inconsequential things

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Leggings, Skinny Jeans, and Other Emblems of Personal Growth

I was reading Sarah’s post about barrel jeans and thinking about how viscerally I hate barrel jeans (and also about how I can never remember if “barrel” has two Rs or two Ls or both), and wondering whether I would continue to hate them forever more or if, instead, they would be my 2020s version of leggings. Back in the 2010s, at least in the early 2010s, I despised leggings. They looked terrible on everyone. Or, at the very least, kind of revealing. But then, at some point, I experienced a Perspective Shift and discovered that leggings are amazing. I have never looked back.

I experienced a similar Perspective Shift with regards to skinny jeans. To the extent that now, even though the trend has reverted to the far-more-flattering-for-my-particular-shape bootcut jeans, I have not relinquished one single pair of my beloved skinnies. So who’s to say I won’t one day own a closet full of barrel jeans? 

Let’s call this Personal Growth. 

Are there other areas in which I’ve Grown, Personally?

Fortunately, I have a blog, so I can measure this! In 2010, I wrote two posts about beloved or trendy things I did not understand. 

I am pleased to see that I have changed my mind about several of them. Note: I have combined the lists from both posts and alphabetized them, for no reason except that I can.

  • Alice in Wonderland (except for the part with Johnny Depp)
    • 2025 Position: I do not recall this movie at all; I do know that Johnny Depp is no longer appealing to me.
  • Ben Affleck, Taylor Lautner, Robert Pattinson (please don’t hate me!)
    • 2025 Position: I feel like I saw a movie starring Robert Pattinson recently that made me think, Hmm, he’s not half bad. But I’m not sure what movie it was. It wasn’t Twilight. 
  • Buffets
    • 2025 Position: I still hate buffets. They make me think of sneezes, germy fingers, and food poisoning.
  • Bumper stickers
    • 2025 Position: I am now neutral on bumper stickers. They are amusing on other people’s cars; I am not a car decorator person myself.
  • Chick-Fil-A
    • 2025 Position: Even though I know their values are not aligned with mine, the chicken is so very very yummy.
  • Coffee
    • 2025 Position: Still can’t stomach coffee.
  • Crocs
    • 2025 Position: I remain Croc-free. 
  • Dancing with the Stars
    • 2025 Position: Is this even still on the air? I never did get into it.
  • Diet Pepsi, Sprite, and 7Up
    • 2025 Position: Diet Pepsi is the devil’s soda.
  • Doggy bags (in which one carries leftover food)
    • 2025 Position: Okay, sure, why not.
  • Doggy bags (in which one carries miniature canines)
    • 2025 Position: I blame Carla for this, but I now think dogs in purses are adorable. 
  • Electric toothbrushes
    • 2025 Position: I love my electric toothbrush! Why don’t I use it more often?
  • Facebook
    • 2025 Position: If anything, I abhor Facebook more.
  • Flannel anything
    • 2025 Position: Comfy, comfy flannel. Why did I ever have anything against you?!
  • Gladiator sandals
    • 2025 Position: These are cute on other people, but I can’t pull them off.
  • Iced tea
    • 2025 Position: I regularly drink iced tea, albeit with lemonade; I’m going to count this in the Personal Growth category.
  • Jorts
    • 2025 Position: Love me some jorts, as long as they fit the way I like. 
  • Kedollarsignha
    • 2025 Position: I’m not 100% certain that Kesha is still A Thing, but I can now admit that some of her songs are catchy.
  • Lady Gaga (although I do find her endlessly fascinating and sometimes catchy)
    • 2025 Position: I am neutral-leaning-positive toward Lady Gaga. She’s a good actress, a great singer, a fabulous entertainer. I wouldn’t necessarily choose her music to listen to, but I can appreciate her talent.
  • LeBron James
    • 2025 Position: What did I ever have against LeBron????
  • Leggings
    • 2025 Position: Oh my sweet 2010 summer child. Leggings are the clothing of the gods. The lazy, comfy gods.
  • Mayonnaise
    • 2025 Position: I can tolerate mayonnaise in small amounts. 
  • Michelob Ultra
    • 2025 Position: Oh yessssss I love Michelob Ultra. I might even choose to drink it at a bar where there are other beers available. 
  • Miracle Whip
    • 2025 Position: No. Never. Disgusting. If I ever tell you I like Miracle Whip, know that I have been abducted and send in the authorities.
  • Movies in 3-D
    • 2025 Position: Is this still A Thing? A big meh from me. Not that I’ve seen a whole lot of 3-D movies. Avatar and a couple of movies at the planetarium is all. No need to see any more though.
  • Nicholas Sparks and all related paraphernalia
    • 2025 Position: Listen. No judgement to anyone who enjoys Nick Sparks. Reading is reading, and there is a reader for every book, and I have been a big ol’ snob in the past (and with regards to Miracle Whip), but just because it isn’t my jam doesn’t mean it’s objectively bad.
  • Orlando Bloom
    • 2025 Position: Not really sure what’s up with Orlando these days, but he is not on my radar.
  • Pedicures
