And into the homestretch! Let's just cast our minds over the previous weeks. The collage above recounts Week 1 of the May 30x30 challenge, including the smocked, tiered dress I ended up outboxing after that week.
But I do love Pentecost. I love the Holy Spirit Novena and prayer, with its invocation to be mindful of God's constant creation and making new. In my mind the whole octave, though the contemporary Church doesn't mark it anymore, is Whitsuntide, its own little season before the feast gives way to the business of Ordinary Time.
SUNDAY/MAY 23/DAY 23
PENTECOST
I didn't have anything red to wear, in my 30x30 capsule or out of it. I'd thought I might wear my rose-brown jumpsuit, but instead I settled on this:
#24 kimono, last seen with shorts, #1 blue knit sheath dress, with thrifted Old Navy fisherman-sandal wedges.
This feels a little over-the-top for me, but I think I like it, especially for an OTT feast like Pentecost. The restrained hair seems like the right move for this outfit, so all my flowy wavy hair isn't competing with the flowy wavy kimono. The Spirit blows where it will, and so, potentially, does this silk kimono.
I've said before that one of the problems with the capsule-wardrobe idea is that it so often tends to depend on black as a backdrop for everything. The typical mockup of a basic wardrobe almost inevitably features a lot of black – when people talk about "investing in classic pieces" to build a functional set of clothes, they almost always mean black, as a default. That "column-dressing" idea, too: black top and bottom to create an unbroken line, then some contrast in a top layer, is supposed to be a flattering and slimming look.
For people who look good in black, all of that is true. But you can accomplish the same effect using whatever color actually does look good on you. For me, it's blue. And while yes, ideally, I'd like to invest in well-made classic pieces, and have in fact made a vow not to do any more impulse-buying on the clearance rack at Walmart (with the positive knock-on result that I stay out of Walmart unless there's some extremely specific item I can't readily buy anywhere else), this blue dress represents the best $5 I've spent in a long, long time. I've repeated it several times since the start of the 30x30. I last wore it this past Wednesday to host an online poetry reading. I'm planning to take it to the beach to knock around in, but also to wear to Mass while we're there. It's just a great, wearable, reliably flattering dress and an excellent core wardrobe piece. So far it's held up well to washings, and I hope to get some good years out of it.
Here it works as a "column" item: a neutral, dark backdrop and line, to offset a more exciting top layer. The kimono and the dress have different hemlines, so don't look too boxy together, as they would if they both ended on the same line. I could add a belt for a third line, though the gentle v-neck of the dress also introduces a line. The lighter shoe provides a contrasting frame at the bottom. Again, I think the more restrained hair works because it doesn't compete with the busyness, volume, and flow of the kimono.
My daughter has been into beading lately, making birthday gifts for friends, and she made me this pretty little ankle bracelet in shades of my favorite color.
Heading into this week, with much warmer weather than we've had consistently up to now, I'm going to concentrate on re-wearing things I've either worn only once, or worn only close to the beginning of the month.
Those items include:
#19 pink tank
#21 J.Jill tee
#13 sleeveless white pin-tuck shirt
#7 sage-green skirt
Also: HAT THOUGHTS
I've never been much of a hat wearer, but with a beach trip coming up, and the prospect of some summer hiking, I thought perhaps I ought to up my sun-hat game . . . as in, actually thinking to wear one, first of all, but also as in acquiring at least one more.
I've had the hat pictured below for a long time, possibly even as long as ten years.
And I like it. It used to have a gauzy sort of camel-colored scarf-band type thing, but that's long gone. It was a cheap buy in the general store on the island, where – as I have noticed – things generally are not at all cheap, so I'm not sure why this hat was. The quality is not noticeably . . . how shall I say this . . . crappier? . . . than any of the other stuff they sell. I'm fairly sure that it's paper straw, though on the other hand, I have worn it in the Gulf of Mexico on numerous occasions, and it hasn't melted, so maybe it's not made of paper after all.
The main thing about this hat is that if the wind is blowing, it blows off. That, and it's not all that sturdy, though again, it's sturdier than I maybe have given it credit for. But I like it.
I didn't plan to put it on with the blue dress I wore to Mass, but it all goes together quite nicely, I think. Straw-colored hat: sort of gold/champagne-ish, in the yellow range, which complements blue. Light color provides contrast. I might have to think about meaning to wear a hat with a dress like this, because it works.
