In Which I Determine It’s Time to Blow This Pop Stand

Okay, so first I must confess that it seems we are, indeed, moving to Moscow, but don’t ask me anything more about it yet because that is truly all I know. Could be in a few weeks or it could be end of June. But I will keep you posted.

So in the spirit of purging and streamlining, I attacked a set of dresser drawers on Monday. It was long overdue: I jam socks and underwear into the top drawer without folding anything, and I have no idea exactly what I have in there. The middle two drawers are full of shirts, and many of those I never wear. And the bottom drawer holds a mélange of black tights and gym clothes, but also, I discovered, two mini skirts I bought in 1985.

(If I can make an aside, I am proud to say, they still fit! I distinctly remember wearing them while sitting, astride, on the back of various motorcycles in Taiwan, because I refused to sit sidesaddle the way the more demure Chinese girls did. But I digress.)

So I triaged the drawer contents. I was ruthless, and culled a large laundry basket full of clothes that are, practically speaking, perfectly fine, but in all honesty, I just don’t wear. My drawers are now positively spacious.

I further separated out a smaller pile of items that just belong in the trash. I had underwear from before the children were born, and, while cool and even sexy underwear has always been rather a point of pride for me, these items, purchased in the late 1990s, have lost all their elasticity. Imagine, if you dare, what happens to a thong when the elastic dies: it gets really, really long and just . . . never mind. The image is too awful.

Several items did qualify as maternity underwear, tis true. I had purged shortly after arriving here when a Dear Girlfriend caught sight of some of them and sighed. But obviously some things slipped through the net. So out they went along with a maternity unitard (purchased in 1997), a t-shirt with absolutely no shape left, some dead sports tops (the kind with a built–in bra, but now incapable of holding water, let alone doing any real bra work). And two or three pairs of cotton underwear, purchased from Victoria’s Secret before the turn of the century. They had, I confess, holes.

It wasn’t a large pile, and all of it fit into a plastic grocery bag. I took it to the trash and forgot about it.

Yesterday (Tuesday), I was in the back yard, cleaning the guinea pig cage. I happen to look into Pani Babka’s garden. She’s my 80-something neighbor who speaks no English and who, in spite of a genuinely kind heart and generous nature, manages to repeatedly, although unintentionally, humiliate me.

There is laundry hanging on the clothesline in her garden . . . underwear . . . huh . . . remarkably sexy underwear for an 80-something woman, now that I think about it . . . MY underwear!

Pani Babka has trashpicked my underwear.

It is, indeed, time to leave Bratislava.

New Topic:

This morning, Baboo announces, “I just realized! I’ve never been this old before!”

You and me, both.

Another New Topic:

I am now brunette.