For The Girls

When your only other bras besides the one you're wearing are sports bras. 

When you pull out a pair of underwear you haven't fit into since baby number four and the waistband disintegrates. 

When your sweet husband asks what you want for Mother's Day and your very first thought (even over chocolate) is "I need new underwear!"

Every dressing room in the mall will have lighting that makes your skin look like pea soup! 

Don't be fooled by those mall walkers. They're not walking for exercise, they're desperately moving as fast as they can away from those pits of despair, those sloughs of self-loathing otherwise known as Fitting Rooms. 

If you have a stomach that resembles a bowl of bread dough, then you will not fit into any of the sexy-lace-and-ribbon nighties! Because anything that fits over the bowl of rising bread dough will make your well-loved boobs look like they're helplessly drowning in a very large ocean. 

You will be overwhelmed by all of the choices. 

Bikini

Hipster. 

Thong. 

Brief. 

V-string. 

High-Cut

No-show. 

Boy-short. 

Cheekies. 

Not to be confused with Cheekinis. 

Low-rise. 

Low-rise Hipster. 

And don't forget about your garden-variety Granny Panties! (Which are extremely tempting because the higher the waist, the more the belly-fat behaves!)

You might be able to buy those cute booty-cheeky panties at Victoria's Secret if you have eight arms like an octopus {because then you would be able to pick the wedgie they create every 30 seconds in the middle of carrying a toddler, the groceries and holding the hands of the busy kindergarteners.} But since you aren't a multi-armed sea-creature who HAS TIME TO PICK WEDGIE'S! you will gently put them down, lower your head and slink over to the quiet dusty corner with the dust bunnies, to the bin nobody's digging in, and hold up the panties labeled Briefs. And you will know it's all Downhill and Practical from here. 

You will wear your oldest, holiest underwear when you're going shopping, because then you will feel justified to spend the unimaginable amounts of money it takes to buy new and cute panties {though most of the rest of your wardrobe is thrifted, along with toothbrushes, you just don't buy used panties!}

But DON'T wear your holiest, awfulest underwear while going shopping, because as you search in vain for the perfect bra and panty set you will be embarrassed even to yourself for letting them get so bad, and not replacing them sooner!

Shop at Target, they have the best fitting-room lighting! 

But don't shop at Target! because they only let you try on six things at a time! 

{And when you aren't exactly sure what size you are, and when you're actually probably between sizes, you'll have 87 items in your cart to try on! {Which makes something that should be fun feel sort of like cleaning a toilet. Or like peeling the skin off your face with a cheese grater.}

Driving home, with salad breath {because bread-bowl-belly} and licking a Braums peanutbuttercup junior cone {because shopping stress}, you will remind yourself that even though your body forgot how to bounce back sometime after baby number five, you would always choose those crazywild kids and the matching stretch marks over any other kind of body. 

And, when you get home from the longest shopping trip you've been on in months, maybe years, and when most of the shopping you've done since your first child was born 15 years ago is at Sam's Club or Aldi {so it takes 50 trips to get it all into the house}, your kids will run out to the car cheering that you're home (☺️) and they will be Positively Astounded when you pop out of the car with 

only Two Tiny Shopping Bags!