Meanwhile, I decided to buy just a plain old sun hat, like for hiking and for windy situations when a cord would be good, to keep it from blowing away. I got one of those ponytail hats, with a hole in the back, since I do have long hair, and one of my few other gripes with the hat above is that wearing it limits what I can do with my hair.
The ponytail sun hat came yesterday, and.
Not quite the outfit maker the straw hat is. I like the color a lot, but the shape isn't nearly as flattering. I'll have to bend it around some and see what I can do. Otherwise, it's Mrs. Crocodile Dundee at the Sunday tea party.
Still, it'll be fine for the purposes for which I bought it. It won't blow off my head. I was hoping it would be cuter, but it's not awful. And I can not only pull my ponytail through the hole –
. . . but I can also bunch up my loose hair and make an impromptu messy bun with my hat on (not pictured, but I did try it, and it does work).
Anyway, there you have it. I was bored with all this Sabbath resting and decided to play around with hats. One thing I have decided for sure is that I won't cut my bangs short again – bangs are a pain with hats. This summer they'll just have to BE a pain with hats, because while my hair grows fast, it doesn't grow that fast. I had kind of decided already that I'd aim for long curtain or sideswept bangs, because I think those are really more flattering on me anyway, but the hats just reinforced my conviction that that is the right decision.
UPDATE:
The key obviously is to pull the brim down. Film noir silhouette, not Oklahoma!
Nekkid 56-year-old face in bad lighting. You're welcome. Even the Miraculous Medal is fleeing the scene.
MONDAY/MAY 24/DAY 24
On our way to take our daughter to have her wisdom teeth out. It's 6:30 in the morning, but I reached in, took out these pieces of my 30x30, and here's the result:
I did put these together in my head last night, so the outfit wasn't totally impromptu, but it was easy, and it hits the light-dark-color-pattern formula nicely: light pink belt, dark navy top with pattern, sage-green skirt for color, and I went for a dark minimal shoe on the bottom.
This is my #18 tank with my #7 skirt. To this ensemble, because I imagine the oral surgeon's office will be cold, I added my #25 jacket.
My husband remarked several times while pouring coffee that I looked nice, and that my outfit was "classic." It is, in a kind of mid-century teacher/librarian/mom/shirtwaist-wearer way. Maybe I even feel sort of "computer-aged Sylvia Plath" in this outfit, but in a good way: happy Sylvia on her bicycle in Cambridge, or Sylvia "really writing," not Sylvia desperate in the terrible February.
In any event, the tiny geometric print of the top provides some vaguely boho interest, and the denim jacket feels like an edgier choice than a cardigan, which would be maybe a little TOO librariancore. I also did not bother with much of an updo, just another ponytail. Sumer is icumen in, and this is one of the signs.
This is not a day when I'm called on to look particularly nice, just offer moral support and milkshakes to somebody undergoing one of the less pleasant rites of passage. But I like that it took virtually zero effort not to look like a schlub. All I thought was, "What do I want to feel like?" And my answer was: "Put together, with skirt." I'd wanted to repeat this skirt this week anyway, so here we are. Also, shades-of-blue with sage green is fast becoming my favorite color combination in the entire world. It is delicious to me. Even though all these pieces, especially the skirt, are very basic, serviceable, and plain, they are a pleasure to wear together.
This skirt still features a grease spot. But I have it on good authority that dry shampoo – of which, rather miraculously, I happen to own a can – will help. I plan to try that ploy later.
Wearing the gold glass earrings the wisdom-teeth child helped her father pick out for me for either my birthday or Christmas several years ago.
LATER:
Wisdom teeth out. So far so good. I'm sitting on my back patio listening to the Baptist church's carillon, which is playing "Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken" (Haydn tune), which line is the refrain of today's responsorial psalm for the Memorial of Mary, Mother of the Church. It's a funny old world.
TUESDAY/MAY 25/DAY 25
Realized at bedtime last night that I'd inadvertently put on my old glasses when I got up and had worn them all day. Good thing I like those glasses, and the prescription is more or less the same. The only difference is that my new glasses (acquired in January) have blue-light coating. Otherwise, I really like the old glasses better: they're a nicer shade of blue. Maybe I should mean to wear them more often, and save the new glasses for work.
Not, mind you, that anyone else would notice. They're very similar frames. I didn't even notice the difference myself, though I looked in the mirror, took pictures of myself, etc., until I took them off. Oh, hey . . .
