so i am decidedly not one of those new moms that doesn't know when she showered last. i feel like a sack of garbage if i don't shower daily, so the number of days i've missed since melbs was born is a mere handful. it is a priority for my personal sanity, along with making the bed and sitting down to eat meals (even if the sitting lasts 2.9 seconds).

i put on my mascara and tinted moisturizer every day. i've resumed exercising almost every day. i brush my hair (almost) every day.

i have a grave amount of personal pride at maintaining some visual aesthetic/ semblance of togetherness.

so the current terrain of my body-- with so many elements seemingly out of my control-- is pretty strange to me, as depicted here.

it's not horrible. my pits do smell like death. i haven't worn deodorant in years and suddenly i keep wondering what dead animal has met its demise in my immediate surroundings. i have a literal goatee of flaky skin/ scabby acne around my mouth. my boobs are 100% deflated from the 95 hours a day melby wants to nurse for the last few days. my belly is decidedly unrecognizable, bearing that weird saggy pocket of skin that hangs over the top of my underwear.

it's weird.

i'm not upset with myself. i'm living reasonably healthy (for me. and probably comparatively very healthy for the US.. which isn't saying much). i'm taking care of myself, but it's just weird.

it's weird to have your body change SO dramatically in such a small amount of time and then to have a human that came out of that body literally hanging from it basically 24/7.

whoever thinks being a mom isn't the most insane, badass, challenging, incredible, demanding journey in the universe is actually just wrong.

and so i wrote that post yesterday about not buying jeans for myself, resolving to wear leggings forever, because, really, what happened is i wanted to buy inexpensive jeans, assuming (hoping, praying) not that i'll "get my body back," because i think that's the dumbest thing to hope to achieve, but rather that at some point i'll be less... fluffy. and i just didn't want to invest money in something impermanent.

so i scoured around for cheapie jeans. and they looked and felt like shit and i looked and felt like shit in them.

and then last night my dad's words from childhood came up for me: you've got to clothe what you've got.

as someone with a lifetime of body issues, this was my dad's kind way of saying, this is the body you have and you have to put clothes on that body regardless of what you wish it was.

it resonated with me today. i might lose that 15 pounds in a few months. i might lose it in a year. i might lose it never. but this is the body i have now, and i'm not going to wish or wait it away and let myself feel like shit in the process.

i want the jeans that look good on me. much like the proclamation that i'm not going to wait until my life is over to live my life, i am not going to wait until my body is some vision of perfection until i put something nice on it.

because perfection might never come (perfection will definitely never come). and i'm not waiting around anymore. i'm not waiting to do what feels good. i'm not waiting to do what i love. i'm not waiting to wear the expensive jeans.

so i took melby to madewell, where they make jeans for short people that stretch but don't end up around your ankles ie. jean heaven. they had 25% off plus an extra 15% for teachers, which they still kindly consider me because they like me. melby, mercifully, as if in some gesture of benevolence, slept through the whole thing. and i bought the damn jeans. i bought jeans i felt good in.

because i've got to clothe what i've got.

this is what i've got. i'm here. lumps and scabs and stink. i refuse to keep waiting for something else.

and the truth is: i feel pretty good about it. i am beginning to feel pretty good about who i am. and i hope, in time, that that will show more than anything else. and, in the meantime, feel free to tell me you like my jeans.