Letter to my younger self: low-rise jeans

One day I was looking through some very old posts, and thought it would be fun to revisit them by replying with a letter to my younger self. Here is one from 2009, when I was a frustrated young mom trying not to look frumpy at least some of the time. You'll have to bear with me through the sheer frivolity of it, and the bad grammar. I couldn't make up my mind whether to use first person plural or second person when talking about my current self and younger self, so I did both.

Oh my goodness! We got home from the Fair Oaks Mall in Fairfax, VA, about an hour ago. We were there for four hours +, I've never seen so much denim in my life, and we came home with nothing!

I have been wishing for a nice, flattering, comfortable pair of jeans that are casual enough to be worn every day, but can be dressed up a little with nice boots and a top. All my jeans sag on my butt. They are not cute, they are raggedy. I have a hole in the knee of my Old Navy jeans that I bought a couple years ago, not because I really liked them, but because they'd do, and they were dirt-cheap. Well, they did their time. I won't even go into all the other pairs of jeans I have and hate for one reason or another. I have bought so many pairs of jeans in the last 15 years, and I don't think I've ever had even one good pair.

During our hour-long drive to the biggest mall around, I told Tim I would walk away today, rather than waste money on another pair of jeans that is less than perfect. I never in a million years thought that that's exactly what would happen!

I must have tried on 25 pairs of jeans, and looked at 100 more. I kept throwing them on and strutting out to show Tim. Uh-uh. Uh-uh. No way, get back in there!

I'm in a real conundrum. Whenever I shop in the "grownup" departments, or stores like the Gap, Express, Banana Republic, etc., they didn't carry anything small enough for me. Or maybe they were all sold out of them that day. Everything is too roomy. I know that I ought to be thanking my lucky stars for this, as a 30-year-old who's given birth twice, but I'm frustrated.

So the solution ought to be in the junior departments, or stores like American Eagle or Aeropostale, you'd think. Well, someone decided that all teenagers need to wear ultra low-rise jeans, that barely come up over the crack. These jeans hug me the way I want, but they are not meant to be worn while changing a diaper on the floor. Why can't any of them come up any higher? I want a pair of jeans that will not give me a muffin-top, is that too much to ask?

Tim thinks I ought to just suck it up and wear low-rise jeans because he thinks they flatter me, but I say, no way! I am not settling for jeans I'm not comfortable in, and I don't care what they look like.

Dear Rachael from 2009,

Oh my goodness! You were not being dramatic. It really was that bad, and I've seen a lot of things come and go since then. There ought to be a class-action lawsuit for all of us who were victimized by low-rise jeans.

I've got good news and bad news from 2025. The good news: it gets SO much better. The bad news? Buckle up because it gets a lot worse first.

You're going to phase out your low rise bootcuts and flares in favor of low rise skinny jeans, and that will be it for awhile. They'll look good with tall boots, and you'll feel really put together for your date nights, fun family outings and school events when you throw on a long top or sweater over that combo. And your top will really need to be long, better yet kind of loose too, because that low-rise waistband creates a muffin top. Sometimes you'll pull the look off well, and other times the proportions will be a little off. Your super-duper low-rise jeans and your super long top will elongate your torso and make your legs look shorter.

When you get home from whatever it was you needed real clothes for, you will waste no time peeling the shrink-wrap off your calves and you'll exhale with relief when you're wearing something comfy. Fortunately for us, we can mostly get by with comfy clothes or workout clothes, which often double as comfy clothes. The word "athleisure" will enter your vocabulary at some point.

You're never going to be a paragon of fashion, and that's perfectly OK. Sometimes you just want to look presentable and feel good about yourself, and right now that is really hard for you. You only have a couple things in your closet that look nice, and you hate wearing them. Most days it's the same old yoga pants and ponytail; it's hard to make an effort when you're wrangling toddlers.😬

But hang in there, I promise things are going to start to turn around.

