Tonight: Raising the Bar. I love formulaic lawyer shows. I think I have seen every episode of Law & Order during the Jerry Orbach years, twice. Zack Morris as an angsty lawyer in what is probably a crappier version of every other show Steven Bochco has ever done? Sign me up.

Tomorrow: The new 90210. This goes without saying. I just hope they don't focus too much on the actual teenagers, the way the new Degrassi did. Keep true to the original fans! Brenda vs. Kelly, round 2. I'm there.

On weekends when I am lounging around and MTV repeats all their programming: My Super Sweet 16 Presents: Exiled. I can't stress enough how much I can't stand My Super Sweet 16. Why would anyone want to watch spoiled rotten teenagers demanding to be the center of attention and their wimpy parents indulging their every ridiculous demand, resulting in $300,000 birthday parties with $80,000 cars for presents? I can't even flip by this show without cringing. So imagine my joy when I happened to flip by at the very moment one of those overindulgent parents informed his daughter that she would be sent to reform her selfish ways by living with a remote African tribe. Of course, there is the chance that this show will objectify the tribal people and make the teenagers look sympathetic — I hope not. This will be surely be my schadenfreude-inspiring guilty pleasure of the season.

That is what Suze Orman would say if she spent one minute with me. That woman scares me. And yet, I am kind of in love with her. Actually I am in love with those impressions Kristin Whig does of her on SNL . . ."Don't waste your money on expensive self-tanners! Take a bath in beef boullion cubes!" Sometimes I get sucked into Suze Orman's show and I want to slap her callers. Not the dumb ones who spend too much money on shit they can't afford . . . I like them. They make me feel good about myself. The rich ones who call in and give stats about how they are 26 years old with a huge salary and a ginormous savings account and stocks and bonds and retirement and then ask if they can buy some dumbass rich person thing like a $900 pair of shoes. And of course Suze approves them, because they can afford it, because they are freaking rich and everyone knows it, and why are they calling in on this show anyway — just to brag?!?!

But I digress. I think I need a Suze Orman in my life. Every year around this time, I get a compulsive urge to buy stuff. I think it's because we always got the gigantic J.C. Penney's catalog in the summer when I was growing up and I would spend a great deal of time going through it, circling things like a mad woman and drawing mustaches on the models. I would plan what I was going to wear on the first, second and third days of school. I'd record Saved by the Bell and Blossom and write down what everyone wore to see if I could copy their outfits. And then, right before school started, which was coincidentally also around my birthday, I would get stuff! Not a lot of stuff, but enough to make me feel like I had achieved a real makeover. Of course, my taste was totally whacked out (please note that Blossom was my role model). I remember taking great care to plan one of my first week outfits in third grade: It consisted of a t-shirt that said "I don't look for trouble . . . it finds me," red knee socks, and poofy corduroy knickers (inspired by newsboys, I suppose?) that I asked my mom to make specifically for the occasion. I thought I looked awesome. Later, I started cutting the tops off my sweatshirts and coupling them with shorts — over tights — and the requisite floppy hat with the flower in the middle. Then came the crazy Salvation Army get-ups that were trying too hard in the opposite way. Each new outfit made me feel like I was really projecting a new image: that people were going to think I was super edgy and cool. I think people just thought I was weird.

Thanks to my help from the Macy's personal shopper a few years ago, I have the beginnings of a fairly solid grown-up wardrobe. There are some gaping holes in it though, and I feel like now is the time to fill them. Instead of getting a new iron and a new vacuum. This year I feel extra urgency in getting new stuff because it appears I am about to get my braces off — and I can't really explain the logic here, but it's like, I really should get a new bag to show off my new teeth. Doesn't make any sense, I know. Especially since I do not care at all about bags. Or shoes. But suddenly, I kind of do. It's weird though, I still hate the experience of shopping — I just want to get stuff so I can never go shopping again. But I think Suze Orman would tell me I've got it backwards. And then she'd slap me, probably.

My hair has been the bane of my existence for about fifteen years now. When I was a little kid, I had thick, shiny, super-straight hair fashioned in a stylish and gender-radical bowl cut. Then, one day, I woke up with curly hair. But not just regular curly — frizzy, pouffy, curly in weird places and straight in others. It just got worse as I tried out different styles: bangs (horrible idea!); bangs in various stages of growing out; even an awful early 90's perm to even out the curl. As a teenager, I shaved my head on a few different occassions, which was all right, except it grew so fast and all the in-between pouffiness was unbearable. I will never forget one day in fifth grade, the coolest girl in class told me, "You know you could be really pretty, if you could just do something about that hair." I have heard her voice in my head pretty much every day since then.

