunch with the Dot Org runners, the two who were going out. I had forgotten my iPod and I cannot run alone without that--let us stay within the realm of possibility. Unsurprisingly, the companionship of better runners is a better motivator than Morphine and Pearl Jam.
Honestly, we do have better reason to renovate the bathroom than only the leaking of the sink (whose fix requires a new faucet, not just a new washer) and the flickering of one fluorescent bulb. There's the absence of the storage and, most important, of a tub. I have found the single best reason, trumping even the tub, and I found it in an advertisement in 5280 for Carpet Exchange. The caption is "When it comes to an incredible selection of flooring materials, carpet is just the tip of the iceberg" and the illustration is a mosaic of marble and granite forming two penguins on an iceberg.
Flooring is the only aspect of Formigny's permanent decor that should be patterned, and we do want to replace the hideous linoeleum with tile. Instead of the train station-looking black and white ceramic hexagons we've been assuming, why not equally black and white but more interesting penguins? Mr. Killjoy was unmoved. He correctly pointed out that I do not actually want to tromp on penguins. This means he probably won't want magpies or badgers either. Foiled again.
5K in 33'30" at 1% incline, averaging I guess 5.5 mph, then a quarter mile at a nice stretchy 15% incline and a cooldown at an even lower mph and incline until my pulse was under 125.
That's two 5Ks in two days. I know I'm supposed to pay attention to how my clothes fit and not to the scale, but the middle number on the home scale rolled up to the next decade last week. That was once, and it scared me so much that I continued the bold effort I noted earlier this week not to graze. The medical scale at the gym balanced at the same number last week and today, but that number is at least in the previous decade than the house scale's figure.
Kal and Neal gave us dinner last night, a yummy lamb curry. We brought champagne to toast their recent engagement--
--last week Scarf and I were in their house to feed the kitty when the phone rang and the machine (they have a machine!) answered and Kal's voice said, "Lisa, I just called your house and RDC told me you were here so if you're there, pick up!" Scarf was closer and she picked up and said hi and was instructed to pass the phone along to me, and the first thing I heard was "We're engaged!" and I squealed and jumped up and down and pointed to the appropriate finger for Scarf's benefit and she squealed and jumped up and down and Kal reported to Neal in the background, "There's a lot of squealing and jumping up and down"--
and we toasted their engagement. As we sat down to eat, Neal picked up his wine glass and said, "Two bay leaves and two cardamon pods and four innocent palates--" at which point I laughed because only then did I realize he was counting instead of toasting "to bay leaves and cardamon pods, and for innocent palates..."
Also, he believes in butter with peanut butter toast. Another voice of reason amongst the legions of dry-toast sufferers!
Bessie Head, from the Feminista list. I kept thinking of Henderson the Rain King and maybe I was supposed to. I liked it a lot, much more than the Saul Bellow (which I tolerated). There was also a white guy and there was also dynamite, but here their collaboration was not disastrous.
I know I'm thinking about the white guy's choice of cash crop, tobacco, through a 2006 perspective, but what about the idea of a cash crop at all? Why should people who struggle to grow enough food for themselves expend energy and rare water on a cash crop? And okay, Gilbert's an agricultural specialist (unlike Henderson), so why doesn't he know, in the '60s when this is set, that irrigation is not sustainable? How long until the land becomes salinized and mineralized into uselessness? And how superior of me to want Gilbert and the village of Golema Mmidi to prioritize the fate of the land in a thousand years over their daily survival.
I liked that Makhaya could know at least one righteous white person, and his pan-Africanism, and that the reader knows almost nothing specific about his past, and especially how the lack of specifics doesn't render him faceless and interchangeable.
I would like to know how Botswana got its name. The novel has Botswana people and Motswana people [aha, Motswana is the singular of Botswana] and someone reads a Tswana translation of the Bible.
Jane Smiley faced a dry spell after Horse Heaven and read 100 novels; this book is her ruminations on that process. I was interested to learn how differently A Thousand Acres, Moo, and Greenlanders, the only three of her novels I've read but all three of which I adored, evolved.
