Siobhan: Didn’t you just buy jeans?
Tata: I bought three pair three weeks ago, yep.
Siobhan: Why are you buying jeans, then?
Tata: Remember last time we went shopping? I said, “I can’t go home without clothing because I have none.” Remember that? I’ve decided I can avoid Pants Emergencies through preemptive procurement.
Siobhan: Right, then. No more Pants Emergencies.
Tata: Speaking of which, don’t ask what I’m wearing.

Sometimes, I’m broke and eschew clothes shopping in favor of bill-paying. Sometimes, I don’t like what I see in the stores and make do with a little of this and a little of that. I don’t like owning more clothing than fits in a dresser and a small closet; I change sizes often and give things away the moment they constrict movement at all. Siobhan has threatened more than once to turn me in to What Not To Wear when I appeared at her door in a raincoat, a pajama top and –

Siobhan: Are you wearing a duvet cover?
Tata: Yes, but I stole it.
Siobhan: A stolen duvet cover! That’s still not at all clothing!

Siobhan really just wants the best for me.

Tata: When I turned up in a red vinyl mini skirt, what did you say?
Siobhan: “Where’d you get that? Off the body of a dead hooker?”
Tata: And that Halloween the gold coins wouldn’t stay glued to my boobs?
Siobhan: “Caramel sauce is not outerwear.”
Tata: Have I not worn bubble wrap to parties and a gold lame toga to bars? A red sequin dress with combat boots to an airport? My grandmother’s black velvet bathrobe to a funeral?
Siobhan: You have, and if you darken my door in sweat pants, it’s Clinton and Stacy for you!

So…yeah. I put on underwear, which is always a special occasion, and found a pair of Levi’s that actually fit at Sears for $12.98. Siobhan will believe that when she sees it.

Don’t kid yourself: I’m a freaking prize, especially if you have to live with me. I get up at a stupid hour, push myself like riot police and demand a lot from the people around me. Pete was having back trouble so I sikked a Pilates teacher and two massage therapists on him before he decided to join me on my bike ride to work every morning. He rides with me, rides around the park near the library and rides home and – hooray! – Pete’s exercising three or four more days per week. My powers: they work for Good! On the other hand, one of my friends allowed as how she got kicked out of the Jehovah Witnesses, was excommunicated and everything. I’ve been tossed out of bars, fired from jobs, asked to leave one high school, two colleges and a religious retreat; I’ve cheated on boyfriends, slept with half a town, including married men and women, and I’d do almost every wicked thing I’ve ever done again, but even I have never been kicked out of an entire religion. What’ve I done wrong?

Nails wet! Need new top coat! Nothing could be less important, of course, except that I am a middle-aged Italian-American woman with a white collar job in a temperature-controlled pressure cooker, and I never – never – leave the house with chipped polish. An hour into my work day, I may discover my sweater’s inside out or I’m wearing different jeans than I thought, but my nails are done, which may be the only thing about my entire day over which I have an iota of control. Omigod, what am I wearing?

Pete and I live very austere lives for Americans: we work six days a week, use eco-friendly products, hang-dry our laundry, bicycle all over the place, reuse stuff almost to the point of obsession; we compost and stay home for fun because our cats let us. Our means are modest, as are our needs: we save up, buy good gear and plan to use it for years, which is a healthy way to regard buying good shoes, but a terrible way to buy nail polish. I find myself perpetually in need of newer, stranger and more exciting colors, which I attribute to my failure to manipulate lactose-intolerant Pete into making me a tasty cheese fondue. So blue polish will now remind me of long-lost gruyere.