Upon moving to Humidity Central, PA, my hair became more frizzy than ever. I began experimenting with different hair stylists and products, dropping mad cash on products from Ouidad and Curl Friends. Although I really liked Ouidad's leave-in conditioner, I gave it up after I made the conversion to natural products. Before I went natural, I had a chemical frizz reduction treatment, which made my hair less pouffy, but not less frizzy, and also totally dried out. I tried almost everything in Whole Foods' beauty aisle, and that stuff ain't cheap. I tried Bumble and Bumble curl cream, which is not particularly natural, but earned an okay rating from the Skin Deep report at The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics. I liked the Bumble and Bumble frizz serum, but it didn't seem to last very long. Then, the other day, I got free sample of Aveda's new Be Curly line, and. . . it sort of worked. So I bought the whole damn 5-piece kit, which cost $75 and made me feel very guilty. I came home from work and twirled and curled and diffused and all of a sudden, I had awesome hair. I got all kinds of compliments. Unfortunately, I have not been able to repeat that awesomeness because I wake up late every single day. But this is the first time I have liked a product enough to recommend it.

I really really hate shopping and when I find something I like, I want to buy a lifetime's supply and never go shopping again. There are a couple of other things I have been trying to find for years, so I will just put this out here if anyone has any recommendations. I'm looking for low-heel, knee-high black boots that are comfortable enough to walk around the city in but not so industrial they look out of place with a skirt. I would prefer something non-leather but I could probably be persuaded to wear leather if all of the other factors are in place. I also really really need to find some good underwear. I admit, this might be my fault for always going the outlet store route here, but I am ready to make an investment. I'm looking for some comfy full coverage underwear that does not induce VPL. So far, I have tried Under Armour, Jockey's No Panty Line Promise (it's a lie!) and Gilligan & O'Malley from Target. No luck. Ladies?

So I had to buy two suits for work because I have two suit-wearing functions, with the same people, two days in a row. I have never really owned a suit before. I have one really cheap "suit" from H&M which is the wrong size. It consists of super low rise pants that are too big for me and constantly slide off my ass and an ill fitting jacket that just looks. . .off. I knew that Macy's offered a free personal shopping service and had been patiently waiting for the Center City store to open so I could take advantage of it.

I find clothes shopping to be a near traumatic experience. I consistently buy clothes in the wrong size. When I was growing up, I wore crazy outfits in all the wrong sizes, compiled from homemade and second-hand sources and sometimes the J.C. Penney catalog. In college, I had a uniform — spring: jeans, dark t-shirt; summer: cargo shorts, dark t-shirt; fall: jeans, dark t-shirt, hoodie; winter: jeans, dark turtleneck. I actually came really close to getting on What Not to Wear, thanks to the tenacious efforts of my best friend. For the past few years, primarily shopping at outlet stores, I have managed to get by with a semi-appropriate work wardrobe, although I usually have to repeat outfits a couple times in a week. I have actually gotten a lot better at dressing myself. People who knew me a few years ago always remark that I have lost so much weight, but I haven't — I just no longer wear ribbed cotton turtlenecks and two-sizes-too-big jeans that make me look like a total blobosaurous. However, I have not gotten any better at shopping and I still find it to be an terrible experience that ends in either tears, returns, or something sitting in my closet, never to be worn again.

Enter Laurie at Macy's by Appointment. I call her up, tell her my story and she arranges to meet with me the next day. When I arrive, there is a private dressing room, which is like three times the size of a normal dressing room, with two suits, a bunch of shirts and a skirt hanging. One of the suits is on a super sale and Laurie explains to me that she thinks I can get away with buying the cheaper suit and pairing it with a skirt to make it look like two different suits. This turns out to be so much less expensive than I had thought so I am able to buy other shirts to pair with the suit. I'm not sure about the suit, because I think suits are stupid but Laurie explains how everything is supposed to fit. The suit is a little too long in both the arms and the legs so Laurie gets the alterations person to come down to fix things. My second pair of pants is too big in the waist, but fits perfectly through the thigh, because like most women I am about 50 different sizes. I pretty much have size 12 boobs, a size 6 waist, a size 8 ass and size 10 thighs, combined with a long torso and legs that are about a half inch too long to be petite. These dress pants are size 10, and both Laurie and the alterations woman think that the size 8 version is too tight in the thigh. So I get the waist of the 10's taken in and the length shortened and voila! I am the proud owner of perfectly tailored pants. These are the kind of things I can't figure out for myself. Skirts are the only item I end up buying too small, because I want them to fit my waist, which makes them too tight on my thighs. Now I know. Throughout the whole process, which took about an hour, Laurie kept running out to the floor to bring back different sizes and styles of things. I didn't even have to look at all the stuff on the floor, which I find overwhelming.

The best part was that Laurie wrote down the items that I wanted but couldn't get and said she will call me if they go on sale. She was very conscious of the fact that I needed the cheaper versions of things and never pressured me to buy anything. I don't know what the proper etiquette is to thank free personal shoppers who work for big corporations except to reccommend Laurie and this service to everyone in Philadelphia. This was, by far, the best shopping experience I have had in my life. Thanks, Laurie. Thanks, Macy's.