  In the past several weeks, I have cut back on my wine intake, almost stopped eating fried things, and opted for light beer when I could stand it. This means I lost a few pounds, always a welcome event. As a reward to myself for this achievement, I spent entirely too much money on an hourglass-shaped dress for the wedding I attended last weekend (I strongly believe in the reward/reward system: rewards for good things, rewards as a salve for bad things). The dress was not exceptionally snug anywhere except at its fashionably-belted waist, where I’m approximating that it measured 27 inches. Actually, that would be physically impossible, but I know it was very small. It was eminently doable, though, and looked quite nice. Unfortunately, when I arrived at my mom’s house on Thursday night I went on a freak eating binge, consuming somewhere near 10,000 calories in the 48 hours pre-wedding. This meant that my already-form-fitting dress was impossible for me to zip up on Saturday afternoon. I enlisted Mom’s help, insisting that the dress fit, it just needed a little extra pressure at the midpoint. When she had trouble, I stomped off to do it myself. In my zeal to zip the dress, I managed to tear the zipper away from the fabric.
Luckily for me, Mom’s sewing skills are better than I remembered them being, and she said that she thought it was salvageable. The event ended with me holding on to the piano, exhaling forcefully like Scarlett O’Hara getting corseted for the ball at Twelve Oaks, and Mom/Mamie sewing me into the dress.
I was a little nervous that the stitches would give out at midnight, like Cinderella, or that I would drink too much and forget to maintain good posture, causing a scene like when Eddie Murphy's skinny-potion ran out in The Nutty Professor. Once everything was securely fastened, though, it was actually a comfortable outfit and I received more than enough compliments to make up for the fiasco. Which just goes to show, being vain isn’t as bad as it’s made out to be. 
