Turning the corner in Lent, a little bit refreshed by Laetare Sunday (wore pink instead of purple, yay), renewing my commitment to Bible and other reading, working away at the anthology project . . . we'll see what the week brings, and what I wear for it. Also, the forsythia is blooming.
SUNDAY MASS
Laetare Sunday, as I said. I did exactly what the priests in their chasubles say they are not doing, ie, I wore pink, not rose.
It was nice to break out my old navy top from the Belk Juniors department, and my long cardigan, which hasn't gotten that much wear during Lent, though now that I think of it, I did wear on Saturday. I didn't put it away Saturday night, which is really why I put it on again Sunday morning, but I'm glad I did. The thrifted Danskos . . . held up, sort of. I think if I could effectively glue down the gorilla tape around the edges, I'd be good to go for a while, even though I can feel the heels breaking down inside the tape as I'm walking. Bleah. But from a distance, they are so cute.
Thrifted pink skirt from last year or the year before. It's a brighter pink than I'd probably choose to wear, but it works decently with my good colors, especially navy.
MONDAY
Back to our regularly-scheduled Lent. This week I thought I'd try the full-circle challenge, wherein one piece that I wear today is worn again tomorrow, then one piece tomorrow is repeated on Wednesday, and so on, until eventually I come back to something I wore today.
It's much chillier this morning, hence the big furry cardigan. I'm not going anywhere – everyone else is coming and going in the cars while here I sit at the kitchen table trying to grind out some writing. I don't mean this – this is just blah-blah-ing on about nothing, really. Spinning wheels until they all get themselves off to class and out of my kitchen, so that I can concentrate. I am dressed for comfort, primarily, and for holding my peace while other people bang around in what is not, actually, my private workspace, even though I treat it as such. Even if I had an office or study, which I do not, I'd still choose to work at the kitchen table, so it's not like I can really blame anybody. But: go away, already, people. I love you, but go away. Definitely come back, because I love you, but later.
"Are you through ironing yet? Made your lunch? Had some snacks? No? Not through yet? Any idea when you might be through? I mean, no reason . . . "
TUESDAY
Full Circle Challenge, Day 2.
I have a doctor's appointment this afternoon, so thought it better to wear a 2-piece outfit than a dress. Also, it's cold and raining. So: my repeat item for the day is yesterday's green skinny jean (thrifted), worn here with the familiar thrifted 50-cent butterfly-sleeve cardigan and a thrifted J.Jill pinky-purply light sweater I've had for years. The pink sweater is a bit boxy in shape, so I tucked one side of it, and I think the cardigan, weird as it is, does add a necessary vertical line, as well as purple for Lent. Doc Martens on my feet. Aged dog at my side.
Also wet hair. Tuesday isn't my usual wash day, but I wanted to try some Carley's Flaxseed Leave-In, which my daughter got in a sample bag with the moisturizer she'd ordered.
Trying to get some work done. Let's see what Welsh poetic form I want to attempt today . . .
(on reflection, I really did not love today's outfit and wish I'd chosen a different cardigan. I want to like this cardigan, since I did pay a whole fifty cents for it – that's fitty cent, as in Five-Oh, as in an eff-number of cents –but I really don't think it added much to my ensemble, which is a feeling I begin to realize I'm consistently experiencing when I wear it . . . I think it's the length. It might just be exactly the wrong length, neither long enough nor short enough.)
WEDNESDAY
Full-Circle Challenge, Day 3
Repeating the pink J.Jill sweater, easily my favorite piece from yesterday's rather meh outfit.
Had to re-wash my hair, as the leave-in conditioner I tried yesterday was not a win, at least as a leave-in. It left my hair far too gunky and weighed down not to wash again, though I've tried it today as a wash-out conditioner, with better luck, I think. Here my hair is just dried and still kind of chaotic, but not gross.