    • 2025 Position: I still dislike having a pedicure, but I enjoy having had a pedicure. And I like spending time with mom whilst getting a pedicure.
  • RaNdom cAPitaLizaTIon
    • 2025 Position: I have no feelings about this one way or another; it has its place and can be amusing when deployed correctly; you do you.
  • Red Bull
    • 2025 Position: Still have never tried Red Bull and still have no desire to do so.
  • Replacing “you” with “u” and “are” with “r”
    • 2025 Position: I have Personal Grown so much that I sometimes text my daughter “where r u” when I’ve misplaced her in Target or when she’s not where she should be at the school pickup spot. 
  • Saying “no problem”
    • 2025 Position: Again, I no longer have the intense loathing for this phrase that I used to. I still prefer “you’re welcome” but I don’t necessarily think “no problem” is always as passive aggressive as I once assumed it was.
  • Shorts
    • 2025 Position: As I’ve matured and, let’s say, filled out and also as I’ve gotten less and less tolerant of heat of any kind, I’ve grown to appreciate shorts’ sartorial role. 
  • Showering every day
    • 2025 Position: It wasn’t until I had a baby that I fully appreciated showers and one’s ability to take them daily. Now, it is a rare day indeed that I skip a shower. I have, however, finally learned how to shower in 10 minutes or less, which was something I thought impossible when I was younger. 
  • Sliders (the mini hamburger kind)
    • 2025 Position: Still haven’t ever eaten a slider, I don’t think. What’s the point, when you can eat a full size burger?
  • Soccer (aka “football”)
    • 2025 Position: Ted Lasso helped me see the value in soccer. I don’t follow professional soccer or anything, but I don’t mind it, either.
  • Spray tans
    • 2025 Position: I’ve still only ever endured one spray tan, but I can see how they would be nice – if you had a good spray tan place and money to spend to spray tans and if you looked natural enough in said spray tan.
  • Sushi
    • 2025 Position: I still can’t stomach sushi. Raw fish just does not appeal.
  • Swimming pools
    • 2025 Position: When my friend visited recently – a friend I was closest to in the early aughts – she expressed significant surprise that I have a swimming pool in my backyard. “I thought you hated swimming pools?” she said. Well. I am still repulsed by public swimming pools, but I don’t mind my own so much. 
  • Text messaging
    • 2025 Position: Oh, pre-iPhone Suzanne was so naïve. Little did she know that texting would become her preferred means of communication. 
  • The Bachelorette
    • 2025 Position: Although I haven’t watched this in awhile, I do think it’s kind of fun on occasion.
  • The Biggest Loser
    • 2025 Position: Wow. From my 2025 vantage point, I can hardly believe this show was ever on the air. So cringe.
  • The iPhone
    • 2025 Position: Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. I bought one in 2013 and have been completely, helplessly addicted ever since.
  • Tofu
    • 2025 Position: One of these days, Birchie’s descriptions of her delicious tofu-accented meals are going to turn me, I just know it.
  • Tomatoes
    • 2025 Position: I’ve tried, and it’s not going to happen. 
  • Trader Joe’s
    • 2025 Position: What did I ever have against Trader Joe’s?!?!?!?!?!?!
  • Turkey burgers
    • 2025 Position: Turkey burgers are still a no from me, dawg.
  • Twilight anything
    • 2025 Position: Nope. Haven’t changed my mind about this series – book or movie – either. 
  • Water/soda/iced tea with lemon
    • 2025 Position: Eh. This is fine, I guess. Although I did once read that the lemons and limes at restaurants/bars are extremely filthy, so I usually remove any fruit that appears in my drink when out. (No, I do not want to think about what other horrible things go on behind the scenes in a restaurant thank you.)
  • Yoga
    • 2025 Position: Feels like this prior position of mine is a betrayal of Nicole!!! Nicole, I have changed! Yoga is lovely and centering and strengthening and life affirming! I still don’t do it as often as I should, but I am not, in any way, opposed to it.

Let’s see. Surely there are things that other people currently love that I’m not into. Like barrel jeans, or TikTok, or Chat GPT, or KPop, or the color beige. But at least I’ve Personal Grown to the point where I can acknowledge that I may not always feel this way. Like business wear for pets. Once I was solidly against this. And now…

Leo would like to see you in his office to discuss your compensation.

Now I am all for it.

What are the trendy/popular things you used to vehemently oppose that you kind of love now? Or what are the things you have always hated and will always hate, no matter what?

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Fold Your Own Way

The longer you live with someone, the more you discover about how little you know them. At least, this is true for me, when it comes to my husband. I have known this man since 2001, for over half my life, and have lived with him since 2003. And yet I have only recently discovered some things about him that baffle me completely. (Does anyone else recall the time when I learned he does not consider soup to be a meal???) 

