Same here--every time I walk into REI I get fobbed off on the teenagers. Evidently an old lady is not supposed to know anything! If I ever had a real technical question, I'd be toast! How do they know I'm not the next Grandma Gatewood? (I'm not, but they wouldn't know.)

Re rain pants--I'm way too hippy for kids' sizes. I was lucky enough to score one of the last pair of women's GoLite Reed rain pants available--ran a Google shopping query and found one pair in large. I really love them! IMHO, a really poor decision on GoLite's part to discontinue those.

I hope the washing treatment works for at least one of your jackets, or maybe two so you can leave a spare in the car.