Reading: Pale Fire and Middlemarch.

Watching: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, season one. You will be assimilated.

Moving: 15' Nordic Track; some abs, some deltoids, some triceps

14July 2002: Bastille Day

Happy Bastille Day.

Pity me, for I have bra-shopped.

Yet it was after that painful experience that I Nordic Tracked. My bra size has changed, though that was not my immediate impetus. My circumference is less--less muscle--but my cup size has increased--more fat.

Furthermore, I'm between cup sizes in a lot of styles. A larger cup puckers with excess but a smaller cup does not contain them. That's verging on TMI.

A salesclerk measured me and asked what I needed.

I had a traumatic experience in college, sitting--still, mind you, not seat-dancing or anything--at a table with gay SLH and small-breasted HEB, when my cheap (T.J. Maxx, probably) bra snapped, cup from strap, with an audible pop and a (mercifully forgotten) immediate plunge. Since then, I prefer my bras to be solid. No spaghetti straps, and preferably the material of the cup should continue into the strap.

Also no padding. I don't need more. Also I never show cleavage. A v-neck shirt is as racy as I ever want to be. Therefore I don't want pushing or shaping.

I want not to bounce.

I summed this up to the clerk with, "Well, I need support, but I prefer comfort. And I have serious breasts, not these charming little accessories all the trendy young things are sporting these days." Or something. Her laugh seemed genuine, but she might merely have been very good.

So I have new bras.

I looked here and there for a dress. Dresses good. Bras bad. Dresses pretty. Bras stupid.

I found a skirt that I craved, a dark violet unwaisted just-above-the-knee linen, discounted 50%. Yet still five score dollars and ten.*

I have to bring my camera next time and--small matter--use it while driving. Driving down the exit ramp, which is next to the receiving area, I saw the following sign:

Be Prepared to Stop When Flashing

I'll keep that in mind.

* This phrase, though coy, I use because of Can I Get There by Candlelight? which arrived Friday. I love online used bookstores. That was one of the few non-Marguerite Henry horse books I liked, and I liked it because of the ghostly time travel more than because of the pony.