waist not, want not

A full house here last night - someone in every bedroom and on the sofa too. A new tenant, Mary Fay, a young actress from Halifax, just moved into my spare room, usually called the Vancouver room. Charles still inhabits the top floor, Maggie and her boyfriend live in the basement flat, and last night, my son came for supper, stayed for Jon Stewart and crashed on the couch. It reminded me of the days (and nights) when my kids' friends seemed to live here, and there were bodies everywhere. Live, hungry, noisy bodies. My current guests are quiet, thankfully, and feeding them is not my job. A whole new world.

The weather is unbelievable - so warm and sunny, you'd think you were in some civilised climate and not Canada at all. The heat is scarily inappropriate - ten degrees tomorrow! - but it's hard to stay disapproving for long. I walked to Yonge Street in the sun today, to buy some new jeans. (Everything I wear is from second-hand stores except underwear, shoes, jeans, and fashionable but cheap stuff from Monoprix, in France. And yes, I know it's strange to declare myself a frugalista who flies to France to shop at the equivalent of Woolworth's. Ah well. My right-wing friend Paul has called me a champagne socialist for years. Actually, I'm a Prosecco socialist.)

Anyway, some months ago, still under the influence of sensible French eating, I went jeans-shopping at Gap with my daughter and came home with a pair of size 4 jeans. Even as I paraded about in them, I knew this was absurd - size 4? Who are we kidding? I'm not eating THAT sensibly. Must be a special new kind of sizing to flatter the middle-aged. And though not as low-rise as hers, they were still low enough that I always had to tuck in my stomach when wearing them. Tiresome.

Anyway, I am in full carb-loading-to-survive-winter mode, and the little jeans hurt. As my mother-in-law used to quip, "My shoe size is an 8, but a 10 feels sooo good." So I went to the Levi's store on Yonge Street and poured myself into a bigger pair. And what a pair - designed, obviously, for bulging old farts, they're a deliciously stretchy design called Figure Enhancers. "Perfectly slimming," says the tag. "Flattens your tummy and slims your shape. Sits at waist." That's the important part - SITS AT WAIST. Despite the usual teeny tiny zipper, they rise up to the waist like real pants, not like the silly, shrunken, stick figure suck-in-your-gut muffin-top pants. They hold the belly IN, not force it to dangle over the waist band. All that spandex molds the folds. What a marvel, eh? We boomers now get geriatric Levis.

I think Stephen Harper brought in a budget today. Luckily, I was too busy trying to do up the teeny tiny zipper of my new magic high-rise pants to pay the slightest attention.