Creeping phlox and ajuga on Divine Mercy Sunday, after Saturday night's heavy rain.
DIVINE MERCY SUNDAY
What I wore to Mass:
All thrifted today: Liz Claiborne maxi skirt (a very small size 10), pink lace-hemmed tank whose label I can't remember (nothing fancy), green Loft boyfriend cardigan which I got in a 4/$1 deal at the thrift shop down the street. Thrifted Old Navy wedge fisherman-sandal/clogs.
Another view:
And the Vermeer-ish distance shot, which I seem to like:
It's always a comfort to know that even to someone glimpsing you across the room, you will not appear entirely grotesque.
I do love the ruffle detail at the hem of this skirt, and the tiny floral print. Like virtually everything else in my closet, this is a piece that can dress up – for Mass, for a party, for a nice dinner out – or down, swapping these heels for Birkenstocks or my brown Crocs thong sandals. It also works with my camel boots and with my gray-green Doc Martens for colder weather.
I have liked this little pink tank as well. The advent of higher-rise trousers has been a welcome development, since it's easier to wear a top whose hem sits right at your natural waist when there's not a big gap between your natural waist and the waistband of your trousers. While I enjoy the trend of tucked blousy tops, which is a very kind trend to those of us without flat abs, I also like having some tops that I don't need to tuck in to accentuate my waist. I like that the lace detail provides both a little pattern clash with my skirt and a definite line, which is broken up by the longer line of the cardigan. I feel much less pear-shaped when I establish these contrasting lines, none of which hits right at my hips. All of this seems fairly essential for wearing a maxi-length skirt or dress, particularly if you're not tall (I am 5'4) and not willowy (I don't know what I weigh right now, but while I'm a small-medium up top, I'm a medium-large, sizes 8-10 generally . . . and heading more toward 10 than 8 at the moment . . . on the bottom). If you're not going to look and feel dumpy and weighed down, then you have to create some illusion of verticality, and a line that skims, rather than resting on, your hips and thighs.
Mind you, clothing is not all I have thought about in preparation for Holy Mass this morning. I'm really just filling up time, since I got dressed before everyone else (takes me 10 minutes to get ready on Sunday morning) and am now waiting around for us to leave. And I don't mean to focus all the time on self-self-self, like a narcissist. I hope I'm not that. I'm just a person who's about to go worship with a bunch of monks and college students and wishes to be presentable in that company. I'm also a person who wishes to spend the hour at Mass not consumed with self-consciousness because I feel weird and unattractive in my clothes (see last week's disquisition on clothing and attractiveness). Think before, let it go later. That seems to me to be a workable plan, and a plausible way to prepare for Mass, in addition to reading the readings, which I also did but did not photograph myself doing. There are limits.
Later thought: Supper on the front porch is life.
MONDAY
So, how about another style challenge? This is yet another challenge that I ran across on Instagram, scheduled for this week, but you could do it anytime you liked (including not at all).
NO BORING CLOTHES WEEK
Now, technically, you could do this challenge and not wear anything all that exciting. I think that's probably exactly what I'm going to do. But whatever. Here are the daily prompts:
Monday: Something thrifted (Well, that would be 9/10 of my closet, but thank you)
Tuesday: Something inspired (By what, I wonder. What does "inspired" even mean? This is Not a Helpful Prompt, but I'll try.)
Wednesday: Something monochrome (okay, this I can do, and it will be interesting, since I don't usually do monochrome)
Thursday: Something bold (Again, what does this mean? Relative to what? But again, I'll try. On Thursday I will do my best to wear something not-timid)
Friday: Something you already wore (This week, I presume. Easy enough).
So, what I wore on Monday – my "something thrifted" – was:
All thrifted, including my earrings (which you can't see anyway), necklace and shoes. Probably could use a belt. Cardigan repeated from yesterday because I hadn't put it away yet.
I love this little swingy tee dress. The washed indigo color is perfect for me, and it's so soft and comfortable. I've worn it instead of shorts, even to go hiking. It is a good year-round piece, too, which I wore all winter, even in the coldest weather, with leggings, boots, and a cardigan. Just a huge favorite on every count.
TUESDAY
I don't think I'm doing this no-boring-clothes thing right. Today's prompt was "inspired," and – again, I ask you, "Inspired by what?"
The weather is cloudy, but it's 75 degrees and muggy, so feels warmer than that. I knew I wanted to go for a walk – my daughter and I walked about two miles on our neighborhood greenway trail before lunch. So I was inspired by: the weather, the desire for a walk, and a general feeling of who-gives-a-monkey's.
