Hemlines.

I'm short. It's obvious. For a very long time growing up I would struggle when buying pants to find ones that actually were the appropriate length. For a good stretch the Gap carried ankle length jeans that worked, then I had to shift to Old Navy and finally, once I got out of college and law school I just broke down and recognized that a) yes, you can have jeans hemmed, despite what my mom used to tell me, and b) essentially every pair of non-jeans, non-capri pants I might ever want to buy will be manufactured for a giant, so I may as well just get over it and get everything shortened, professionally. "Professionally" in this context is a bit of a strong word because it rarely means actually having a real seamstress do the work (like the time I managed to snag a Burberry skirt at Syms and then took it to Burberry claimed it was a few seasons old and that I got it at the outlet and they took it down two whole sizes for me, shortened it and it only cost $10)... no usually it means taking your stuff to the dry cleaners and hoping for the best.

Now I ask you, why is it that whenever you take pants to get them shortened the person doing the shortening never wants to make them short enough? Even if they mark them short enough, when you come back and get them and try them on with the same pair of shoes they're always longer than you wanted. For a while I thought maybe it was just me, then I was at Banana with Dave one day and he was getting pants hemmed and the woman there gave him the same argument--- "wait until you wash them, they'll shrink." "Sit down and see how far they come up".... okay, fine but when I'm sitting I'll most likely be behind a desk or behind a table so I don't fricking care how short my pants are when I sit down, I want them to be the right length when I'm standing up! Who wants to have a pair of Burberry signature plaid pants with cuffs that drag on the ground?

Needless to say, on Saturday when I picked up my maternity jeans (the ones from the garbage bag incident discussed below) and my lined, wool Liz Lange pants (thank god these were ready since yesterday morning it was all of 9 degrees on the train platform) they were of course, both too long. Sure, I could take them back and ask them to be fixed, but that would be another week that would go by without having the pants to wear and I'm afraid at this stage, I don't have that week to spare.