Lately I’ve been feeling as if I’d gone through the looking glass, a sort of modern-day Alice in Wonderland. You know… Eat Me - Drink Me. Grow Me - Shrink Me.

I first noticed this phenomenon a couple of years ago when I went to take my summer pants out of the closet. I tried on a pair and found to my dismay that they had been growing over the winter. (Don’t worry, I’ll get to the shrinking part.) Anyway, I thought maybe they’d stretched out hanging in the closet, but then I remembered they’d been stored flat in a plastic bin. My pants weren’t stretching, I was shrinking!

Pretty soon I also realized I couldn't reach the top shelf in my kitchen without a stepstool and tantalizing goodies on the grocery shelves were just out of arm’s reach. The coup de grace was trying to get a bag of kitty litter down from a top stack. It hit me on the head, bounced off my shoulder, and fortunately landed in my cart. But not before I was stunned, angry and surprised.

An annual physical checkup and a bone density test soon revealed that I had lost three inches in height since menopause drained the estrogen from my body. Actually I hadn’t lost the three inches, they had just rearranged themselves around my waist. And did a rather lumpy job of it, if I do say so myself.

I’ve been taking more calcium and some prescription medicine since then and my height has stabilized. But it’s all made me think about what else has been shrinking around us. I ate a chocolate bar the other day that was so thin you could have read the New York Times sports section through it. A bag of pretzels on an airliner (if you even get one) wouldn’t satisfy a chipmunk. Don’t even try to read the insert information in a bottle of medication unless you have a termite inspector’s magnifying glass. And has your bank switched to check replicas instead of returning the actual cancelled checks to you? The last facsimile I got looked like it had been issued by one of the Three Bears. First there was a check-sized replica, then there was a medium-sized replica, and finally there was a teeny, tiny Baby Bear-sized replica.

The good news is some of the shrinking is positive. I love the “choose your size” paper towels, adult low-strength aspirin and that some manufacturers are making an effort to wrap their products in less plastic packaging. I hope they start with printer cartridges.

And taking the scratchy labels out of the neckline of T-shirts is a great idea. Replacing them with white print on yellow or pink, isn’t.  Next I want to try out one of the downsized menu items that a number of restaurants are offering. I wonder if the price is downsized too?

In the meantime, ever notice as you get older your shoe size increases? So my socks weren’t shrinking after all…