Sunday, October 18, 2009

kövér calves

so if it wasn't bad enough that i can't find jeans to fit my massive quads -- R.I.P. keirin cut dream -- apparently it is not only my quads that are too big.

a few weeks ago rubi posted some ORANGE & yellow (my two favorite colors) argyle knee socks on my facebook wall, with a note saying: "you need these." need is perhaps a strong word, but i clicked on the ebay link and they were only 99 cents with no shipping charges, so i figured i would bid.

....now let me first say, that i have never really had much luck on ebay. being the closeted competitive type, i don't think anonymous auctioning is really a good thing for me. moreover, i kind of have maybe had a tendency to "bid" on multiples of the same thing, thinking-- oh, that won't win...and then having to buy both them. ....like the time i bought two broken digital cameras. ....or the time i bought two old saddles that hurt my ass more than the old saddle from 1972 than fred gave me. well, i guess that only happened twice. but, those were my first (and only) two experiences on ebay and i decided that ebay and i weren't a good fit, and i laid off it.

that is, until rubi told me to buy these socks. yellow and orange. and knee high. those of you not from hellyer park velodrome might wonder why on earth someone would want knee high argyle socks. well, that reason would be the one the only maurice monge. known affectionately as mo-mo. maurice likes to race in these, and probably why his girlfriend rubi was looking through argyle knee socks on the internet. when she ran across these obnoxious ones, she thought of me.

naturally.

so i bid on the socks. i put a maximum bid of $2.37, but i won them at 99 cents. i also saw some other socks the same seller had, and bought some low-cut argyle socks, also bid $2.37, and won those at $1.27, as someone else had bid, but I guess $1.26 was too much for her for socks.

a few days later I got the socks in the mail. the low-cut ones were very cute, and the knee highs were just as hideous as the pattern in the picture indicates. i immediately tried them on and couldn't get them over my gigantic ..... calves?

are we kidding here?

it's not just my quads? it's also my calves?!? i mean, they were socks. so they stretched. so i *could* get them on. but they kinda squeezed and there was a big bulge above the cuff that turned bright red, as i was getting circulation cut off to my lower leg.

*awesome*

i, however, cannot blame biking for this one. i blame freshman through senior year in high school where i got a little bit obsessed doing that stupid calf raise machine in the gym after track practice.

i would put a picture of me in the socks here, but both digital cameras "i won!" are broke.

i'd like to say this is a new problem. but it's not.

perhaps the most traumatic story about my calves dates back age twenty. i was in college and "studying a broad" for a semester in budapest. we took a week long class trip to transylvania. not the dracula part... but the "greater hungary" part of romania, cause there is a political party focused on reclaiming romanian land from pre-world war i (cause it all used to be hungary during the austria-hungarian empire). but, i digress. we spent our time in mostly one village and looked at a bunch of churches and tromped around the village killing chickens and chatting with romanian motorhead fans and watching 20 person wine harvesting parades and getting drunk off palinka and wine, but mostly palinka.

so one evening before the wine festival dance we went to kati neni's tiszta szoba. this translates to something like "fancy room" or is basically where a family keeps all their heirlooms and nice decorative things that have been passed down through the ages -- all the dowry stuffs. kati neni had some costumes...errrrrr, traditional decorative clothing, that she wanted us americans to try on. now there were only about 12 of us in that program- cause who really decides to study abroad in hungary anyway. i think we were 6 & 6 boys and girls and somehow i was the lucky girl who got volunteered for this to try on the girl outfit.

i didn't want to. trust me.

erzabeth made me. she was our coordinator. i tried to get krisztina or stephanie to do it, but i always give off the "little joiner" attitude so i won! of course.

so kati neni started putting on all these layers and layer and layers of clothes on me...petticoats and more petticoats. and there was a corset in the back and the thing was too small and i thought i was going to die. it was heavy. it was hot. it was tight! i was kinda short of breath. so, yeah, i definitely gained some weight over there on my dumpling, sour cream, and beer diet- but these outfits are meant for 13 year olds!

so although it was all a bit uncomfortable, everything fit well enough. until the boots. they wouldn't go over my calves. not even close. and then kati neni started making fun of me. "kövér kövér.... kislány kövér" (fat, fat, fat girl). she went on and on, but my hungarian was spotty at best. i'm sure other people who were better at the language understood her jeers, but i did not, and it was probably for the best.

now, the connotation of kövér in hungarian isn't really so nice. plump, portly, corpulent. ...and i guess it was a bit of a soft spot, cause i had gained a lot of weight because of the sour cream, dumpling, and beer diet. and also, i cracked my knee cap running the 2nd week there and couldn't run or really do anything physical and was waiting to have surgery.

but, nevertheless, i can definitely take people making fun of me. but it was a bit different having a little old hungarian lady making fun of me in front of all of my classmates...when i was dressed like a fool...then, all of them starting to make fun of me. add that to the above paragraph, and i wasn't really laughing with them on the inside.

too make matters worse, she pulled out the men's boots. but i don't really think they were men's boots. i think they were teenage boys boots. they didn't fit either.