Somewhere around 2014 or 2015, you'll start to follow a blog that will change your life. It's called Putting Me Together, and the lovely Audrey is going to help you dress for your body type, build a mix-and-match wardrobe, and even point you in the direction of a pair of jeans that isn't torture to wear. You'll order them from Nordstrom, free shipping both ways. Yes, it will be a little spendier than you're used to, but one good pair of jeans is worth more than a closet full of cheap, crappy ones, trust me. At some point soon after that, low rise will yield to midrise and even higher. Best of all, within another few years, skinny jeans will become just one option of MANY.

You'll be a kid in a candy store with all the possibilities. There's mid-rise, high-rise, and sky-high-rise; full length and cropped, straight, wide, flare, bootcut, and trouser. There are mom jeans, dad jeans, girlfriend and boyfriend jeans. Only a select few are in our closet; in fact I have to remind myself I don't need them all. But every pair I do own passes the "changing a diaper on the floor" test. Ask me how I know.😉 

Sincerely,

Rachael from 2025

Cropped raw hem jeans with Birkenstocks forever!

Merry & Bright

I am now back to blogging about prettier things. For now.😊

I had so much fun decorating for Christmas this year. I had some extra motivation too, since we hosted Tim's work Christmas party earlier this month. I'm so happy with how it all came together. We had Annie take this picture of us a couple hours before the party. It was a very casual affair as you can see. Tim slaved at the stove all afternoon, making pasta sauce and shrimp casserole (not shrimp this time, I remember now. His assistant is allergic to them. I can't remember what he used instead, but it was good). My contribution was the 70 meatballs I made the weekend before, which was a big overestimation of how much we needed. We'll have meatballs for a good long time.

While not decorations per se, I had to snap some pictures of some of our plants that are at their best in December. The camellias bloomed beautifully, died when they were hit with frost a couple weeks ago, and then bloomed again. I don't know if they'll make it through the next couple of freezing nights, but they're always so lovely while they last. Some of the grasses have been changing colors too. 

I gave our old snowman door hanger a makeover.

A camellia

I took an old wreath I thought I didn't like anymore, and added some arborvitae clippings, berry picks and a bow. Amazing!

We went to a Christmas event at a farm right after Thanksgiving, and I took home this little bouquet. It lasted me weeks, and I replaced some of the stems throughout, but it was perfect for this little corner behind the sink. I think I'd always like to see some sort of floral arrangement in this corner.

I don't know what the red berry-looking things are, but they were my favorite. They lasted a good long while, then turned black and I threw them away.

I need to be more careful about what I put on this board. These past couple weeks have seen me overwhelmed by the simplest of tasks. Just the other day I had to run out last-minute for the bread and juice boxes I said I'd provide for the boys' class Christmas parties. I could have had Tim grab them while he was out the night before, but I couldn't even manage that. I also broke the little glass bottle in the picture while I was cleaning up the counter. So far no one has even asked where it is.

I went around tying ribbons on everything one day. I warned my family that if anyone stood still for long enough, they'd end up wearing one too. It was kind of a trend on Instagram, but you know, ribbons have been a staple of Christmastime for many, many years.

He would always rather not be wearing pants.

For the first time since Okinawa, we (what's the past tense of "forego?" "Forewent?") decided to forego a real Christmas tree, and we splurged on a nine foot Balsam Hill one during Black Friday. I had been saying for years it was time to replace the crappy old fake tree that had been setting up in the office; I wanted a nice big one that would fill that fill that window. So there was that factor. Another thing was that Tim permanently extended our kitchen table after Thomas started using a regular chair. When I say it is permanently extended, I mean he put in the leaf and reinforced it from the bottom, and used glue and made sure that the cracks are sealed, and it will never ever go back to the smaller size. That means there's less space on either side of the table, and the only spot that made sense for our main Christmas tree to go in the past is no more. The tree in the office is now THE Christmas tree. I also added another skinny fake Christmas tree to a corner in the dining room. I'm not sure how I feel about having no Christmas tree in our main living area. The one in the office is gorgeous, but so far away. I also miss the smell of a real tree, and I might have scrounged at Lowe's for some Fraser fir clippings that I could put in water and simmer on the stove.

