Short Sleeves

It was a very rainy spring, and Nory was stuck inside. She could go out to hunt for the ever elusive cardigan sweater, but inertia and a stomach full of bagel impeded her progress.

She had been looking for suitable sweaters ever since fall when she took all the worn looking and ill fitting sweaters (mostly from the Salvation Army) back to the Salvation army, so they would not be clogging up her tiny closet.

It's a wonder, she thought, that no one seems to think I will need a sweater in Spring or Summer. They are selling shorts and halter tops which are no longer a staple since letting her short body go to wrack and ruin, but there seems to be no place where an open front sweater can be found. It is as if there was no sea air at the shore, or air conditioning chilling one to the bone in Summer. There is a certain age, it seems, where pulling a sweater over one's head just does not feel right, not to mention the ruination of a questionable hair style.

When it is hot outside, it is always cold inside, chilled to meat preserving temperatures in some places, while in others, there is no such provision at all. Once in a while, a girl can get away with a hooded sweatshirt, all too available, but why no cardigan sweaters heavier than tissue? There are tissue sweaters aplenty, but they are designed to wear over not one, but two or three tiny tank and t shirts, artfully disarrayed so as to show off all the different colors. This adds cost as well as bulk to one's outfit and one's person, which is not so much attractive in a postitve sense of the word.

The other mystery is the short sleeved sweater. Why wear a garment meant to keep one's arms warm, when there are no sleeves? Am I supposed to wear a long sleeved shirt under that? And if that is the case, what do I do when I go back outside and it is too steamy for that long sleeved under layer? Frankly, I am stumped, she thought.

In point of fact, Nory had such a short sleeved sweater, left over from college. In those days, she wore it in winter as a sort of vest over a long sleeve t-shirt, under a jumper. She was nice and warm, and enjoyed this outfit immensely. Unfortunately, with age came a thickening in the waistal and stomach areas that are crying out to be heavily disguised. The peasant shirts almost work, but she never quite feels completely comfortable in them.

It wouldn't hurt to lose a few pounds, she thinks for the twentieth time that week, but how? The answer: excersize and eating less food , is anethema to her, and she puts on the hated hoodie over the large and unflattering sweater from her sister, and sits down at the computer.