While I am the primary laundry-doer in our household, I don’t fold everything that I wash. This is not out of laziness, Internet. Well. Not solely out of laziness. My husband is not only the Better Folder of the two of us, he has folding preferences. I am sure I’ve mentioned before that he prefers to fold his own T-shirts. For that I am eternally grateful, because I am horrible at folding, especially when it comes to things that can’t be lined up edge to edge, like a towel or a blanket or a dishrag or another piece of fabric with straight and symmetrical edges. It’s not like I haven’t tried. I have. And yet, despite sometimes extreme effort, my attempts at folding T-shirts result in such lopsidedness and extreme variances in size of end product that frankly boggle the mind. My husband, possibly due to years in his youth spent working in clothing retail, possibly due to being a normal person and not folding challenged like his wife, can fold his T-shirts with seemingly no effort and end up with a stack of perfectly identical little rectangles. This is all to say: my husband prefers to fold his own T-shirts.

Okay, fine. But I can at least fold his pants, right? I fold my own jeans and leggings (the extent of my pants collection) and they make nice tidy stacks. I fold them once lengthwise, meeting one corner of the waist band to the other, so they look like a one-legged pant, and then fold them shortwise (what is the opposite of lengthwise? widthwise? I am explaining this very poorly), bringing the hem up to meet the waistband, and then fold them one last time so that the waist band touches the folded portion of the knee area. (This reminds me of that old elementary school exercise where one person has to explain step by step how to make a peanut butter sandwich and the other person has to follow each step literally, as if they have never experienced either peanut butter or jars or sandwiches before. You know: the explainer says, “Put the peanut butter on the bread” and the sandwich maker picks up the jar and puts it on the bag of bread.) What I am trying to say is that I make three folds and the jeans end up in a small square. 

Fold 1.
Fold 2.
Fold 3. I don’t know why the pocket does this but I hate it thanks.

This is how I have folded everyone’s pants since time immemorial, including my husband’s jeans and work pants. Then some years ago I found out that that my husband preferred me to simply fold the pants in half, lengthwise, and leave them at that. Okay, weird, I thought, but whatever. Saves me two folds per pants pair, clearly a significant amount of time in the grand scheme of life. But as the years passed, I wondered why he was so adamant about the single fold. Because, in fact, when he puts his jeans/work pants away in our closet, he stacks them in neat little squares just like I stack my jeans. 

It took a long time for this mild curiosity to develop into an actual question, which was, “If the end result is the same, why don’t I just fold your jeans for you?” To which he reluctantly told me that when I fold his jeans, he refolds them, and he feels bad about that, so he wants to relieve me of the initial fold. To which my response was, “WHY.” Which is when he admitted to me that when I fold his jeans/pants, I fold them backwards.

My jeans, folded my way. Still with the pocket issue.
I STILL REFUSE TO IRON.
My husband’s jeans, folded the opposite way.

This is a very, very long story to say that a) apparently people can fold jeans/pants differently, who knew, and b) apparently that can be bothersome to some people, and c) my husband and I are pants-folding opposites and I only just found out. (How do YOU fold your pants?)

(By the way, I have since been folding his jeans/pants the opposite way – although I still only make the single lengthwise fold – and it is surprisingly difficult to do! My brain has A Certain Way it believes folding should be done, and that is not it.) (It’s a feeling similar to folding your hands together differently than you normally do: if the left thumb normally sits on top of the right thumb, when you try to fold them so the right thumb is on top instead, it’s doable, but it’s weird.)

I have since kept my eyes open for other weird differences in our everyday trivialities and have come up with two others. 

One has to do with filing. Picture a filing cabinet, with folders of paperwork for things you keep track of over time – utility bills, insurance statements, tax returns, etc. I think we can all agree that it makes sense to file these sorts of things chronologically, right? And yet, to my SHOCK, there are (at least?) two ways to do this. 

When you open one of the folders, what is on top: the most recent bill/statement, or the oldest? Well, I do it one way and my husband does it the other way (the WRONG way) and that is absolutely insane to me. To make matters worse, at one point in our relationship, we maintained separate files, so some of the files use my system and some use my husband’s. I would almost rather transition ALL our files to his (wrong) system than to have two completely opposite filing methods in the same cabinet. MADNESS.

The other way we are opposites is in how we get out of the shower. Yes, I am really writing about this. Day-to-day minutiae is my favorite topic (next to food) and if you are new here, boy are you getting slapped right in the face with household nitty-gritty.

Our shower has a sliding glass door with two panels. You slide one panel over the other – so they overlap – to expose the opening to the shower. My husband slides both panels toward the front/faucet end of the shower to exit; I slide both panels to the back, wall end. I wonder if this has to do with our individual towel placement: my towel hangs just outside the faucet end of the shower; my husband’s is on the wall on the other end of the shower. Would we exit the shower differently if we hung our towels differently? Are there simply Front of Shower Exiters and Rear of Shower Exiters, just like some people are optimists and others are pessimists?

These are some of the very silly, inconsequential differences between us that are as charming (to me, at least) as they are perplexing. All of us are weird in our own weird ways. And I’m delighted to still be learning new things about this man I’ve loved for nearly a quarter century.

There are lots of other ways that he and I are Very Different. Some of them I know and accept: for instance, he is a Laundry Basket guy, and I am a Pile Clothing Into My Arms And Drip Socks All Over The Floor gal. But maybe (probably?) there are things I am yet unaware of. I hope we have time to discover all of them.