The day's "inspired" outfit:
Thrifted J.Jill tee. Thrifted Columbia "Omni-Dry" outdoor shorts that I've had for three or four years. Thrifted Birks. Day 4 hair that I refreshed by misting until it was pretty wet, then wet-brushing and air-drying. Bangs look better than they did yesterday, but on the whole, I am not feeling particularly attractive today.
But, I mean, I am comfortable. I'm also glad to be healthy and if not svelte, at least fit enough to walk two miles easily without breaking a sweat. I do think I need to take more length off my hair, but I probably won't get around to it for a long time.
I also really love this swingy tee. It occurs to me that it might be more flattering tucked in (though I confess that one reason why I chose it and didn't tuck it is that these shorts are kind of tight right now), but I still like it. I like the tie-dye pattern at the waist and the way that that creates some more lines, so that your eye isn't necessarily drawn so much to the line at the hip. Also helps if I stand at an angle, frankly. Anyway, a later prompt for the challenge is to wear some item again, and I might very well choose this tee.
Meanwhile, keeping it real with my naked fifty-six-year-old face, in weird lighting.
Later:
I was inspired by the cloudiness outside and the clamminess of my house to feel cold, and therefore to replace the shorts with joggers, with predictably not-wearing-this-out-anywhere results:
Trust me, this was the best picture by miles. These joggers are comfortable, but reliably unflattering.
Again, this angle was okay. If I could only appear to the public at large at these angles, maybe I'd feel better about the whole joggers trend. Or maybe it really is just that they're pink, and when I put them on I automatically feel like somebody on a senior-citizens'-center minibus trip to the casinos.
WEDNESDAY
The sun is shining, we have a predicted high of 84F, I've sent poems out to a contest and a journal, and today's No Boring Clothes prompt is: monochrome.
Now, maybe it's just me . . .
Anyway. I was going to wear blue, because of course I was going to wear blue, because my closet is full of it. But then I thought, what about green?
Thrifted Gap tee, thrifted skirt (I forget the label, but nothing particularly impressive), old pink belt, old blue EVA Birks.
I have really thought green was hard to wear, and in some senses it is – I look terrible in more greens than I look good in. But I am finding that I can do these mossy, sagey, grayed greens. And my husband, who likes green, liked this outfit, so there.
Ah, the inevitable grease stain shows up in this shot. I can't have nice things, I really can't. I can't even have thrifted nice things. No matter what I do . . . how do other people avoid getting spots like this on their clothes? Don't tell me to wear an apron. Do you see where this spot is? That is not an apron-covered spot. I begin to think that other people must cook naked.
I have tried various tricks for getting set-in grease spots out of clothes (because of course most of the time I don't even notice them till AFTER the item has been through the wash and the dryer, so that the spot has been blasted into the very fibers). Anyway, if you want to know why I don't buy investment clothing, this is why.
Also, it has occurred to me that the reliable way to discern what clothes I actually wear and what clothes are just taking up space is to look for the grease spots. If it's got at least one grease spot, then it's something I wear and probably love.
See? I'm smiling. I love this skirt. Even if I weren't smiling, you could read my love in the grease spot, bottom left.
More naked face, this time outside in the midday sunshine:
I was going to wash my hair today, because I didn't like how it looked yesterday, but weirdly enough, when I got out of bed this morning, it looked okay to me, and I decided not to bother. Day 5 wavy hair for the win.
An indoor shot where it maybe shows up better, despite the sub-optimal lighting:
I have just been refreshing it with a spray bottle of water, nothing else. Really trying to avoid a lot of styling products (which I have never used much, all my life, but have been experimenting with some this year), and to focus on methods that will encourage my hair to clump into more defined waves, but not to involve a whole lot of styling time. I welcome the return of the 1970s shag haircut and the idea of just-got-out-of-bed hair, because that is my mojo. Still thinking I will get more length taken off next time I go for a haircut, still can't decide how much I want to let my bangs grow out, but I definitely want more layers, especially in front and higher up.
Meanwhile, my husband says that in the sunlight my glasses really look purple, and he is not wrong.
THURSDAY
Today's No Boring Clothes prompt: BOLD
It was chilly-ish in the morning, so that after I got dressed, I felt the need of another layer.
These are brighter colors than I'd normally wear together, so I guess that qualifies as "bold." I do like the color blocking and the subtle pattern clash of the ragg-knit cotton sweater and the tiered skirt. I tried various pinning and knotting moves with the sweater, to make it less bulky, but none of them succeeded in making it actually less bulky, so I'm just wearing it this way.
