The Holy Grail of Denim

I’m a very loyal person. When I was a junior in high school, I turned down a date for prom because I thought a friend wanted to go with him. (She didn’t.) (Oops.) I find a brand of chocolate chips I like and buy them until the company goes out of business – then I mourn. I’ve been wearing the same brown Gap sweater since 2001 and you’ll have to wrest it off my cold, dead shoulders. When I find a pair of jeans that fit and make me look five pounds thinner (if you’re female and wear clothes, you recognize this as the wardrobe coup it is), I wear them until they disintegrate. Then I buy the exact same pair five years running. (One might say that’s less “loyal” and more “tenacious enjoyment of digging my heels into very deep ruts.”)

What Are You Talking About This Time, Woman?

If I had a quarter for every time I’ve exclaimed about Twitter recently (with accompanying enthusiastic hand gestures), I could retire to the Maldives and eat grilled baby dolphin all day. But I have to say it again: Twitter is the portal to all things great and good. A few months ago, the lovely Justine found my Twitter account and asked if I wanted be a Gap Brand Enthusiast. I wouldn’t have even known what that meant, were it not for Holly’s Nintendo Party last year, where I unrepentantly hogged all the jelly beans (and got a free DS Lite that tells me my brain is about two minutes away from death). So when I got Justine’s message, I may have done a little happy dance. Which may have knocked over a stack of post-it notes and maybe a mug of six-hour-old coffee.

As this position doesn’t require diplomacy or mastery of astrophysics, and does include inviting all my friends over to paw through a massive selection of Gap jeans, my answer was a very eloquent, very professional, “SIGN ME UP.”

Witness the Mayhem

Lo and behold, my dear pal Kristin got the same gig. So we pooled our guest list and threw a soiree with enough cheese to keep an army of goats employed, s’mores brownies, and FREE JEANS FOR ALL. Also: Wine. Because alcohol is essential for any activity where women are forced to contemplate their thighs. And may I say that EVERYONE’S THIGHS LOOKED AMAZING. Observe:

Leah, EIGHT MONTHS POST-BABY. Yes, that deserves all caps. Because DEAR LORD, WOMAN. Did you sell your soul to Lucifer? Does he need more souls?

Holly, who just needs to be on billboards already. I mean, COME ON, LOOK AT HER.

Kristin, who – aside from looking smashing in her jeans (WELCOME TO THE DARK SIDE, DRESS GIRL) – saved my tail by offering her house for our party. My wee apartment can’t fit more than three people at a time, much less half a Gap store.

Me, looking like I need to grow six extra inches of leg.

I was too busy pretending to be a good host to pounce on the stacks quickly enough, and still need to swing by a Gap store. (I’ll post a picture when I do. If I think of it. And if the cheese and my vanity allow.) But I expect to find a pair that looks as good on me as these do on everyone else – extra cheese notwithstanding – and that will herald the official shift in my loyalty. SOMETHING THAT IS VERY HARD TO DO. I HOPE YOU’RE SATISFIED, GAP.

Friends who would prefer a root canal to jeans shopping found pairs that fit and quickly squirreled them away. Friends who, like most of us, have proportions that defy the usual Barbie doll sizing didn’t have to sacrifice a waist that fit to accommodate the lower half. Everyone ate cheese. In short, everyone was happy. And that made me happy.

Here’s the good part: I have a $50 Gap gift card to give away. So leave a comment by Friday, and I’ll choose a random winner. If you need comment inspiration, allow me to suggest a nice haiku.

I Get Towels. You Get a Grainy Video.

Explanation for this post: I needed towels. So when J.C. Penney said they would give me free reign of their home department if I wrote a post, I learned exactly what my writing is worth. That’s right: One large, fluffy bath towel.

Not that I undersell myself: If you’re stepping out of the shower into a cold apartment and dripping all over the floor and see an empty towel rack openly mocking your shivering self, you’d give just about anything for a towel. Anyone who’s ever tried to dry off after a shower with toilet paper knows this. Not that I’m one of those people or anything.

So! BlogHer and J.C. Penney gave me $500 to get all the Linden Street stuff my little cart could hold. And you get this blog post. HA HA! I WIN. But you do want the video tour of my tiny little hallway of an apartment, right? RIGHT? That’s what I thought.

A few items of note:

1. That bowl will contain even my compulsive apple buying. I’m like a squirrel faced with its first freeze. MUST HOARD ROUND TASTY THINGS.

2. I was going to bake a cake to put on the cake stand, but I was too busy shaking my camera and trying to make it work in a less blurry fashion. My time would have been better spent whipping up something in a nice chocolate hazelnut.

3. The cheese platter is my new pride and joy. Just don’t drop it on your big toe, unless you enjoy the purple yellow sweep of bruising.

4. The towels are Dancing Moose Slipper approved. The moose would have danced with the towels, but I couldn’t arrange the logistics without resorting to cursing and/or a hasty trip to the emergency room for my broken left femur.

5. Blue blankets are highly necessary when one is too cheap to turn on the heater and one may have been stupid enough to plant one’s bookshelf right over said heater.

6. Only tool used to put up my new blinds was duct tape. STEP DOWN, MARTHA.

(BlogHer and JCPenney are giving away 5 $100 gift cards each week here.)