So far away!

This is what is occupying the spot where we used to put a seven foot real Christmas tree. In this picture it has the little gifts for the Navy-Marine Corps Relief Society volunteers on it. As much as I miss having a Christmas tree here, I really like the way this looks.

My work is 99.9 percent of the way done, and now I can just enjoy. We will be right here on Christmas Day for the first time in three years (I think?), and I'm looking forward to that. 

Once upon a scalp

Tim sent me an Instagram Reel yesterday, one of maybe a handful a day that he sends, and it was about the state of a woman's home and mind after it had been announced at her kids' school that there were some lice cases reported. She hadn't even found any herself!

It made me laugh, and then instantly took me back to fall of 2019. This is something I might not have mentioned at the time because it was too embarrassing then. But my kids started bringing lice home from school repeatedly over a period of about three months, and I nearly lost my mind. We had never had lice before in our family, and the kids had been to several schools. At the time we had our first case, they'd been going to this school for about a year-and-a-half.* 

Annie and Joey reuniting when she got home from camp

Want to know what was the worst thing about it? I felt like I was the only one raising the alarm. I called the school nurse, and she told me that the protocol is not to alert all the parents at the school; just use the shampoo, comb out the nits, and send your kid back the next day. No note? That didn't sit well with me, so I texted the parents of the girls' friends. The first time wasn't so hard, but then it happened again. And again. I was never once on the receiving end of a text that said, "Check your girls' hair. I found lice.😭😭😭" I was always the sender. Everyone probably thought WE were the problem, and my mortification was profound. But my conscience wouldn't let me keep it to myself. And my need to find a solution would not let me keep it to myself, so you know I was asking my Marine wife network on Facebook. The Nix that you get over the counter, that the Naval Health Clinic kept giving us, was not helping. I had tried every remedy, had the girls wear their hair in braids, all the things.

In February, the 5th graders got their chance to go to a little camp for about two or three nights, as was customary. I did not want my daughter to go, but I let her anyway because it was a big deal for her and her little friends. It turned out later to be one of the last normal things she'd get to do with her school friends for awhile. I checked her hair when she got back, and yet again, I found nits.

The consensus on Facebook seemed to be that the only medication that works when nothing else doesn't, is Sklice. Sklice is ivermectin as it so happens. I knew nothing about ivermectin, still don't. All I knew was that, according to my Facebook people, Sklice was highly effective--lice gone, nits gone, instantly. They had all tried the Nix first, but the issue is that the lice these days are becoming resistant to it. Now I knew what I needed to beat this thing once and for all. There was just one problem: our kids' pediatrician refused to prescribe it. After much back and forth, and me tearing my hair out (pardon the pun), Tim decided to go over to the Naval Health Clinic and pay him a visit.

He wasn't going there to intimidate him or anything crazy like that. He just wanted to have a conversation man-to-man. It started with something like this: "Are you married? You have a wife at home?" He then went on to seek the man's compassion and understanding, because surely he must know that when Mama is repeatedly washing and combing kids' hair, turning the house inside out, vacuuming everything, washing every piece of bedding, quarantining the stuffed animals, and repeating this process every few weeks, she is NOT happy. When Mama's not happy, nobody's happy. He did not like having to come home to this every day, and for that matter, he probably started to feel concern that one day he'd get home and see the place burned down. He explained that I had done my research, and the word is that this Sklice stuff is what will actually take care of the problem after everything else has failed, and would he please prescribe it for us?

The doctor heard him out and sympathized, but wouldn't budge. He explained to Tim that he thought the medication was very strong, it would do more harm than good, and that we really didn't want that. Tim told me that he was very sincere, and we both had to respect that he stuck to his guns. With a sigh I thanked him for making the effort. Then realizing that I might have lice myself, or could likely have it very soon, I reached out to my own doctor at the Naval Clinic, and he prescribed me enough to share. Correction: he prescribed enough for me to use more than once.

I was sporting braids too.