I came across this line and read it aloud: "The protagonist is the fulcrum of the author's relationship to the narrator, an the prose, or style, of the novel continuously presents the shifting balances among the three....The author, the narrator, and the protagonist are always in a state of conflict that is always being reconciled as the narrative moves forward." RDC criticized that that sounded very formalist, and the following led him to dismiss.
Nah, I'm going to have to buy this book to read it, because I want to write all over it, e.g. in protest of this:
It infuriates and intrigues me by turns, and I need to read it with a pen.
The intern has mentioned enough housemates that I assumed he lived off-campus, but I was mistaken: he lives in a "townhome" on campus. This must be the difference between a state school 20 years ago and a private school now, I grinned. Überboss strolling by and seeing the grin said I looked like the cat who'd swallowed the canary (dreadful simile, which I as Empress strike from use). I said, "Oh, we're just jeremiading." Überboss is too kind to point out that someone who laments the way things used to be shouldn't be verbing nouns all the time.
At the end of the day I told Überboss I had a language thingie for him. My mother sent me an article from the Lyme Times about the Peck Tavern, which my highschool classmate's mother has been running as a B&B for a quarter century. It was built in 1680 so of course George Washington and Benjamin Franklin each slept there, probably: "While that historical fact probably will remain apocryphal...."
5K in 32'30" with 1% elevation gain throughout; total 3.5 miles in 37'.
I forgot socks but ran anyway. The other times my feet have gone commando, I've blistered my instep. This time was no exception. Plus I opened them. Plus this is the first time on a treadmill that my hip has ached afterward (sometimes for days) so I think it is (I have made it) an actual injury instead of just a being unaccustomed to running on hard surfaces. I need to run in the park after work instead of at noon from work so as to avoid pavement, I guess, which is unfortunate because lunch is a much better time for me.
The Superficial:
Things I Haven't Tested in Some Years:
Characteristically lisa:
More Important than That:
I ran 5K in less than 32'50. I shouldn't have. I could not swim afterward because I couldn't stand the chemical'd water on the beds of the blisters. Should I be concerned that, three days later, they haven't crusted over yet? They've been covered with antibiotic ointment and huge band-aids since, but I walked a mile downtown on Thursday night, a half-mile to the tailor on Friday, and again around downtown yesterday. Perhaps I shouldn't.
Mark Kurlansky. I tried to read his Basque History of the World but didn't get more than a page into it, but I don't remember for certain whether I blamed that on the book or on me. This was great and maybe I should try again about Basques and cod. In Salt, the third major element in that triangular relationship is expanded upon.
Also, I'm rereading Wide Sargasso Sea, and it's nearly a new read because I remember absolutely nothing from it--the narrator changes from Antoinette Cosway/Bertha Mason to her unnamed but Mr. Rochester-y husband less than half-way through? All I remembered was violence and Antoinette-Bertha. Anyway, when Antoinette taunts another child, one of her insults is that the other girl eats salt fish. Kurlansky writes of how dependent upon such provisions was the slave trade.
Kurlansky says that salt is the only rock we eat. Perhaps it's the only one we eat separately, not dissolved in other foods, because vegetables and meat contain minerals, which are rock, right? I think. I was glad to have more background on Gandhi and Indian freedom, and how interesting that the third-longest river in the world (the Yangtzee), 3700 miles long, had no bridge across it until after 1949, and he even made the genesis of Tabasco interesting.
He alleges that "sterling" derives from a word meaning "easterner"--I don't have the book with me, Dutch or German along the lines of "osterling"--by way of the Hanseatic League and that guild's assurance of quality. Wikipedia--which I am more and more inclined to take as gospel in a way I hope James Surowiecki (The Wisdom of Crowds), would approve--agrees, with reservations.
---
Bookclub two days later (Thursdays are the Other one, not the neighborhood one) had the least book-oriented conversation of my experience. At one point I tried to segue from someone's trip to Israel to the book by asking her if she swam in the Dead Sea (yes, and her experience made a good story), but it didn't work. Didn't anyone like the history? Or how China invented percussion drilling and techniques the West wouldn't credit itself with for a thousand years? Or how Kurlansky skillfully wrote the new, all-inclusive history, with, e.g., a contextual aside about Columbus and genocide that acknowledged the fact without being either flagellatory or apologetic?
