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Instead of buying a new one, I took my old one apart on Saturday to try and see what was wrong with it. The water/steam thing that pumps the water up from the tank into the filter/coffee basket area was possibly the grossest thing I’d ever seen. It isn’t supposed to be totally full of coffee sludge. So I cleaned it out, ran vinegar and water through the coffeemaker a few times and it’s about 75% better.

Then I went out and bought something I’d sworn never to buy: skinny-cut jeans. Allow me to explain, though. They aren’t really skinny-cut, with the super-tapered leg and the so-low-rise-my-hoo-ha-is-about-to-show. They’re just kind of trim. Tailored. Anyway, I’d always steered clear of them because I’ve seen a lot of overweight people in the mall wearing them and that was enough to make me think I was much, much to squishy to wear them. I had visions of denim sausage-casings, barely containing my Michelin-Man body. But then I was out at the outlet mall, and the place I was in only had my size in two styles of jeans, so I tried them both on. And it’s some sort of engineering miracle: the skinny-cut jeans make me look thinner.

Yeah, I don’t understand it either. Maybe all my old, bulky jeans just made me look bulkier. Or maybe losing 15 pounds is what did it. Whatever though, and I mean this in the most un-self-promotional way possible: in those jeans, my butt looks fantastic. No joke. Fan-TAS-tic.

I’m not going back on my other things I swore to never buy: like UGG boots. Seriously. Those things are awful. They make your feet look like loaves of giant, suede bread and give everybody short, cankle-y legs. I already have short, cankle-y legs. I don’t need help.