Pretty in Pink

Woowee. What a weekend. Briton and I started our love-fest-weekend on our Friday night date. After a hearty platter of Sveedish meatballs, we wandered the corridors of Ikea and admired the clever closet organizers. Then, on Saturday, we each went running (separately) and I spent some time hunting and gathering. Enter Embarrasing Story (if you are male and get skittish when reading the word “bra” and “lingerie”, do not read this next paragraph. Consider yourself warned).

It’s like this: I really needed a new bra. I’ve been wearing the same dingy, maternity bra for over a year. Victoria’s Secret has it beat when it comes to buying bras. For the uninitiated, you should know that buying a bra is a pain in the neck when you never know what size to buy because when you’re nursing and weaning and then getting pregnant again and nursing and weaning you’re carrying around a moving target. They’re like the cycles of the moon. Waxing and waning. Waxing and waning. Right now they’re waning and I’m whining because the bra I have just isn’t doing its job correctly. I will spare you further detail.

So there I am, in the Ooo-la-la Store because they measure you and then hand you that nifty box in your correct size. I really like that Box System. Plus, a lady stands attentively outside your door and asks how you’re doing. She's really attentive. I finally make my choice – a very industrial-strength, every-day type of bra. As industrial strength as VS can get, anyway. No lace. No frills. Plain Jane. And then I switch gears and think about my next item. Lingerie. Come on – it’s Valentine’s Day, after all – and I know I don’t really put much stock in the commercialization of love – but still – this is something I’d been thinking about long before Valentine’s Day. It’s just a coincidence that I happened to have time to go shopping for this sort of thing on said day. Well! Lesson learned: NEVER GO TO VICTORIA’S SECRET ON VALENTINE’S DAY … especially if it is the one closest to your ward boundaries.

So there I am, clutching a diverse selection of lingerie. I look up and unavoidably see and make eye contact with someone from our ward. The husband of my visiting teacher. He, too, is making his selections. He says, “This is embarrassing.” Embarrassing? Try, mortifying. I tell him, “Do not go to the cash register. Don’t follow me!” I make my purchases. The friendly cashier lays each piece in turn, the industrial-strength bra and risqué lingerie, on the counter to carefully wrap them in the bright pink tissue paper. I make small chat and decline acceptance into the Angel Program. I turn to leave and who is standing next in line, fully in view of what the cashier was wrapping up? Yeah. He'd followed me. The next day in church, my visiting teacher and I laugh about it. She told me that her husband had come home bursting with the news: “You’ll never guess who I saw at Victoria’s Secret. Someone you’d never, ever expect to see there!”

Hey! ...What the heck!?