This post is mainly about SHOPPING!!! My friends can testify that I love love love love to shop.

And today...today I think I shopped almost all day. My feet are totally killing me. I bought a few things to take with me when I leave for the UK in September, among which was an amazing woolen coat that I got at a highly reduced price. I adore it! I would've bought some wellies as well but I didn't find them in my size. M&S were selling them for just AED 10 but the biggest size they had in their clearance stock was 5/38 and my size is about 42. Ah well, curses for having big feet! Also got another hoodie sweatshirt, a Tatty Teddy pajama set (the only piece available was 3 sizes too big but I bought it anyway and am altering the bottoms coz those are just falling off...can't have that now, can we?) and erm... a Wall-E alarm clock. No, I haven't gone mad. I'd stopped into Baby Shop also and they had a sale and I saw Wall-E clocks ranging within AED 17-27 and I just HAD to buy one. So I bought a pink alarm clock that has Wall-E and Eva on it stringing those Christmas lights together. Ah, unconditional love. Won't bore you with the rest of my money-spending projects, so will stop here, while assuring you that what I mentioned is just a few of the things I bought today.

ANYHOO, let the rant begin!

I feel as though the sizes of clothes sizes have shrunk. Don't understand? Well, I wear a particular size of jeans from a few stores and that size hasn't wavered over the last 3 years. I also know I haven't put on any weight (well any more than the amount that's already burgeoning there, that is) recently on my hips or legs. I decided today to buy another pair of jeans. I went back to the shop where I'd bought my last pair of jeans since they're still gonig strong and fit me well. Get this, in the size I'm wearing, not one pair of jeans fit me. I tried something 2 sizes bigger and that just about went up! I was so shocked, I wondered what the hell had happened!!! I didn't think I'd put on any weight, because one, my old pair still fit (and no it hasn't stretched so much that it's gone 2-3 sizes up from what it used to be!), two, a pair that my Mum bought for herself recently, and is a size smaller than what I wear normally, just about fits me still, and three, she also tried her normal size in the store and that didn't fit her as well either. The clincher was when I wandered over to the girls section ie for kids, and spotted a cute t-shirt with strawberries on it. I decided to go see what sizes they had. As I approached the clothes rack with those t-shirts, I didn't look at the label but thought the first one would fit a 1 or 2 year old pretty nicely. I looked at the label. I gasped. Then I gesticulated wildly to my Mom (she thought I was having a fit or something) and asked her, with her experience in having 2 children and buying clothes for all my cousins whenever we go back to India over the years, what size according to years was the t-shirt I was holding. She looked at it with her practiced eye and said, 'Ummm about 1 year maybe'. I silently flicked the label so she could see. She gasped as well. It said 8-9 years. Not months. Years. TILL date I have NOT seen any 8-9 year old who could fit into that excuse of a t-shirt. Max a malnutritioned 5 year old could get into that top. Sizes are shrinking. And they expect kids to be anorexic too. Sad sad day.

But I have new clothes! YAY!