Thrifted Liz Claiborne cotton sweater, thrifted skirt, old Crocs thong sandals, thrifted Miraculous Medal, which I virtually always wear, for devotional rather than fashion reasons.
I did break down and wash my hair last night – after sleeping on it damp, I detangled it this morning with a wide-tooth comb, spritzed it fairly thoroughly with water until it was damp again, blotted and scrunched it a bit with a microfiber towel, let it air-dry a while, then diffused a bit on cool just to hasten the drying. In these photos it is still a little damp, especially at the ends.
Contra the Curly Girl Gospel, I do shampoo my hair, though I always opt for a sulfate-free cleanser. Currently the brand I'm using is Emerge, which I like a lot, and which is a decent bargain, at roughly seven bucks for a large-ish bottle. I use a silicone-free conditioner, rotating among two or three at any given time, depending on the weather and what my hair seems to need. Again, I use basic drugstore brands, because come on. I'm not buying a $50 bottle of any hair product, ever. At the moment my selection of conditioners includes a couple of SheaMoisture varieties and one Cantu.
Yes, I buy a lot of products formulated for Black hair. No, I do not believe that this makes me an honorary Black person with special insight into the Black experience. Nor has it ever happened to me, as I have heard of its happening to some people of color, that a big-box store employee made me come to the back of the store to purchase my hair products in a separate check-out process because "these products get stolen a lot." Make of that what you will.
ANYWAY. When I say "depending on the weather," what I mean is that whether the dewpoint is high or low, whether there's a lot of humidity or only a little, determines whether I use conditioner with glycerin or not. Glycerin as a major ingredient (high up the ingredients list) works pretty well for me when humidity is relatively high. When it's not, glycerin can be drying. I have heard scientific explanations regarding humectants and how they work (glycerin is a humectant), but not being a scientist myself, I'm not going to pronounce on them. There's no natural law specifically pertaining to glycerin, as far as I know. But I've observed how my hair behaves, so that's how I make my choices.
Cantu products are fairly glycerin-heavy. I love them in the summer. I especially love that TEXTR conditioner, which can be used as a leave-in, though I generally rinse it out. I also like Cantu's Curl Cream as a styler in the summer – it makes my hair soft and shiny and relaxed, rather than coarse and stiff, which is its natural mode. I've had the same bottle for over two years, and have diluted it a lot with water, which has improved the experience for me. Otherwise it can feel too heavy on my hair.
I have liked Shea Moisture conditioners this past winter. The Curl and Shine has some glycerin, but not that much. The Restorative has none. Both include protein, which my hair also seems to like. I usually use one of those (lately, the Restorative) with the Not Your Mother's Curl Talk cream, in the crumpled purple-and-white tube on the left.
The little bottle in the front is a sample of Carley's Flaxseed Leave-In for Curly Hair. My daughter uses their moisturizer and cleanser, and they always send free samples in the box with her order, so she gave me this one. I don't like it at all as a leave-in – when I tried it that way, it didn't provide nearly enough "slip" (ie seaweedy slickness), and my hair, when dry, felt gummy and weighed down. But last night, while I still had the Cantu TEXTR conditioner in my hair, with lots and lots of water, I also emulsified a little of the Carley's in a cup with water and poured that on, wet-brushing all of it through my hair, leaving it on for some minutes, then rinsing. I was happy with the softness, shine, and waviness of my hair when it dried, and sort of sorry to have to sleep on it. But it's revived decently this morning.
I have also liked Cantu's TXTR scalp-relief shampoo a lot. Need to order some more of that. Right now my last bottle is used up, but I've filled it with a weak apple-cider-vinegar/water solution for clarifying my scalp and hair as needed. Possibly my favorite thing about that shampoo is that it comes in a bottle with a pointy tip, so that you can apply it right onto your scalp, avoiding your hair if you don't want to strip moisture from your hair. It's a gentle sulfate-free shampoo anyway, but I like that I can clean my scalp and largely leave my hair alone. It was formulated for people with locs, braids, and weaves, who just want to clean around those structures without disturbing them, but it works well for me, too.
It's supposed to be 72F today, so once it warms up, here's the layer under my big sweater:
Bold? I mean, I do show up, which is something. And I haven't worn this tie-dye shirt, thrifted sometime back in the winter, all that often, so it's good to have a particular reason to pull it out. Also, doing a lot of squinting up at the camera today, to make a change from peering peevishly down at it.
