Pondering Panythose

Kate Middleton. We all love her. We all want her fabulous teeth and hair and clothes. Or at least I do. There was also a time when I wanted her husband. Hold up - this was back in the mid-90s when he was still attractive.

In the 10th grade, I was given a writing assignment titled "Me in 20 Years." I predicted that Prince William would abdicate the throne for me. You see, the British would not accept an American princess and I longed to be free of the paparazzi. So Wills and I moved to a little cottage in the English countryside, with a balcony off our bedroom that boasted a sweeping view of the hillside.

Fifteen years later, I live in a condo with a balcony, but it's not quite as glamorous as I once imagined. One time, I walked out there to find a cockroach crawling on an empty, sticky bottle of Mad Dog bum wine. I have a sneaking suspicion that this is where Kate's life and my life differ. You just know she has people to take care of that shit for her.

However, Kate and I do have something in common: an internal struggle regarding hosiery. To wear pantyhose or not to wear pantyhose? That is the question.

According to this article, Kate is bringing sheer pantyhose back into fashion. This fad may be unintentional, however, as the article posits that hose are a royal requirement, not a personal preference of Kate's. Kate wears hose due to royal pressure, while I do not wear hose due to peer pressure. The 2 of us should really grow a set.

I enacted my "no hose" rule a few years ago when I was in a friend's wedding. I asked a fellow (sister?) bridesmaid if she would be wearing hose with her gown, and I was laughed right out of the dressing room. Excuse me for being modest! Girls, if I can't win you over with decorum, allow me to appeal to your vanity. There are no ifs ands or buts about it - all legs look better in hose. They cover many a flaw. Yet, I wear dresses and skirts to work without hose in the name of fitting in, even though I feel a bit self-conscious about it. (I'm 100 years old and impossibly old-fashioned, I know.)

Kate may be new to the royal family, but that doesn't stop her from bending the rules. The sneaky princess is trying to pull one over on the House of Windsor! She apparently goes bare-legged when wearing open-toed shoes. Surely, a fashionista like her is aware of toe-less pantyhose. They have a rubber seam that goes around the balls of you feet, leaving your piggies free. People see your perfectly pedicured toes in peep-toe pumps and think, "Wow, her legs are so smooth and blemish-free. And that bitch has a flat stomach too!" Cardinal rule of hosiery: always choose control top.

Toe-less Hose

The open-toe is just one of many modifications made to traditional pantyhose over the years. I think it's safe to say that women's main complaint about pantyhose is the sagging crotch. Solution? Thigh highs.

I have owned only 1 pair of thigh highs in my life. I was 13. This is back when I was innocent enough to think crotchless pantyhose were designed solely for the wearer's comfort. During a shopping trip in the metropolis of Harrisburg, my Aunt Cathy bought me the black thigh highs along with a black leather jumper adorned with buckles and zippers. Don't worry - there's a perfectly reasonable explanation as to why a 13-year-old needed such an outfit. My friend Katie (not Katie Middleton, another Katie) and I were planning to re-create the Janet & Michael Jackson Scream video, and I could not find a pair of rubber pants anywhere in the Schuylkill Mall. Imagine that. The S&M get-up would have to suffice.

The more I wore the thigh highs, the more I liked them. No sagging crotch or pinching waistband! Easy to do the moonwalk in! At the time, my school dress code required navy blue hose or knee socks. Screw that. I asked my mom if I could get a pair of navy thigh highs to wear to under my plaid catholic school girl skirt. (This was years before I read Lolita, by the way.) Turns out there isn't much demand for thigh-highs in that particular hue, so I had to stick with the hose. But, trust me, the 7th grade would have been a lot more comfortable had Immaculate Heart allowed these...

Although it is many years too late to do me any good, I'm pleased to see that Kate is breathing new life into navy blue. That beautiful engagement dress of hers has inspired many copies, and I'm inclined to believe that today's little girls just might be lucky enough to find navy blue thigh highs. I hear it is William's favorite color. Sigh. That was probably my one opportunity to land him. If only. Then I could wear nude pantyhose guilt-free by blaming it all on the Queen. And I'd have hired help to clean up the Mad Dog spills.

Pretty as a princess in navy blue

Windy City Sans Wind

First thing's first - absolutely nothing of significance has happened since I last posted to this blog 13 months ago. We could analyze the fact that a simple 26 hours in a new place out of my daily routine is all it takes to get me motivated to blog again, but we shall save discussion of a career change for another day.