So, today's ensemble, which I like much better than yesterday's:
*thrifted J.Jill sweater from some years back. I can't remember how long I've had this sweater, but I haven't worn it that often in all these years. That, I think, will change. It's a very good pink for me, on the blue/cool side. And it's lightweight enough to wear in the summer as well.
*old Walmart t-shirt dress. Yet another of those cheap impulse buys which I've resolved not to indulge in anymore – but I've had this dress for what? Six years? Seven? Eight? And I've worn it hard, all year round. The fabric has held up to many washings with no pilling, because it's 100% cotton, and is soft and breathable. For $10, it's been a good little dress, not a disposable piece. I am thinking it will be the part of today's outfit that I repeat tomorrow, though of course the trick will be not to appear to be wearing the same outfit twice.
*purple leggings from Ross, two or three years back. Another fast-fashion buy, but again . . . they've been good leggings so far, and I've worn them frequently. As my current stash of leggings begins to wear out, I will look for more ethical replacement options, possibly in wool – I just hope they don't all go sproing at the same time!
*wool hiking socks belonging to one of my sons, who left them here who knows how long ago. Once I'd determined he wasn't coming back to reclaim them, I cut them down to ankle height so as to get more wear out of them, because big thick wool knee socks are not really A Look.
*my last-year's-birthday Doc Martens, which featured in yesterday's outfit as well. It's supposed to be warmer tomorrow, so maybe I'll be able to put on sandals again. On the other hand, we're supposed to get socked by some kind of killer storm, so maybe not.
Wish I could get the lighting right, so that the purple-gray color of these leggings showed up more clearly, especially since they represent my Lenten purple for today. It is St. Patrick's Day, of course – but I'm not Irish and will glower at anyone who tries to pinch me. Not that there's anyone here TO pinch me right now, and not that the people who live here would attempt such a thing. Anyway, I like St. Patrick's Day because beer, and who doesn't love saints generally, but that's about the extent of it.
And so back to work. Yesterday I wound up writing a section of a poem in a Welsh couplet form called the cyhydedd fer (the whole poem is sections in various Welsh syllabic and rhyming forms), and I need to finish that section today. Would be nice if the poem as a whole decided to be finished, but it hasn't made up its mind yet. Meanwhile, I've just combed back through a novella I'd written several years ago, which has been through two or three drafts and still holds up, for me, anyway. Not sure what I'm going to do with it, other than have a friend read it, but every time I reread and edit, after some months of not thinking about it, I'm startled all over again by how much I like it – for whatever my judgment about my own writing is worth, and it might not be worth much! All that, and another essay for the anthology by the end of the week.
THURSDAY
Full-Circle Challenge, Day 4.
I began with the gray t-shirt dress I wore yesterday, which looks like this in its natural state:
Really had no idea what I was going to wear with it. The weather is warmer today, but with storms (including tornado action) forecast all day long. It's damp, meanwhile, and chilly in the house, so though I might have been tempted to go bare-legged, in the end I decided for something under my dress.
Re-enter the thrifted purple skinny jeans, which have certainly earned their keep this Lent. It is funny that at this stage in the outfit, everything I'm wearing at least originated at Walmart. Obviously I know enough about the ethics, or not, of the fast-fashion industry (really this is more like the quickie-fashion industry) to know that these origins are not funny, but problematic. Living as I do in a semi-rural area impoverished largely through the closure of textile mills and the globalization of that entire industry . . . well. I tend to think about the whole issue from the perspective of the slave labor involved overseas, but there's another angle as well. Here you are, average my-county resident. You're poor because the local economy with all its jobs tanked decades ago and never recovered, but you can afford to buy clothes at: Walmart.
