Instead, my robe, the one I thought might be fun to wear all the time (not to get all Dickensian), the one I purchased with cap and tassel for under $23 (so what did I expect?), that robe seems to have, in its see-through acetate way, solved this year's Halloween costume problem entirely.
Things would be tolerable if I weren't so, ahem, zaftiggily. You would think that flowing black robes would be the one wardrobe element where all sizes could be truly happy, but no. Don't think that -- you will be all wrong.
I started with the Plus Size 1 robe. Wow... very... plus... With room for the whole family to swim, and check out how the sleeves skate down past my fingertips. Nice. Why, they're almost the same length as the hem, which is inexplicably almost at the knees. And I have short legs!
C'mon people. "Knuckle-swinging miniskirt made from a garbage bag" isn't the shoddy craftsmanship I've come to expect from the "whatever" school of design often associated with plus-size garments. Normally we fatties just bitch about horrible florals and capri pants that float down to the ankles. This suggests conspiracy theory.
This sucks.
Meanwhile, everyone agreed that the caps suck. ("Use bobby pins!" This is what the university ladies told each new shopper at the rather ambitiously named "Grad Expo." Where "Expo" equals "buy disappointing costume, walk across cafeteria-like "multipurpose" room to eat cookie, stare balefully at overpriced leather notebook holders with school logo, retire to empty table with four of the other seven people present to complain about how school rings cost -- would you believe it -- about six hundred bucks for anything not made of stainless steel.)
And some people agreed that the tassels suck. I mean, I think the tassels are very nice, but the cheap plastic gold-painted "2004" bobbing from the top definitely needs to be snip-snipped out of any mature age scenario.
As for the robes -- eh -- everyone seemed to find them tolerable (again, what do you expect for less than $23?), and only I was really disappointed, what with the sleeves past my fingertips and the hem not really past my knees and the mostly-open front (did you know only the top half zips closed?), all meaning that I better buy a black skirt and a black top if I'm going to walk.
I did try the robes for "normal" people -- perfect sleeves (yes, even in the 5'11" size, and I'm 5'6"), similar or slightly better hem length, but too snug around the middle to risk it. (She pauses to pat her "medicine pouches" tenderly.)
It all seems like a bad omen, and I think any feeling of giddy expectation over doing the traditional dances of a "COLLEGE GRADUATE" has passed. I don't know if I'm going to walk. I didn't walk for high school (early grad, happy grad, got-on-with-my-life grad), so maybe not walking is my thing. I'm planning for at least three more degrees (master's and doctorate in literature, something in astrophysics), so I could really become That Girl Who Never Walks Across the Stage and Therefore Never Gets Yelled at for Pausing for a Photo after Receiving Her Rolled-Up Paper Posing as a Degree.
(The university is already finger-wagging cranky about the possibility that someone might not keep walking, keep walking as the degree-baton is handed off. No time! No time!)
Yeah. I really don't want to shuffle across the stage like I'm seven and dressed up in Uncle Fester's cut-off nightshift.
Besides, the thing is at 9:30 in the morning on the Saturday. Would I do that to anyone I love? Do I even want to worry about Mom coping in an auditorium full of noise? And Mike... well, it's not like Mike is coming now. Some recent events have put us in an extremely dangerous place financially. (Which I would love to blog about, but you'll have to wait until traffic is clear.)
Thank goodness for grad school loans -- I can't actually afford to live in Vegas now, but I can't afford not to go to school there, either. (Suffice to say that I better get into two of the three online grad classes being offered, or I'm going to be hauling myself west very suddenly and with all of the credit cards on Defcon 11 standby.)
I'm fine. Everything's fine. I hate my robe and the house is messy and the future is uncertain, but the future is often coy like that, so really this boils down to me needing a maid and a seamstress. I'm going to be a much saner person exactly five weeks from now when my 10-hour-per-day unpaid job is over. Probably fatter, surrounded by even more half-packed boxes, and with noticeably less jingle in my penny loafers, but definitely saner.
(And my H'ween costume problem really is solved. If you're in Victoria, look for me and two of the other "pre-service" teachers to be knocking on your doors with volunteer teens in tow, begging for cans. And look for the photos here in a few weeks.)
Comments