With that prescription in hand, I thought my problems would soon be over. The Naval Clinic pharmacy had no Sklice in stock, so I'd have to get it from a civilian pharmacy. But not one had it. I expanded my radius, and I called pharmacies in and out of network with Tricare. No luck. Then out of curiosity more than anything, I started calling pharmacies all over the state, even out of state. No Sklice anywhere. (Interestingly enough, I just looked it up and I see it is currently available without a prescription. Not only that I can get generic ivermectin curbside at Walmart in two hours. I wonder what our old pediatrician would say to that?)

So much for the Sklice. It was the old Nix/combing/washing/vacuuming/bagging up the stuffed animals and extra pillows/rinse, repeat as many times as it takes once again. Then came spring of 2020. Finally, with school shut down, a break from the stupid lice. Wherever it kept coming from (apparently not us!) is where it stayed. I always tell Tim the silver lining for us with the Covid lockdowns, was that they stopped the spread of lice for dang sure. Nothing less would have done it.

I wasn't as vigilant with the boys' hair at first. I remember the first time I went to check Timmy's hair, I didn't even have to comb through it. I could see the lice crawling around as he sat there. It was like being in a horror movie.

That's my blog these days, folks. There's isn't life great, aren't the seasons beautiful, aren't the kids cute? And then by the way, let me tell you about the time we got lice over and over. Haha. At least I spared you some gross pictures. But if your school does give you the courtesy of a heads-up (sorry again) about lice, and you want to know what it is you're looking for, I can help.😊

*Little side rant here: this school had the reputation of being the nicest public school in the area. When Tim and I were house-hunting later that year, we happened to chat with someone in one of the neighborhoods we were driving around, who had worked as school nurse for the entire county. She claimed that the other schools always had lice going around and this one didn't. She didn't know that we had kids going there already, and that I was now the proud owner of a deluxe lice comb with stainless steel teeth, not the standard issue plastic one that comes in the box of Nix. But yes, it was a very nice school. Good teachers, good families, everything updated, shiny and clean. Lice wasn't supposed to happen in a place like this (that's of course a myth--lice do not recognize school districts). And I get it, it's embarrassing; nobody gets it more than me. But the approach of "we're not going to talk about this" was just not doing anyone any favors. That place should have been closed for a good cleaning long before the pandemic, and at the very least, notes should have been sent.

Fall

It seemed like the end of summer hit me extra hard this year, I don't know why. I was in a little bit of a funk for a couple weeks, just not wanting to accept it. But fall always wins me over in the end, and as busy and tiring as the days can sometimes be (Thomas still not sleeping well doesn't help matters), I take the time whenever and wherever I can to just look around and take in all the beauty the season has to offer.

He is quite the little talker these days. Sometimes when I'm about to change his diaper he says, "Let's talk." His way of stalling, I guess.

I hosted our parish's Well-Read Mom meeting last month. The book was Peace Like a River, so I put a snowy scene on the TV to go with the book's wintry setting. 

Who doesn't love the first days of sweater weather, even when you know it's going to be 80 again in a day or two?🍂

Tim's parents came and stayed with us for just shy of two weeks, and that was really nice. Karen and Matt came for a few days too. We all celebrated Tim's birthday together, went on a few outings, kids' activities, and had the best weather the whole time.

Senior Night. She has been accepted into Appalachian State, and that is where I would say she is 99% likely going.

The feeling when you find that Old Navy puffer vest in your size😊

I always look forward to bringing this dinner back into rotation for fall and winter.

On Halloween, Tim and Delaney were in Raleigh, Annie was out with friends, and the other boys were trick-or-treating around here with kids their age, so it was just Thomas and I walking around. He was so excited. I brought the stroller for our loop around the neighborhood, but he was on foot and carrying his own bucket up until just the last few houses. There was a family in dinosaur costumes, and he was so fascinated. "Hi Dinosaur," he kept saying. He also wanted to touch their tails, which fortunately were nowhere near actual body parts. It was cute. A bonus two-year-old in middle age is absolutely delightful, even as it is exhausting.

The view outside Grace's window in Cincinnati, just because.