Yeah, and what do you say about that cycle? There are in fact many things you might say, but one of them is that at least it's possible that every now and then those clothing choices will not be the absolute worst things you could buy in your price range. You might say that with some care you could choose pieces out of which you might get some years of good wear, because the quality is not as bad as it might be? These things that you might say do not negate other things that you might say; still, you might say them, and you would not – as far as it goes – be wrong. Given that so many ships have already sailed, and that our choices, at least in the short term, are not going to call them back . . . and given that in the meantime people do have to wear clothes, and that although all our local thrift shops do a brisk business, sometimes you need things you can't find at the thrift store at the precise moment when you need them . . . I think my brain might explode trying to parse the ethics of all this. Anyway, I bought these jeans at Goodwill (where I don't normally buy Walmart brands, because come on, but I was looking for purple jeans) and as I've said before, I'm surprised by how much I do actually like them.
The whole outfit I ended up with:
If my feet get cold, I can put boots on, but I think it's going to be a little warm for boots.
And so to work.
UPDATE: My feet got cold.
Almost forgot I had options other than sandals and boots.
Today's poetic form: the Welsh gwawdodyn hir, a six-line syllabic form with four nine- and two ten-syllable lines, and a rhyme scheme that looks like this:
xxxxxxxxa
xxxxxxxxa
xxxxxxxxa
xxxxxxxxa
xxxxxxxxxb
xxxxbxxxxa
Though the b-rhyme in the stanza's last line can fall pretty much anywhere in that line. Try it – it's fun!
FRIDAY
Feast of Saint Joseph/Full-Circle Challenge, Day 5
Repeated the patterned cardigan from yesterday, with my old J.Jill maxi dress, the wool scarf my husband gave me for Christmas for some subtle pattern mixing, pink belt, and gray-green Doc Martens, a little springtime nod to what appears to be an autumnal trend in Australia right now.
The face of a person who was horizontal all night long, but not asleep. The lighting is weird, but even if it weren't, I think I'd still look semi-jaundiced. Anyway, just to keep this from being too transparently a vanity project.
A better angle, though still weirdly lit, to show my earrings, a gift from my earring-genius daughter, last Mother's Day:
They have resin drops with heather inside, and I love them.
Tomorrow I'll close the circle somehow, repeating an element from today's outfit with something from Monday. Watch and see how I do it! (I'm watching, too, because as of right now, Friday afternoon, I have no idea what I'm going to want to wear. Thinking I might repeat the belt, just so I'm not stuck wearing a dress on Saturday).
Off to Mass and to do some work on campus, while hoping to meet up with a friend whose son is visiting the college. A little change of scenery on a chilly, dank, gray Lenten (but feast day!) Friday.
SATURDAY
Going with my girly to get some orchid mix to transplant some rather pot-bound orchids rescued from my mother, who had too many and was going to throw them out. Even the one that I thought was dead and cut back to the very nub is now putting out a new leaf, in honor of the first day of spring.
Others have celebrated by actually blooming.
They like the indirect light in this window at the end of the back hall.
Outfit of the day, concluding the Full Circle Challenge. I repeated both the Doc Martens and, again, the patterned long gray cardigan from yesterday, plus the thrifted soft-grape tunic (tucked in this time) from Monday, with boot-cut jeans and soaking wet hair, a total look. I think this tunic is on its last legs – it's Old Navy, so not top quality despite being so soft and nice, and the neckline is really stretching out of shape. I will probably move it to "lounge and sleepwear," rather than thrifting it, because it is soft and comfortable. But I think I'll be looking for some kind of purple replacement before next Advent.
Off to try to diffuse some of the water out of my hair before the girly and I embark on our Saturday errands. It's been a week . . . and tomorrow begins another one.
UPDATE:
Lettuces planted.
Many things blooming.
Post-gardening dry-hair look:
Very come-hither. While I'm feeling so come-hither, I'm going to go drink a Saturday-Lenten-evening beer and make some Sloppy Joes (which would have been the obvious thing to make last night for St. Joseph's Day, but we had steak instead, because MEAT FRIDAY is not to be wasted on the Sloppy Joe). Using
this recipe from Cast Iron Keto, with buns for the kids and sprouted-grain English muffins for us (because while we're sort of sometimes keto, we're not really all that keto all the time).
Only one more Lenten Saturday night after this one.
