omfg it's new fleece day!

Jacket

For the past ten years or so, I've worn a fleece jacket from REI pretty much every waking hour about six months of the year in Oregon, and I used to wear one in California about 3 months a year and always in cold offices. I have two cats that go everywhere, so as a result, my beloved fleece jacket* usually has an embarrassing amount of cat hair embedded in it.

I used to fret over this. Every weekend I'd take rolls of packing tape and carefully clear every inch of my jacket so as to appear as if I was a sane person. A few years into this, and one day I rolled around on a carpet of a dog-owning friend and I lost the battle. No amount of tape could remove the embedded hairs that went all the way through the fabric, so I gave up. At some point, my fleece reached an equilibrium somewhere between totally covered in pet hair and a mere light dusting of hair. Even still, I get asked "how many cats do you have?" by strangers at the grocery store about once a month.

So as part of the whole giving up about keeping it clean, I've taken to buying a new REI fleece (size L Tall, about $69 and usually special order) on an annual basis. My 2007 fleece was supposed to arrive tomorrow but for some reason Fedex got it to me a day early.

I have four or five of my past years' fleece jackets on a shelf somewhere. The fleece thickness on the basic REI jacket seems to vary each year and once in a while I'll switch into an old one if it's appropriately thinner or thicker than what I am currently wearing. And I'll wear an old one if I'm working in the yard or if my current one is being washed.

It's official, old 2006 jacket is going into the wash in a feeble attempt to remove the topmost coat of cat hair, and then it will be added to the final resting place, far above my tshirt shelves in my closet. You served me well, 2006 jacket, but I'm enjoying a newer, warmer, cat hair-free 2007 model.

Now to enjoy a month or two of cat-free fashion.

* that kay joking refers to as "my wubbie" as if I'd give it a nickname like a childhood blanket and freak out when I have to put it through the wash each month, pacing around the house going "is my wubbie done yet?"