Fake isn't always great

Most people don't know that I'm not a born and bred Colorado chica.  No, I was actually born in Oklahoma.  Yee haw.  Not a horrible place to live...if you like heat, humidity and tornadoes on a daily basis.  Then yeah, it's your place!  But while Oklahoma may not be my cup of tea now, we did have a pool in our backyard and we all used that thing like it was going out of style.  So while I was perfecting my cannonballs and Olympic-esque backstroke (um, yeah right), I was also getting extremely tan.  So tan in fact that my mom thought I was naturally darker complected than my super fair, blond haired cherubesque younger brother.  This thought lasted until we moved to Colorado where there was snow of all things and no pool in the backyard.  **Little note for the non-Coloradoans...pools in backyards here are very uncommon.  Well, this meant that my tan started fading and my mom then realized I was truly the pasty Irish-English child I wasn't meant to be.  Or as she put it, "as pale as a blade of grass that's been under a board all winter."  Great.

Jump forward to summer of 2010.  Prior to heading to the east coast to work with the hubs, I'd been going to a salon to get weekly spray tans.  Call me vain if you want but I like to be tan.  I personally feel better about myself...so there.  I wish I could say that I'm confident in my pasty self but I'm not.  So while Denver had a bevy of spray tan salons, northeastern Pennsylvania did not.  And the one that I did hunt down had no idea what she was doing and sprayed my feet a color that was more akin to Michael Jackson pre 15 dozen surgeries.  So I bit the bullet and went to an actual tanning place.  I was totally breaking my own cardinal rule of no tanning beds after having a bout with skin cancer on my leg that left a scar similar to being gnawed on by a dog.  But I was only going to go a few times just to get a good base and then I'd be good!  Which is true.  But one problem.......my legs flat out refused to get any color.  They wouldn't budge from their pasty Irish-English roots.  That's what I was most interested in getting tan anyhow!  Sure, my stomach was pretty dark but it's not like I walk around rocking crop tops so it was a bit of a waste.  I bought 2 different kinds of tanning lotions guaranteed to tan the "hard to tan" areas.  Mmmm hmmm.  Nada.  Zilch.

What's a girl to do?  It was time for plan D in the form of self tanner lotion.  I wasn't expecting any miracles given my past disappointing experiences with them but this time, oh this time I found me a winner!  The Banana Boat Summer Color must have changed their formula since I used it last because it rocks.  My legs were "just got back from 3 months in Cabo" dark after just one application.  And no streaks!  Yes, it's an odd combo but I'm gonna roll with it.



In my "research" for this post, I came across some images of folks that may have abused the tanning a little bit.  Maybe.  Just a little bit.  But hey, what do I know?!?

 Please tell me they're doing a parody of Jersey Shore because otherwise I may just faint.


 Hmmm, so many things in this picture deserve a comment but oh where to start!

 If only she hadn't put those last 5 layers on her face, everything else would be acceptable.

 I'm utterly speechless.  Don't even know where to begin.

It's not fat, it's muscle...

We all know the oh-so-flattering words: cankles, thankles, tree-trunk legs. I could go on and on. No girl wants to have fat legs, admit it. So when I reached the age where I started wearing fashionable knee high boots, I realized I was doomed. I was a girl with thick legs. Let me just stop you before you start conjuring up a mental image of just how I look.

It was in high school that I realized something was up. I'm 5'7", have been forever it seems. In my teenage years, I had a metabolism of the freaking Energizer bunny. I was around 90 pounds. At that height, it's not an attractive look but I was eating enough to fulfill the varsity football team so it's not like I was trying to look like Kate Moss, a la the '90's. I began to realize that while I was probably the skinniest girl in my high school, my legs were not. Or rather, my calves weren't. But being the smart girl I was, I realized that because I was so freaking skinny, my legs were just all muscle...not fat. Hey, no high school girl (or woman in general) wants to think about any part of her body being fat. But while I was glad my legs were just muscular and not fat, it still posed a problem when it came to wearing the knee high boots I started coveting in college.

The problem was they wouldn't go around my calves. And it's not like you can go walking around with your knee high boots only zipped up halfway. I doubt that's a trend that will ever stick. Apparently most boots are made for girls with legs of a 10 year old. Me, I've got Gerda the Swedish Lumberjack's legs. Lucky me. But in all honesty, I don't really think about it that often. Until a couple months ago when I was in pursuit of some new riding boots to wear horseback riding. I'll tell ya right now that riding boots are made for the girls with Ethiopian legs. Let me tell ya, it's kinda embarrassing to be 5'7" tall, a size 4 and have to look for boots that are either Wide or Extra Wide. I managed to find some boots (wide, thank you) and it reminded me of the last time I bought riding boots and The Incident. Yes, there was an incident.

Back in 2002, I decided I wanted to pick up riding horses again. So off I went in search of some riding boots online. I found the same brand and style I'd worn as a kid and thought, these worked great when I was young so they must work great now! Ahem. The boots arrived and I tore into them in the middle of the living room; pulled up my pant legs and started to pull them on. As I'm pulling them on, they start getting really snug around the calves. I start seriously struggling to get them on. And by struggling, I mean grunting, groaning, yelling, and probably some swearing. As I'm burning hundreds of calories doing this, a tiny thought pops into my head: stop killing yourself dummy...they don't fit. But no, I pushed on. And finally! Finally I got them on. And they didn't fit. They were huge around the ankle and my foot was slopping around inside. Not exactly what you want when you're trying to control a horse with your legs and feet. Figures. So back on the floor I went to pull them off. It was then I realized we had a problem. They wouldn't budge. Apparently a vacuum was created because of how snug they were around my calf so the harder I pulled, the tighter they became. It was like one of those stupid Chinese finger traps you messed around with as a kid. I grab the ankle and start yanking, twisting, anything I can think of to loosen the boot's killer grip. I had my leg in an angle that usually only babies can pull off. I even considered taking a pair of scissors to the boot to get it off; that seemed the only possible option left to me. (Mind you, my roommates were gone so I was doing this alone.) After an HOUR of torture, I finally got the boot off and spent the next 10 minutes recovering on the floor.

So, while most girls don't have to worry about if a boot will fit over their well endowed legs, I do. I can't wear jeans under my Uggs, I have to pull my jeans off by the ankles first and my riding boots have to have the zipper up the back. But I guarantee these legs will give a nasty kick if messed with!

My eyes! My eyes!