I have worn this shorter lapis-bead necklace a lot lately, with the medal as a longer piece. I've had the lapis necklace since my early twenties, when my parents went to France, I think, and brought it back to me, from either an antique shop or a market. I think this necklace actually dates from the nineteen-twenties, so can certainly be regarded as a thrifted/secondhand/vintage piece.
Later:
My Feet Got Cold: A Memoir
Yes, that's my unmade bed in the background. I am a believer in airing out the sheets for . . . some hours. But I do make the bed eventually, because civilization, and very nice it looks, too, when I do it.
Here's a random stack of "paradigmatic novels" and works on fictioncraft, waiting for me to finish this poetry-anthology project and read them:
By the way, if I seem puzzling as a brand, what can I say? I contain multitudes.
FRIDAY
No Boring Clothes prompt for today: Something you wore before.
I assume that this means "previously this week." And so I have repeated a piece from Tuesday, my thrifted J.Jill blue swing tee, wearing it this time with these jogger pants I bought back in January (a new purchase, so I do want to get my money's worth of wear out of them), my blue duster-length cardigan (ditto), and my thrifted Birks.
I did tuck the tee in, all the way around. This way it doesn't look so much like the same shirt worn again. It also seems to work better with the shape of these trousers, which I do like, despite their weird satiny finish. I last wore them in the fifth week of Lent, and I want to remember to wear them more often. They fit more flatteringly than the pink fleece/sweat-fabric joggers and are far more lightweight, though as I think I said last time I wore them, it remains to be seen how breathable they are, and how much I would wear them in hot weather. I've already established that they're not great in cold weather, unless I wear a thermal layer underneath. They also look far better with sandals than with any other kind of shoe, though I tend to think that of all my clothes.
Mostly though: I feel good today. It's interesting how our self-perception fluctuates, and how those fluctuations so often bear only the most tenuous connection to objective reality. Last time I wore this tee, in fact, I was feeling really blah, as in not very pretty and therefore depressed. Or possibly depressed and therefore not very pretty. Chicken, meet egg. Discuss who came first.
Things in objective reality that I think have some bearing on how I felt about myself Tuesday vs. how I feel today:
*Hair. Boy oh boy. Hair days. Why does our hair exert such power over us? I don't know, but it does. On Tuesday I'd last washed my hair on Saturday. It wasn't dirty – I typically wash my hair on Wednesdays and Saturdays, and really could only do it on Saturdays much of the time. I'd refreshed it with a spray bottle of water – I do some kind of refresh most days, though sometimes I just wear it up when I don't want to deal with it – but it just hadn't turned out that great. I wish I'd gone for a ponytail, instead of insisting to myself that it was going to get better, somehow, without my doing anything.
Today when I took a bath, I got my whole head soaking wet, as if I were washing my hair, but all I did was add some styler: Cantu Moisturizing Curl Activator Cream, cut well with water in the bottle (no, I don't know exact proportions). I squished this through my very wet hair, adding more water to distribute it, then wet-brushing it through. I shook my head to encourage my hair to form wave-pattern clumps, then squeezed excess water out with a microfiber towel. I let it air dry for a couple of hours, then diffused it the rest of the way, mostly by "hover diffusing," i.e. waving/hovering the blow-dryer, with the diffuser attachment, over my hair from a distance, rather than scrunching clumps of hair with the diffuser. I bent over and flipped my hair upside down for a lot of this process, to try to encourage some volume at the roots. My hair is very heavy, so this is always a challenge, and it's why next time I probably need more layers higher up, and less length.
Anyway, I think the wet refresh turned out well, and I should do it more often, though it's almost as much trouble as actually washing my hair. Still, it might be worth it. The way it's framing my face feels more flattering, the way it's supposed to. It's not just hanging there. I even like my bangs, though they're a bit wonky.
* I'm wearing my very best color, which always helps. If I'd bothered to look up and smile in Tuesday's photos (when I was NOT feeling it), I probably would have looked automatically better, but even so, blue is always good to my skin tone. It puts automatic color into my cheeks – or rather, it highlights the color that's naturally there, instead of draining it away or working against it. It emphasizes my eyes. The green I was wearing on Wednesday does this to a certain extent, but today I'm reminded yet again why I wear blue so much. Also, I'm not wearing pants that are almost too tight, as my shorts were the other day. That definitely makes a difference. I'm wearing this cardigan that I always like and feel good in, and the vertical line it provides makes me feel balanced in my shape.
