End of an era - - the clothing archive is no more

This morning was the end of an era.  Today I opened up the last of my clothing archive - - the treasure trove of clothes that I had outgrown years ago, bundled in sizes 14-22.  That's right, the size 14 bag was finally opened, and this is one of the dresses I found inside.  I am delighted to report that fits perfectly. 

I have had a lot of luck with my archive over the past year.  Some of my particular finds include:

14 - red wool blazer, little black dress, formal black dress
16 - olive green suit and several chino skirts in various colours
18 - navy suit, burgundy suit, lilac suit, various skirts, shorts and jeans
20 - the pink and black suit and the black and white suit
22 - the green tweed blazer

Each one has been a delightful surprise.  My memory is so bad, and some of these clothes were worn so seldom, that I had forgotten that I owned most of them.   In most cases I got too big for the clothes too quickly to wear them more than once or twice, so they made little impression.  Opening each new size bag of clothes was like Christmas morning. 

The clothing archive has been a huge help to me as I have lost weight over the past year.  It has saved me from having to buy multiple suits, since I have for the most part been able to rely on my old clothes from the archive to tide me over.  Recently I discovered my old blue jeans archive, which has provided me with several pairs of shorts and jeans in sizes 12, 14, 16 and 18, just when my old size 20s were turning into clown pants.  Score! 

The Nerd and I are packing up some of said shorts tonight in preparation for our trip to his family reunion in South Carolina, or as I like to call it, "Humidity Country" (there is 89% humidity where we are going as I write this - gack!).  We are both really looking forward to the trip, and we both have lots of clothes that fit to show off.  I ended up picking up 3 new swimsuits (1 piece suits, let's not go crazy) and t-shirts to wear with the chino shorts I found in my old clothing archive, so I am ready to go!  More importantly, we are both fit and feeling fine, which is what you want before meeting large groups of family. 

I have made arrangements to unlock my iPhone so that I will have roaming data/voice service whilst I am visiting our neighbours to the south, but I believe that cell phone service around where we will be going ("Hello, Lake Jocassee!") is somewhat spotty.  We will see how I do over the next week without my usual plethora of technological crutches. 

This upcoming week will have lots of family, lots of new experiences (for example, I have only been to South Carolina once before, and never to this part of the state, Go Tigers!), and lots of breaks from routine.  We'll see how this affects my weight loss plan, but really, that's not my primary concern.  My main objective is to relax and enjoy my time away from the office.  I am going to try and do something active every day, whether it's going for walks or swimming or something else I can't think of right now, but I'm not going to obsess about it.  Vacation is a time to go with the flow, and not be so programmed.  My regular weeks are adequately programmed after all - - I can cut loose sometime. And that time is this coming week.