I couldn’t do up the zippers on three of my work dresses this morning.

F$&*%!!

Really?

What a drag, seeing as though I went to the gym four times last week and am more or less the same weight/size I’ve been for the past six months.  For some reason, my dresses decided to not do-up and I was left doing the awkward back scratch as I reached, pulled, jimmied and shook the half-inch zip, but to no avail.

I came up with the excuse that my skin was too hot and that I had moderately expanded with water.  It was, after all, a balmy ‘feels like’ 32 Celsius in my bedroom this morning.  I finally, and ironically, put on a much older dress from slimmer days and it fit like a glove, bolted out my door in my running shoes (very NYC of me) and banked a 13 minute brisk walk to work in my workout folder for today.

When dresses give up on you on a Monday morning, you feel somewhat out of sorts.  The mental satisfaction of last week’s exercise floats out the door and you are left with the grim reality that what you are and what you feel like are two different things.  I passed a girl enroute to work and it felt like she was dirty-looking me.  A bit tinier and stouter than me, I soothed her with the voice in my head ‘don’t worry, I couldn’t get my dress on this morning’.

I thought seriously about inventing a zipper helper that would make it easier for single girls living on their own to do up their own zippers.  It’s a serious affliction affecting millions of women in North America every morning.  And, I bet I could find a statistic saying that zipper-related shoulder injuries have risen since more millenials have decided to move out of their parents’ houses.

Living alone is a fabulously freeing thing, but there are definitely moments, like this morning, when I could have used a hand.  Similarly, yesterday, my boyfriend and I were working on a clogged tub with a little Drano and perseverance.  The standing water made it near impossible to aim the flowing liquid into the source and I felt like giving up.  Thankfully, my man has a way of inventing a solution from his product design days.  Just like that, a plastic coke bottle (which he cut the bottom out of) turned into a funnel and the Drano worked instantly.  Be gone, long hair of mine!

I should have MacGyver’ed my zippers this morning but it was too darn hot.

It’s nice to have someone there to help and I’ve often thought of the things I need done with the aid of another – things I’ve put off because I feel I can’t do them myself.  Shelves properly hung, a decorator to eyeball my dining room, a handy boyfriend to invent clog-stopping coke bottle funnels.  I have the latter, thankfully, and the others involve money and time, so I’ve put those off.

At least I won’t have to battle with the clenching metal jaws when all I want to do is strip down and get comfy tonight.  Even my too-small grey dresses have silver linings.