Back to School Shopping

Looking in my closet, you wouldn't think that I need any new clothes. I own so many clothes that my camera does not have a wide enough angle lens to take a picture of all my clothes. I own so many clothes that if I wore a different outfit each teaching day, I would not have to repeat a single item of clothing (excluding shoes) until well past the midpoint of the semester. I own so many clothes ... well, you get the picture. Unfortunately, they are all cold-weather clothes, and it is still very much a warm-weather time of the year. To make matters worse, the math building is not air conditioned, and I might end up teaching a class of 30 students in an un-air conditioned room on the 3rd floor. (I have asked for the "good classroom" -- one of the two regular sized rooms with central air -- but I suspect that other people have, too.) So yesterday I went shopping.

I always have a hard time finding warm-weather clothes. I prefer drab colors (damn you color cabal for denying me navy blue this season!) and simple styles. Summer clothes tend to be light or bright colors (you can not make me wear orange), made of filmy fabrics, and decorated with flounces and ruffles and lace and other decorative nonsense.

With the fall styles already out, I had no trouble finding low rise corduroy pants completely inappropriate to wear while teaching calculus. (They appear not to have the red on the web page; if I bought them -- which I won't because I already have enough cold-weather clothes inappropriate for teaching calculus -- I would get the red.) I also found (and bought) a very well-fitting wool/mohair sweater. (It fits so well that I could use it as a sloper for altering knitting patterns! The yarn is so nice I could rip the whole thing out and recycle it! There were just too many reasons to buy YET ANOTHER SWEATER.) In addition to the sweater that I don't need, I bought a ridiculous summery shirt that is probably inappropriate for teaching even if I wear something underneath it, a long-sleeved shirt that I will probably not end up wearing until well into the semester, and three short-sleeved shirts that I don't love but will wear because they are brown (2 of them) and black (the 3rd).

In other back-to-school shopping news, I am flipping out because I have not yet painted the trim in the sewing room. Get this: The reason that the room is always a mess is because I don't have the right kind of storage furniture in there. All the best storage and filing stuff is in the stores at back to school time. It is logistically impossible to put more furniture in the room before the trim is painted. If I don't paint soon, I will miss my chance! (So why am I not painting? Because I don't have any painting clothes?)

My hair is still an open problem. It is well on its way to recovering from the bad haircut that I got in May, but I'm unsure what the next step is.