The Arbolog |

Friends of mine who are of the male persuasion: you might not want to read this entry. It’s not that I care, but maybe you care. I mean, hey, if I cared, would I be writing it on the intarnets for all the world to see? No, not really. But if you care, and think you’re going to be all blushy weird about this later? Then stop now.  Go read this interesting article about a year with bees. Neat stuff.

You see, there’s something I’ve been meaning to talk about, and by talk about, I mean “write a blog post about something that’s been annoying me lately”. Yup. Underwear. Is she really going there? Yes, yes I am.

I’ve bought the ridiculously overpriced kind before from the stores like La Senza and have tried pretty much every single cut they make. (And bitterly disliked their service and have vowed to never shop there ever again because they suck). I’ve worn the standard fare Hanes Her Way / Fruit of the Loom /department store cotton kind too and I generally revert back to the plain cotton kind, because they are readily available, inexpensive, and used to fit decently enough. I used to buy the white bikini cut. But since having had a cesarean birth, the re-arrangment, shall we say, of my stomach and lower area makes these kind of uncomfortable. Like my complaint about jeans, I find that the good ol’ white cotton bikini cut style just rolls down under the cesarean “shelf”. Which produces some insane visible pantie line and a gathering of fabric I don’t much care for. I also have lost sensation around the area of my cesarean scar, and so elastic around that area just feels, well, weird. I can’t even put my finger on how it’s weird, but it just is.

So, I’m hunting around online for the latest and greatest in women’s underwear styles, thinking there has got to be something out there I am missing out on.  I’ve run across this website which caters to post-surgery cesarean peeps, and I was reading and thinking, hey that’s cool, and then I figured out which style would be appropriate for me since its been, you know, 2 years and all, and I was sold! Until I discovered these are $23.50 a pair. Whoa! Seriously? I wear underwear every day(crazy party animal that I am, yo) and so one pair wouldn’t cut it. So, I guess I know my threshold is considerably lower than that. I found another site and they were even more expensive! What the hecks? I took a look on Etsy – because if I am paying that much money for a pair of fancy undies, I want it to go to a single producer and not some company. And then, I started thinking that maybe I should just design and make my own. I tried that once and I wore them twice and found them so uncomfortable they went to the rag bag. ( I made some of my own amendments to the pattern and now I know why I should  not have.)

Anyway, so I got to the point where I was like, “Okay never mind, white cotton bikini cut Hanes it is.” So off I went to Zellers (and yes, I drive all the way to Zellers in Burnaby rather than Walmart because Walmart sucks) and LO! Packaged socks and underwear were buy one get one half price and so I bought me some fresh new cotton socks for the summer and spent about 45 minutes at the packaged underwear rack.

You know you have become an adult when you are sitting there on the floor of a understaffed and dirty department store  opening packages of giant sized tent underwear, stretching them out to see their “max capacity” and inspecting their seams because poorly made? I’m not going there.  So there I am stretching them out, holding them up, trying to find one package that hasn’t been opened up, mixed with another, and then re-stuffed into the wrong size package. And I’m looking at all the styles – hipster (NO), bikini (NO), boycut (NO), full brief (GOOD GOD NO I’M NOT 90), and finally, I settled on the poorly spelled hi-cut. (Grammar pet peeve – things incorrectly spelled on purpose for marketing reasons – gah). I figured that they’re high enough in the front to come up and over that cesarean shelf, but high enough on the hips and thighs that I still feel well, okay, at least feminine a bit. I don’t wear low cut pants anymore so I don’t really care how much fabric there is in the back.

So! $10 for 6 pairs. Slightly better on the ROI than the $23.50 each fancy pants panties. And honestly, these are working out just fine.

What about you? What’s your favourite brand or cut?

Also, since we are talking unmentionables here, I’m working on a review of the Diva Cup. This is a silicone cup that is a reusable alternative to pads and tampons. I bought one ages ago, tried it, got nervous, and there it sat in its little bag under our sink for a year. Until this past month when I got over myself, pulled it out and started using it in earnest and now am a convert. If you are a Diva Cup user (and I know there are a few of you out there as some of you recommended it to me in the first place), can you email me at jen arbo at g mail dot com? I’d like to compare a few notes with you.