The first full day of summer feels like an appropriate time to talk about bathing suit shopping, no? In less than two weeks, we'll be packing up the car and heading to the cottage for a full week of eating nothing but fried clams and barbecued steaks, smearing on Hawaiian Tropic and reading dozens of trashy magazines and teenybopper novels in the sand.

My idea of heaven...except this means I have less than two weeks to find a new bathing suit.

I hate bathing suit shopping at the best of times. I hate fluorescent lights in dressing rooms that make me look like a mottled, pasty white witch with translucent skin. I hate when the tops sag and the bottoms dig in, painfully obvious reminders of where I'm lacking and where I've got more than enough. I try to go right after a workout and before mealtime so at least I don't have the added bonus of a post-meal pooch sticking out and making me feel even more like clawing my eyeballs out of my head.

You know how you're not supposed to go grocery shopping hungry? The opposite is true of bathing suit shopping. BE AS HUNGRY AS YOU CAN.

Here's the thing. Once I get to the beach I'm OK. The hateful fluorescent lights are gone, the sun is shining, and you can dig a little bum-hole in the sand (NOT HOW IT SOUNDS) to make yourself look skinnier when you lay out. You can take advantage of things like strategically-placed towels, artfully draped sarongs, layers upon layers of self-tanner and huge sunglasses to help distract from any flaws. Usually I have an initial uncomfortable hour or so where it's like, "I should NOT be this undressed in public" and then I get drunk comfortable and I'm good to go for the rest of the summer.

But the trying on of the suits? Harsh, harsh, harsh. When I die and go to hell I will spend eternity wearing a slightly-too-small bikini in the Winners dressing room. And Nickelback will be playing in a continuous loop, and there will be only boiled ham dinner to eat, and the room will be full of cats.

Anyway, this year there's the added bonus of having what is currently a mango-sized bun in the oven, and by July who knows what type of produce it'll have grown to. Now we've all seen pregnant ladies rocking the bikini and looking amazing and cute but this girl normally refuses to eat any bread for 36 hours prior to a beach visit - I don't think I can deal with my stomach sticking out this much, even if there's a baby to blame. Which leaves me with a few matronly options: the one-piece and the tankini.

My soul just died a little bit typing those words.

So, I'm sitting here googling maternity swimsuits to see what amazing options we can come up with.

I started off at Thyme Maternity.

While this suit is adorable, I don't think I can have the mango exposed like this. I just don't think it would be cute. I don't have a big preggers belly yet - it still looks like a potbelly - so I can't get away with flaunting motherhood when I more closely resemble a slightly troubled girl at the tail end of freshman year after a few too many drop-kick-me-Jesus parties with the football team and hungover McDonald's feasts the next day.



Motherhood Maternity was next on my list, and this one-piece caught my eye. I like the pattern and the style is a little more interesting than your basic tank suit:



Old Navy's Canadian website doesn't offer maternity options anymore. WTF? Canadians don't reproduce? However, the American website has a black one-piece halter suit that I like and some tankinis that aren't totally vulgar as well. In fact, for this summer I maaay even be able to get away with buying a tankini top in the regular section, just a size up, and pairing it with bottoms I already own.







After writing this post I actually feel better, not worse. There may actually be a suit for me out there. If I have any luck finding anything I'll share it here. Just don't expect pictures of me modeling it.