and everyone laughed louder and louder. kövér kövér kövér kövér kövér

and i couldn't really breath and was really hot and all those beads were actually kind of heavy and i really wanted to start crying and curl up in the fetal position and feel sorry for my kövér fat self who got fat on dumplings and sour cream, but couldn't really cause crying over being kövér would not only be super pathetic, but also really rude, cause kati neni was very nice for having us in her house and showing us her tiszta szoba and letting us try on her clothes. i knew that. i just didn't want to be the one trying them on.

so kati neni got out another pair of men's boots and i put those on, and they fit my calves, but not my feet cause i have fairly small feet. size 7. or 38 biking shoes.

they let me take off my clothes and we went to the wine festival, which felt like a junior high dance. except all the boys got to wear jeans and motorhead tshirts and the girls had to wear kati neni type dresses. then my boy space friends and i ducked out and went to the one bar in town. and they knew i felt bad so bought me too much palinka. aand i drunk away my kövérness on cheap distilled pear liquor that cost 20 cents a shot and smoked cigarettes and drank more palinka. and then i blacked out and apparently puked all over kati neni's chicken coup at 3am or something. which demonstrates i am a good, respectful american tourist.

here is me and kati neni

so yesterday i went on a long bike ride and was really lazy when i came home and started for 3 minutes to go through my pile of papers and came across a business card (from the argyle sock guy) and somehow ended up on ebay again (bad idea!) looking at all his socks.

i mean, it was a *good* deal.

for real here, i don't really understand what makes "athletic socks" athletic socks. biking socks, biking socks. running socks, running socks. in my humble opinion it is all a bunch of malarky about "breathable" and "elastic form fitting" so someone can go and charge $4, $5, $6/pair for some sweatshop labor. my socks were probably sweatshop labor too, but i take some solace knowing that they were only marked up 100%, as opposed to 400%, 500%, or 600%.

so, in my post-ride, lazy state, i went on ebay--which i swore off given my stupidity with it in the past--i started looking at socks. oh those are nice for work. those are nice for biking. martini glasses & olives? my sister-in-love will love these for christmas. lemons? maybe that will give my roommate a hint that she should make her lemon pound cake more often. jesus saves socks? my mom will love those!

so i bid on....uhhhhhh..... 22 pairs of socks.

really, i don't blame ebay so much as mozilla firefox for creating web browsers that let you open up 20 plus tabs in one browser, which creates problems for me in multiple areas of professional and personal life, because you can research endlessly without actually reading anything, with minimal clutter on your computer screen.

my decision making process for maximum bidding was really high tech. $1.47 if i kinda liked them. $1.87 if i really liked them. and $1.07 if i could take them or leave them. i figured i'd win 7 or 8 pairs.

...or 20...

really?! i WON them all but 2?!

and so we learn again.

i got most them all for 99cents. and so somehow i just spent $21.23 on--- twenty friggin' pairs of socks.

at least i got a headstart on christmas. so, MOM IF YOU ARE READING: DON'T GET ME SOCKS FOR CHRISTMAS! underwear, okay i suppose, but socks: no.

so, if any of you are looking for socks, i highly suggest the dean clark store in san francisco. he ships free on ebay. has a 99.9% customer satisfaction rate. and you will probably be able to get any sock you want for less than a dollar, shipping included. we're talking women's low cut socks, women's low cut argyles, terry cloth socks, and if you like to pretend you are in jr. high school again, toe socks.

as for the knee high socks you might want to lay off unless you have calves like kati neni. i mean, i guess you will only waste 99 cents, but if they don't fit, we don't have 30 cents shots and your neighbors might care a little bit more than the chickens did.

9 comments:

Gilby said...

I used to wear knee-high opaque socks because cycling-related quad expansion caused me to outgrow my pants (and I bruise easily, and I'd rather have coworkers comment on my socks than speculate that I'm in an abusive relationship). Blah blah blah, new socks are cheaper than new pants. But I think cycling does expand the calves, too, because eventually the socks stopped fitting.

Also: in your defense, argyle socks do not stretch as much as regular (seamless) socks.

Lorri Lee Lown -- velogirl said...

beth sez: "they let me take off my clothes and we went to the wine festival, which felt like a junior high dance."

naked at a jhs dance -- there's every teenager's nightmare!

enjoy your socks!

BIG BROTHER said...

Shop Victoriously!

BTW, can you buy Palinka on EBay?

Ted V. said...

Socks, Motorhead, and Hungary. Welcome back Beth!

petebill said...

abroad is one word, if you make it two words it means something different.

beth bikes! said...

that was intended.

Itinerant Rick said...

I need to get you a working digi-cam. We need more photo documentation of your life ;-)

Are you going to be a Ride The World Cup on Saturday?

Why I'm still single... said...

22pairs?! What have I done to you?! And Maurice? He started wearing argyle socks one day when I jokingly suggested he wear my pink ones to match his Rock Lobster. He totally loved it; only, he stretched them out. So, then I bought him the sexy red ones to match his S-works. Now I have to supply his and put mine on lock down. ha ha ha
I hope that you were able to find some that you love. I suggest making the orange and yellow knee-highs into arm warmers for not so cold days or add a lining.
-Rubi

JT said...

Priceless Beth, priceless. As a chicken legged cyclist - I'd be happy to make use of your calve pinching knee highs. :) Jen