My pants are hemmed with paperclips

While that title is sort of a beautifully ironic metaphor, it's sadly my reality. Obviously, I need to just get my pants hemmed--especially since my own mother is an excellent seamstress and could easily do it in a few minutes, for free.

I keep putting it off for a few reasons: a) because they are the perfect length for my brown strappy wedges--however; right now it's somewhere around 7* outside, and I am not wearing strappy shoes for at least four more months (and my brown boots don't have high enough heels to keep my hem off the ground). Of course, if you know me at all, you can probably guess my letter b) sentimental reasons.

When I was a junior in college, I lived with Holly. At some point towards the end of the year, we sort of panicked about not having jobs for the summer and set up a ton of interviews. However, if you've been a college student, you understand the over-the-winter weight gain. We snuck over the Eagle's Nest waaaay too many nights for smoothies and deep fried chicken strips. We routinely over-indulged at brunch. We both were desperately trying to use our meal plan to its full potential, so we'd eat as many meals as possible in Naz--including our breakfasts, which were delicious.

We were still kidding ourselves about our "working out"--which consisted of walking to the Erickson center, lapping the track a few times, and then walking on the elipticals on the lowest setting for 30 minutes--while still carrying on a full conversation and watching the intermural basketball games on the court below. It was not nearly enough to combat the pan of muffin bread we made and promptly devoured every night.

Since we were college students, our "fancy" clothes were jeans and a polo. We both wore sweatpants and NWC t-shirts most of the time and had nothing that was interview appropriate. So we did what broke roommates do (and just to give you a sense of our broke/cheapness: for the final three months of school we managed to get by without purchasing toilet paper. Instead, we would just steal loose rolls from around campus and shove them in our backpacks). We made one pair of pants work for the both of us and share them on interviews.

Now Holly and I shared lots of clothes--like shirts, dresses, skirts, camis, hats, scarves, etc. One thing we did not share, however, was pants. Holly was in an inch or so south of six feet. I am barely pushing five. My waist was approximately a size smaller than hers, so the pants fit my middle, but they were those crazy extra long pants supermodels have to buy.

Over the next few weeks, we wore those pants to all our interviews. I hemmed them with safety pins so Holly could quickly lengthen them when she needed, and she pulled that rubberband-through-the-buttonhole trick to make pants a size too small fit your waist. It was honestly pretty ridiculous, but a great memory. And the reason the pants I'm wearing today (I somehow ended up with them during the great clothes divide of 2009) are hemmed with paperclips.