I brought two different seaweed salads from Wild Oats, because of salt and because of Wide Sargasso Sea.
Yesterday Maven was walking by the house on her way to work when I came out on my way to work. I walked Shadowfax alongside and we--Maven and I, not my bike--talked until we reached her office. This morning she was walking by again when I emerged, in much different clothes and without my bike. She correctly deduced that today I would drive to work. She's clever like that.
It is handy, using a car at lunch, especially when RDC is away and I can do errands during the day instead of prolonging Blake's already lengthened day. I returned a thing for RDC and purchased new earbuds and sunglasses. I broke the stem of the previous earbuds' left side underfoot some months ago, and for many weeks the right bud has preferred to be in two or more pieces because apparently I don't know how to clean them. Finally the actual speaker piece entirely disappeared, along with both pairs of non-prescription sunglasses, so I bought new ones of each. This means that at least one pair of sunglasses is due to surface soon.
I still have errands to run after work: paper for invitations to a party my sister's having, groceries including a dish for bookclub tonight, and hopefully a new spray bottle for Blake. The nozzle on his current bottle works only haphazardly (and isn't clogged, not even with that orange mineral build-up our water deposits), and the only other bottles we have in the house otherwise have dispense jets instead of sprays. Fluid emerging from them looks like the meningitis vaccination UConn delivered in spring of '93, so high-powered that it punctured skin and dissipated into muscle without time-wasting needles.
Friday I went to REI to spend our member's dividend. If RDC had been home, we'd probably have a GPS. My goal was a triathlon suit. I don't know what brands REI might usually stock, but at this point it offered only Danskin unitards and plenty of them. I took a large and an extra-large into the fitting room, already dubious about the minimal padding at the crotch for biking: enough to interfere with swimming, not enough to comfort even a sprint-distance bike ride. I tried on the large first--I live in hope--and it was fine in its lower half. I had to struggle to get the zipper up my ribcage, though, and as soon as I raised my arms it unzipped a little in what I imagine it would prefer to be a lot under the added strain of running. I had raised my arms to see how my breasts were contained, and goddamn, I don't think anyone at Danskin has actually ever seen a breast.
For starters, the struggle to close the zipper indicated an insufficiency of material at the bust. With the zip closed, my breasts were smashed southward. I could see my nipples--flimsy fabric--and they were farther south than I hope to see them before I'm 70. I hauled them up above a seam just below the bustline that suggested but did not provide support. I ran in place in the fitting room, and it was an ugly sight. My breasts sloshed from side to side and downward. I tried on a medium, hoping for more support, and the bottom was still fine but the top only constrictive.
Safely back in an actual bra, I sought a salesperson. First I found two men, neither of whom either had breasts or was an athlete. Then I found a woman who was an athlete but almost entirely lacked breasts, lucky wench. I asked her, just to be clear, if this seriously was meant to be the only garment worn during a triathlon. Yes. She suggested I could add bike shorts over it and a bra under it, and with those additions the point of buying a unitard would be what? This I didn't speak. The suit still would have shoved my bosom down and to the sides and, I now resentfully imagine, smashed them out and under the bra; and why would I wear padding during the swim and run if I didn't have to?
This is what I'm going to race in, since there no nudity is permitted in transition areas: my running shorts, of a loose but flimsy fabric that I haven't swum in but which I think will be okay; an athletic bra, because it supports and restrains adequately; and a running shirt I spent part of the dividend on, which unlike my usual running attire comes as far up my sternum as my swimsuit does (reducing drag); and for the bike portion, bike shorts on top of running shorts. If the shorts in the water are weirdly floaty or a hindrance or if the elastic waist wants to crawl down my torso and off my person, I can add my tankini bottom over them. Running shorts under bike shorts is the problem: I don't particularly want the former embedded in my crotch but that's where they might end up.
I want someone to justify a triathlon suit to me. No one suggests wearing the same footwear throughout--yes, swim in sneakers! run in molded biking shoes with a metal cleat! bike barefoot!--so why one piece of clothing?
Eh. I am doing a sprint-distance triathlon, maybe only one. I am not competing in but only completing it. I don't need gear.
