^These.

There's a lot of really important stuff going on in the world, from what I hear. The planet seems to be hemorrhaging oil into a great big body of water. People continue killing each other in the usual ways (wars, random attacks, driving into one another head-on, gun and knife and blunt instrument violence in endless configurations, careless food preparation...).Celebrities are dying and getting divorced. Politicians are giving speeches and getting divorced. Unemployment continues to suck. Foreclosures continue to suck. 

There is absolutely nothing I can do about any of those things.

I could sit in front of my great big TV and watch hours and hours of news about those things, slowly losing the will to live.

But my own span of control is tiny, really.

So rather than muse at length about humanity's ongoing flirtation with a handbasket and a very hot Hell, I thought it best to do something constructive with a few minutes of my time today.

She slipped out of them in the dressing area and handed them to me. I stared at them dubiously. They sported a tag that said "Small." Right.

So I exhaled completely, tightened my abs the way I vaguely remember being taught to do in mat Pilates, and started to step into them.

I had expected the jeggings to be tight. To interfere with my breathing. To create not only a muffin top, but a muffin bottom and a muffin middle and a muffin pan and a muffin cup and several other muffin-ish things, as well.

But no. Surprisingly, they were not constricting. They were, in fact, as stretchy and forgiving as...yoga pants.(Which are among my favorite not-clothes in the world, but I've promised myself I will never wear them out in public unless I am actually on my way to or from a yoga class. That hasn't happened in years, so the yoga pants stay in my house...but I digress.)

The jeggings slipped onto me like a pat of soft butter onto a warm roll.

They were soft and velvety and pettable--and dear heavens, really?--comfortable.

In short, they were...Magic Pants.

I am happy to report that my friend cursed. In a good way.

My Gentleman Escort* did not require EMT intervention, but he did leave the room and go lie down for a while.

It turns out that being able to rock a pair of jeggings is one of the joys of being ten guinea pigs lighter than I used to be.

And that, kittens, is how and why Ms. Montgomery came to order her lackeys to deliver a pair of something that sounds as stupid as "jeggings."

They have not arrived yet, but when they do, the squee shall be heard around the globe.

OK, maybe not.

But there will, at least, be one small moment of happiness in a world cluttered with environmental disaster, floods, death, crime, mayhem, earthquakes, famine, boy bands, the inexplicable return of the Natalee Holloway story, and numerous awful remakes of '80s movies (including one about karate that's inexplicably set in...CHINA?).

*Now, as to the matter of the Gentleman Friend.

When both halves of a couple add up their ages and find themselves within a year or two of the century mark, it seems to me that the terms "boyfriend" and "girlfriend" are distinctly absurd.

But Gentleman Friend sounds a bit too...M. Chariot. Don't you think?

I want a better word.

I just can't come up with one.

Any suggestions?