I have been sucked down the rabbit hole recently of the Wool& 100 Days Challenge. Now, I do not own a Wool& dress. I would have to think long and hard about investing $130-$150 in a dress. I would want to be sure, before I wore it for even one day, that said dress was going to fit me well and be flattering.
Wool&'s dresses do not convince me, at least not reliably. Their swing dresses seem fairly safe. What could go wrong with an A-line? – except that if you're pear-shaped, as I am, the triangle line of the dress might make you appear more pear-shaped than you already are. I do wear swing dresses (I wore one last Monday), but am mindful of the fact that they do exacerbate what's already there. If I were going to buy a Wool& dress, I probably would buy either a Rowena or a Sierra, but the idea of paying that much for a dress that's not so great for my body shape gives me serious pause.
Meanwhile, Wool&'s more tailored, fitted dresses, to which I might be more attracted if I were looking for something flattering, really do not seem to fit anybody all that well. The Ellie dress, for example, is pretty, but even this model looks like she's wearing something she just kind of settled for, instead of something that actually fits her. There's way too much material in the top. Even if it doesn't gape, it looks . . . off. (Also, it's sold out, and they're only reordering . . . you guessed it . . . black, for which, if you want it, you can wait until October).
All their fit-and-flare dresses seem, for the price, not very well thought out, and on models of many sizes and shapes – for which I commend Wool&, and they're all beautiful women – fit consistently strangely. I have a closet full of thrifted dresses, for which I mostly paid $5, which are not made of such apparently good material, but which are cut better than these dresses. Some I've had to tweak a bit, as I've done with my thrifted navy Talbots fit-and-flare dress (last seen on May 9), which is a bit big for me up top, so that I wear a crop top under it. I don't mind tweaking a $5 dress to make it work. I would really mind tweaking a $150 dress to make it work.
But I am drawn to their 100-Day Challenge. Maybe I just like challenges. I know I like having some imposed rule that pushes me to be creative with what I have – when I have a rule, I dress better. Really, it's the same rule that I follow in poetry. I need a form, and the form is what reveals to me the thing I wanted to say. So I guess it makes sense that my entire life responds to things like that. In this case, I like the idea of having to make one dress work day after day, for a long time. I'm fascinated by what other women have done with this sartorial Rule of Life. Maybe I just want to belong to a Sistahood, and this is one.
Right now there's no way I can justify buying a Wool& dress, though I do honestly like the swing dresses. I already have a closet full of dresses I like, and I don't want not to wear them. I can't really justify getting rid of them. A couple are nearing the end of their journey – my indigo shapeless J. Jill dress, which I love, is starting to fray at the shoulder seams and develop holes – and I am going to make myself purge them after this season. But I still have too many dresses I like, dresses that can be worn year-round, to make a major dress investment, even if I wasn't then going to wear that investment dress for a hundred days straight.
BUT I like thinking about the challenge. I could pick any dress out of my closet and challenge myself to wear it daily for some extended period of time. Maybe not a hundred days. I have thought that I could acquire a purple dress – which I need to do, since I purged a couple of dresses after Lent that were either worn out or not doing me any favors in color or shape – and just wear that dress for the entire forty days of Lent next year. If it were a very pale, grayed purple, a lavender or even a grayed lilac, it would be a versatile dress, and I could do that, and it would be an interesting discipline. On a more general scale, of course I like the idea of having fewer clothes, but clothes that work very hard. This challenge points in that direction. I could try it with, for example, my little washed-indigo swing dress, which if you don't look that closely could be a Wool& dress, in terms of style. No, it's not wool, but I do wear it year-round. It would be interesting to challenge myself to style it every day for a month, maybe over a season change (say, October-November). If I just wanted to dress myself like the women in the 100 Days Instagram hashtag, I could do it right now, with a dress already hanging in my closet.
And when the time comes that a number of my dresses wear out and need replacing, I will give thought to investing in ONE very versatile year-round merino dress, rather than replacing the worn dresses on a 1:1 basis.
All that to say, I had thought I'd wear something else today, but the little washed-indigo/navy swing dress (#3) it is. It's not wool – it's a rayon-spandex blend – and would not last 100 days without significant washing, but it's a good, useful little dress, and I like styling it.
