Measuring Up

(blogless) Naomi and I paid a visit to Secrets From Your Sister this afternoon. Naomi needed to get a new bra because she's lost alot of weight, and I thought it would be worthwhile to check the place out since it's often difficult to find 36A bras - the size I wear. There were a few 36A's on the sale rack, so I decided to try them on. The shop offers complementary bra fitting, and I told the fitter to measure away, so that I could revel in the fact that I am one of the small percent of women who wear the correct size of bra. Well. It turns out that I'm a 34C; a 32D if the band is on the big side. (Who knew that the band is supposed to fit so snugly?) Earlier in the weekend, I came across My Shape while trolling the Ravelry Forums. I decided to fill out the measurement questionnaire, expecting that it would label me type "A", and was surprised to learn that their algorithm deemed me a type "M". Apparently I have "proportionate shoulders, bust and hips". This was a surprise to me. I've always felt that I have large hips/thighs; I know that some of it is muscle, but I definitely have a thick layer of fat overlying my quadriceps et al. And I have knee fat - bulges on the inside of my knees that cause me minor distress. But , I do have a nice narrow waist, and for my height, my weight isn't too bad - 165 lbs. I don't think I could ever be in the 130ish range that my 2 sisters inhabit; for me, 150 lbs would probably be the lowest that would be healthy. It's interesting how distorted our views of our bodies can be. We don't have any full length mirrors in our house, but I guess that if I were to look in one, it would be like looking into a funhouse mirror that makes you look like a bowling pin - small on top, wide on the bottom. Ironically, one of my secret powers is that I can be scarily accurate in guessing patient's weights - but only if they are laying down. This power was revealed to me when we started using pre-printed nomograms that allow the ICU nurses to automatically treat some abnormal blood test results without having to ask one of the doctors for an order (because Hell is a place where you get woken up at 5 AM to be told that Mr Smith's serum potassium is 3.2 - normal being 3.5-5). There is a section on the sheet where you are supposed to write the patient's weight, and then indicate if it is the actual weight, or the reported weight. Since many of our patients are not in a position to answer questions, I got into the habit of guessing the person's weight and ticking off the "reported" box. We have fancy shmancy beds in the ICU that can weigh the patient while s/he is laying on it - so I usually find out how close I am to the "actual" weight. Many a time I am within 2 kg (about 5 lbs). I wonder what weight I would peg my own body at. There's only one person in the Illustrated BMI Project who is the same height and weight as me. It doesn't look like she's got any knee fat. But enough about bodies - how about body coverings? Specifically those that are knitted by me: I was inaccurate in my last post - the skirt pattern as written has 4 rows of hexagons. I'm partway through row #3. I plan to knit the full 4 rows since I a) have enough yarn, and b) prefer the longer length (hide that unsightly knee fat, you know...) It take me about 2 hours to knit a hexagon, so it was probably quite ambitious to think that I could have completed it during this holiday. I knit the waistband on this weekend because I was concerned that the top part of the skirt was too loose, and that it would slide down. The waistband tightened it up nicely. I am toying with the idea of partially ripping back the first row of hexagons and re-knitting them with a 4.5 mm needle rather than a 5 mm - but I'll wait to see what happens after I wash and block the skirt. Oh, and for those of you that are wondering whether we have a new cat - The Gambler and I went to check her out (he was the one who came across her), and the woman in the shelter said that she was pretty new to them, and they were keeping her separate from the other cats, because she didn't seem to like the others getting close to her. This did not bode well for easy integration into Greedo-and-Somerset-land. So the cat/human numbers officially* remain equal in our house. *The Gambler is down in Las Vegas this week, so if anything comes to a vote, it's likely to be a feline victory. Greedo says that if I'm not with him, I'm against him...what does that have to do with him taking my spot on the couch?