*It's been not a great work week: after writing three essays last week and feeling on top of it, I've written one and drafted roughly 400 words of another, for both of which I needed to do more research, writing, and mind-sifting before I could have something to say. I was feeling overwhelmed until I looked at how many essays I'd already written for this anthology project. As of now I've written ten, I think, out of seventeen or eighteen. That is, I'm more than halfway through, and it's mid-April. The pace has been okay. Plus, I've done some good reading and thinking about poets with whom I had not previously spent that much time, and that feels satisfying, even though it's slowed me down, and I'm ending the week with an essay left unfinished. Is okay, even when that isn't the way I prefer to end the week.
*I've also been letting other people's progress with publications, etc, take up too much rent-free space in my head. I did in fact send out poems this week to several different places, so that was a positive blow struck. But also, I give myself permission to have a fallow period while I'm so focused on this anthology. All the reading and writing involved in that project will eventually bear fruit in my own poems, but it's truly all right that I don't see that fruit right now, today.
*ALSO, the sun is shining. The difference the sun makes is never to be discounted.
*And the selfie lighting is better. I was doing myself zero favors photographically on Tuesday. Just daring the camera not to love me, and succeeding.
Everybody has what I just this minute have decided to call a Color of Life. You probably know what yours is – if you don't, that's something to figure out. But this is mine.
So this is the end of No Boring Clothes Week. I dunno, what do you think? Was this week any less boring, sartorially speaking, than any other week? For the most part I did like what I wore, and if I didn't feel great, it wasn't the clothes. I still don't know that they weren't boring, or at least that they were any less boring than usual.
Takeaways:
*It sounds dumb, but really. I should try to smile more in these pictures. Otherwise I just look mad and depressed, even when I'm not.
*Try just a tad harder with the hair. Or wear it up. I'm never going to spend hours on my hair, because I am a nature girl at heart, but I can refresh it a little more effectively, or else make use of the umpteen million hair ties I have. I also have ideas about what to tell the hairdresser next time, based on how it's behaving three weeks into my most recent haircut.
*Tell myself good, true things about my work progress: banish Desolations. Relatedly: peg away at some poems, and remember to send something out.
Anyway, the challenge is at an end, and we all know what that means. BORING CLOTHES SATURDAY, here we come.
SATURDAY
Wore my soft comfy Old Navy jumpsuit with yesterday's cardigan, a white tee, a belt, and Birks.
I did endeavor to smile for some of these shots.
Make that Colors of Life, that correspond to cool pink skin, grayed blue-green eyes with fairly bright-white whites, cool ash-brown hair that nevertheless has some sort of rose-gold highlights. As I've said before, a great takeway for me, from Nat Tucker's Make It Look Easy mini-course, has been the idea of paying attention to my own actual coloring – skin, eyes, hair – as a key to my clothing choices. When I pay attention to me, as a complex of colors, I feel good. It's as simple as that.
The smiles are genuine, even though I'm taking selfies, which is an inevitably self-conscious activity. I feel good. I'm not thin – my weight has been creeping up again. For reference, as I might have said before, I'm 5'4 and between an 8 and a 10 in US sizes. Really, I'm more like a 6-8 up top, and anywhere from an 8-12 on the bottom, depending on cut, brand, and so on. I fall into the "mid-size" range in terms of clothing and body type: not plus, but at the upper end of regular sizes, even though I also qualify as petite in a lot of brands.
And I'm fine with this. Today, especially, I'm fine with it. I think this very comfortable outfit works on multiple levels. Aside from the colors, which are all my good colors, the lines are fairly vertical and long, especially with the long cardigan. The belt gives me a waist, but the line of the cardigan skims my hips. Setting my waistline relatively high (which is where my natural waist is these days) elongates my legs. The tee creates a little extra emphasis and visual focus at my neckline to draw the eye up, which also helps when you carry your extra weight low. Everything is soft and fluid, not tailored or structured, which again works better for me. I don't feel dressed up, but I could wear this outfit to a party and not feel underdressed.
Now if only I did have somewhere to go, other than Tractor Supply to pick up a doghouse.
Tomorrow is Sunday, a new week. And it's still Eastertide!
PS: A great piece about outfit troubleshooting, on which I plan to meditate (especially what she says about hair) in the coming week.
Also, why is everybody interesting so young? Everybody my older daughter's age is interestingly dressed and introspective about it, and I feel like a creep because I find them so interesting.
"Hi, I'm not really your mother, just old enough to BE your mother, but everybody my age is wearing leopard print. Can I hang out with you?"