Too Short, Too Tall

Being an altitudinally-challenged person has always made clothes shopping difficult.  Rare is the time when I can actually try on a pair of pants and have them fit, length-wise.  I've gotten used to having to pay for alterations, but it's more than just hemming that makes buying pants challenging; sometimes, by the time I get the pair of perfect-in-every-other-way jeans shortened, I've lost the style (especially if it was a pair of bootcut jeans - they can get really funky looking once you lose 5 inches from the bottom of the leg).  And having spent a lot of time over the years shopping with a similarly-challenged mother, as well as my best friend, we've all lamented our frustrations over not being able to easily buy clothes that fit our short legs.

"Tall people have it so easy!"  we'd grumble.
"They can buy off the rack and not have to pay for hemming!"  we'd complain.
"Everything they try on looks good!"  we'd whine.

Well, as I discovered on Saturday, even tall people have it rough when it comes to shopping for clothes.  My friend Andi and I made the trek to Nordstrom in Houston to check out their anniversary sale.  Andi needed clothes and I was all too happy to come along for the ride.  We had a wonderful salesperson who made some great suggestions and brought in lots of items, but it was funny - while Andi would try on pants and I'd see how good she looked in them, she'd see that they were a bit too short.  And that happened a lot.  It was a weird concept for me to wrap my brain around, because in my world, that just doesn't happen!  After a while, I decided to try on some jeans and I have to say, it was pretty funny when I came out of the dressing room to show Andi what I deal with, in the form of them being way too long.  We decided that somewhere between the two of us, there was a person who could buy a pair of pants without our difficulties.

Still, I will say that Andi looked amazing in most of the clothes she tried on.  Would you believe she hardly bought anything, though?  I kept saying "if I looked like you in that top/jeans/skirt, I'd buy it" - but she was choosier than me.  I mean, look at what she turned down:

I loved this top on Andi.  But the hemline was asymmetrical, and that felt weird to her. 

It was interesting to shop with someone different.  As much as I pushed her to try on different things, she did the same to me when it came to shoes.  You see, for my volunteer job I have to wear closed-toed shoes, and I don't have any summery shoes that aren't sandals.  So I've been wearing my heavy, wintery pair of clogs, and boy have they gotten hot now that our weather is consistently in the high 90s.  Andi kept telling me to get a pair of flats, but how many short people do you know who own flats?  Plus, I was sure they had no arch support and were not going to work for me.  Well, I was wrong, and I came home with these:

 Farrah by Me Too.

Gotta love Paco, always ready to get in on the photo shoot. 

I also bought a pair of very nice jeans, which, while expensive, were at least on sale.  And I have to give props to Nordstrom, because I was able to get them hemmed FOR FREE.  And they're shipping them to me, once the hemming is done, for free.  I'll have to remember this next time I need a pair of pants...Nordstrom likes short people!

So after we spent all day shopping, we stopped at a Marshalls/Home Goods before we left the big city.  While I tried on lots of tops at Nordstrom, I didn't love any enough to buy them...but at Marshalls?  I found two that worked great!

Funny, it doesn't look like she's that much taller than me...oh wait, I was standing on a curb for this picture!

Too tall, too short...but just right when it comes to our friendship.