With beach season mere moments away, I realized it was time to hit up the local bathing suit store to see if I could find something that would transform my post-COVID-19, hadn't-worked-out-in-two-years-and-ate-too-much-banana-bread body into something that could be seen poolside without scaring dogs and small children.

Although the store had a large selection of bathing suits and coverups, I usually avoided going there because it was ridiculously expensive, and the sales help is all cumulatively a size 00, which makes the whole process of finding a bathing suit for my gravity-challenged, middle-aged body that much more painful. However, it was such slim pickings in the department stores that I had to bite the bullet and go to the specialty store.

Now this is where things got ugly.

I tried on a suit in the dressing room that I thought was actually pretty flattering. Then I peeked out of the room to make sure there was no one else in the area and I zoomed out to get a look in the three-way mirror. That they don't have three-way mirrors in the dressing rooms of bathing suit stores is, in my opinion, a crime against humanity. However, with no one above the age of 18 who wasn't named Britney to complain to, I sucked it up, or rather sucked it in, and made the mad dash to the mirror.

Having recently lost 10 pounds, I was optimistic that things might look better than they had the previous summer. But as I took in my rear view in the three-way mirror, I saw that I had not actually lost 10 pounds. It had all just moved around to my backside. There it was, spilling out on all sides from the bathing suit like an escapee from cellulite prison. This was not a bootylicious backside. This was the mother of all tushes. It was Buttzilla.

I gasped and grabbed the nearest sarong to wrap around my body. Hearing my cries of horror, one of the Britneys ran over.

"Is everything OK?" she asked.

"No. Not OK," I cried. "I had no idea that things were so bad back there."

"Back where?"

I pointed to my other end. "There!"

"Well, maybe it's just the bathing suit you have on. We can, like, totally find you another," she suggested enthusiastically.

"Do you have one that goes down to my knees?" I asked.

She smiled. "I'm sure it's not as bad as you think," she said.

"It is. No. Actually, it's worse. It's like someone molded my butt out of Play-Doh and then rolled a bunch of golf balls across it."

Since there was no way I could get my butt in shape in time for this bathing suit season, I opted for the best bathing suit I could find, took some deep, cleansing breaths and decided that instead of focusing on the bad parts, I would accept where I was and be happy with the progress I had made.

And if THAT didn't work, I could just focus on the light at the end of the beach season tunnel:

Ski season.

Tracy Beckerman is the author of the Amazon Bestseller "Barking at the Moon: A Story of Life, Love, and Kibble," available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble online! You can visit her at www.tracybeckerman.com.

Photo credit: borevina at Pixabay