It's Hard to Find A Bathing Suit in August

So Thursday night I'm driving to Memphis to meet up with my dad and stepmom. We're heading to Texas to visit my brother and his family. Kind of neat because I've only been to Texas once and it was a business trip so it was therefore immediately no fun. Kind of sad because my brother lives in the Texas equivalent of my home town. And it's August and in the middle of a heat wave. But anything to see my niece and nephew.

However, one thing that I'm not thrilled about is that both this trip and a trip I have to take immediately after require a bathing suit. I have not bought a bathing suit since 6 sizes ago. And let's just be honest. It has less to do with my fat than the fact that I live nowhere near a swimming pool and never remember to bring them when I go on vacation. Wearing a bathing suit doesn't really bug me that much anymore. Buying a bathing suit is what sucks.

Actually, I probably would've been fine buying a bathing suit in, say, May. The beginning of the season when all cute suits are available has long since past and the only thing left is a bunch of rejects on the clearance rack. Seeing as I buy nearly everything I own at Target, I went to see what I could get for a good price there.

But I forgot that Target went through a halter tankini phase this year. Let me clue the swimsuit designers in: A tankini does NOT make fat people feel like they're wearing a two-piece. It does NOT hide flaws and it does NOT do a better job than a brilliantly designed one-piece. AND a halter does NOT support the large breasts of the plus size woman nearly as well as you'd think.

After sorting through what seemed like hundreds of bathing suit bottoms and only two tops (quite literal there), I got desperate. The only matching bathing suit I'd found thus far was a floral tankini halter top with leopard print straps and a leopard print bottom. UGGO. So my desperation lead me to the maternity section. (and subsequently also to a major gripe of mine: RETAILERS. . .STOP PUTTING YOUR PLUS SIZE SECTION NEXT TO YOUR MATERNITY SECTION. ONE CAN EASILY DRIFT OVER WITHOUT REALLY NOTICING CAUSING PEOPLE TO LOOK AT YOUR STOMACH AND THE BOLD PEOPLE TO ASK WHEN YOU'RE DUE.)

I grabbed the cute maternity suit, the shitty leopard print one and then took a one-piece that was stuffed in the middle of a rack and two sizes too big to the dressing room. Joyfully the maternity suit was too big in all areas except for the boobs--which makes me fear pregnancy more than I already do. Besides the fact that I've lost nearly 10 lbs in the last 5 weeks and if it hadn't fit, I'd have been thrown into a hysteria that only french fries can cure.

The second suit was the one piece that fit through the boobs, but looks like I dropped a load in my pants--plus it's brown. (Thank you, mom, for the ass that resembles Kansas. Sometimes you can see a thunderstorm coming from miles away across my booty.) The third suit look like something even a transvestite couldn't pull off. So I went with simple, loaded pant one-piece.

Now I'm gonna be pissed off if I don't go swimming in the next week!