So let's jump write (get it?!) back into it...

This weekend, I took a one-day trip to Chicago. I had my heart set on getting a free ticket to Chicago this year, but I was thinking about the sweepstakes for Oprah's Farewell Spectacular, not a cardiology conference. I was concerned that much of this cardiology material would go over my head because I was attending in place of a doctor who backed out because he had to take his daughter to a Taylor Swift concert. (She sounds pretty spoiled, no?) Well, wouldn't ya know that as I sat in the airport on Friday afternoon awaiting my flight to Chicago, I learned via a celebrity gossip website (don't judge me) that Taylor Swift had cancelled said concert due to bronchitis. Harumph. Suddenly, the good doctor has a free weekend and I'm giving up a Saturday to science! Or as Ms. Swift would put it: He's cheer captain and I'm on the bleachers.

Upon landing at O'Hare, I received an email from Bank of America alerting me to suspicious activity on my debit card. I called the bank and learned that my account had been frozen due to a bogus $535 charge at a Wal-Mart in Sugar Hill, Georgia. Wherever that is. (It was kind of like that time I landed in Bangkok to find that my bank account had been frozen. Except you can use credit cards in Chicago. And the phones work. And people speak English. And it wasn't 110 degrees. And I wasn't a split second away from losing. my. shit.) I asked the customer service agent how they knew to deny the charge. "Well, most people don't spend $535 in Wal-Mart," she said. "But what if I tried to buy a TV? Are you saying I can't do that?" She gave a non-committal answer, and I decided to drop it. Whatever Big Brother tactics they're using to characterize my spending are obviously working.

The Saturday work meeting was shorter and more interesting than expected, so all good news there. Predictably, my name tag was misspelled, so I probably could have skipped the whole thing if we're getting technical.

And we were getting technical. One of the vendors at the meeting mistook me for something I'm not and began teaching me how to use a new device during a percutaneous cornoary intervention. Pulling the guidewire out of the catheter, she said, "See? Just like riding a bike." I nodded in agreement. The irony of her statement is not lost on me, seeing as I can perform neither of the aforementioned "simple" tasks.

The shorter meeting time meant more free time than expected, which was great, but also a bit of a tease. I had time to wander Navy Pier on Friday night and then take a quick bus tour of the highlights on Saturday afternoon, but not enough time to actually DO anything. Nonetheless, it was exciting to be in a big city again! I felt my spirits rising and I walked down into the train station and breathed it all in. There's just something about the aroma of underground public transportation in mid-July. Smells like college.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that there are some very good-looking men using public transport these days (decidedly not like college). Friendly to the environment and cute! On Friday night, 6 uniformed police officers suddenly boarded the bus on which I was traveling. Concerns for public safety aside, this was very exciting because 2 of them were gorgeous (like could be butt doubles for Mark-Paul Gosselaar on NYPD Blue gorgeous). One of Chicago's finest stood facing me, directly over my seat. We briefly made eye contact and I'm pretty sure he was looking down my shirt. Mostly because I was pulling the old squeeze arms together to create cleavage move. But still! (Ladies, don't even pretend you don't do this. You're lying.)

I then boarded a train and encountered 2 attractive young (and intoxicated) men with a female friend, engaged in singing and general merriment. During their 2nd round of  Air Supply's "All Out Of Love" - and by 2nd round, I mean continuously yelling out "I'm all out of love; I'm so lost without (high note!) you" - they caught me watching them. One guy yelled, "this girl wants to join in!" I did. I really did. But, you see, I made a promise to myself to not get inappropriately drunk on this trip and embarrass myself in front of my co-worker, thus shifting the entire power dynamic of the office come Monday morning. Trust me, it can happen. The guy continued, "do you want to come drinking with us?" My inner Marilyn said yes, yes, yes! Exiting a train with strangers in a strange city is exactly the type of poor decision I would usually make, but it's also the type of poor decision that could cause me to lose all credibility with the co-worker (at least in my mind; sometimes I worry too much). So Maureen said no. She is such a DRAG sometimes.

Chicago: The Land of (Lost) Opportunity

View of the Skyline

The Bean in Millennium Park

The Magnificent Mile

Sears Tower (that isn't actually named Sears Tower anymore)