Today I'm wearing it with the #15 collarless denim shirt as a light jacket (though I'll undoubtedly take that off when I go outside), a silver braided belt (thrifted) and my Crocs sandals.
I often don't bother to belt this dress, even though the added horizontal visual helps mitigate against the triangle/unflattering-to-pear-shapes line of the dress. I just mostly don't care that much. But today, since I was trying a layered blue look, and since the shirt hits around my hips (also not an intrinsically good look for a pear shape), I thought I'd make this addition to break up those lines and create a more dimensional appearance.
The one thing I would change about this dress (other than maybe making it a fraction longer) is the high crew neck. A deeper rounded scoop neck is far more flattering to my face. But my Miraculous Medal helps me out here, by creating a longer line at the neck. (She helps me out in all kinds of ways, but don't tell me she's not interested in dresses! Look how many different ones she wears, in all those apparitions!)
One thing I meditate on, as I meditate on the idea of wearing a dress like this every day, is where I would and would not feel comfortable wearing it, at least as I'm wearing it right now. To put it to you straight, I don't wear this dress to church. The length does not read "church appropriate" to me.
I must also point out that I do not think that what constitutes "church appropriate" is a matter of any universal, magisterial rule. Yes, yes, Padre Pio had rules for women's attire, and he's a saint, but even he is not in himself a magisterium. I once heard a priest proclaim in a homily that no Christian woman should wear a mini skirt, and that to do so was objectively sinful, a mortal sin, and – sorry, no. Here Father's wheels had left the Church's straight highway and were catching the air of personal opinion. Nobody would be morally bound to arrange her clothing choices (and it's always her clothing choices) around the principles of that homily.
We are taught very clearly – I taught very clearly, in my years of teaching second-grade First Communicants – what constitutes mortal sin.
First, it has to be clear that the matter at hand is, unambiguously, gravely sinful. "Because somebody might see you and succumb to lust" is not really gravely sinful matter. It's a huge MAYBE. Somebody might see you in a prairie dress and succumb to lust. Somebody might also see you just innocently existing and be moved to murder you. Lust and murder are obviously grave matter. The possibility that someone might be prompted by something about you to commit those sins: not grave matter for you, just an unnecessary burden of worry.
For another thing, "sexual attraction" and "lust" are not the same thing. Sheila Gregoire, in her new book The Great Sex Rescue, spends some time unpacking this important difference, and although her book is written in the context of evangelicalism, what she's saying absolutely applies to our Catholic parsing of sin and culpability. Sexual attraction is not a sin. It's just another sensation, like anger, that can be fleeting. Like anger, it's a sensation that all post-pubescent human beings deal with to one extent or another, but with some discipline we can learn not to dwell in it. Lust, on the other hand, entails dwelling in it. Lust entails moving past that initial sensation of attraction to the stage of acting on that attraction in your mind, in a deliberate and lingering and debasing way. It's the sexual attraction you consciously decide to dwell in, just as wrath is the anger you allow to fester and poison your whole being. The difference between one thing and the other matters a lot.
Second, for a sin to be mortal, the sinner has to be fully aware of the gravity of the "sinful matter," and to be fully in his right mind, capable of making a clearheaded decision. Not confused, not pressured, not struggling with something stronger than he is, not incapacitated in some way (by depression, by unhealed trauma, by alcohol or drugs, by any number of things that impair a person's mental and moral clarity).
Third, that clear-minded, unimpaired person has to decide, clearly and consciously, to sin, in full knowledge that what he is doing is seriously and unambiguously wrong.
In the case of women's clothing, this means that the man who sees a woman (dressed however) and is sexually attracted to her must consciously decide to dwell on that attraction, undressing her in his mind, mentally treating her like a prostitute. Just seeing her isn't a sin. Just being attracted to her isn't a sin. At this point, he has a set of options before him. He can recall that she's a human being with intrinsic dignity, worthy of his respect. Sheila Gregoire recommends that men practice looking women in the eyes, person to person, rather than trying to "bounce" their own eyes away from these objects of temptation. Or he can go ahead and mentally dehumanize her. Again, he has this choice before him.
But again, it's really only a choice if a) he knows the difference between sin and not-sin, b) he recognizes that to undress her and have sex with her, even in his mind, is sinful, and c) he both knows what other more positive options he possesses AND has enough intrinsic control not to go down the dehumanizing road automatically, against his will. If he's a recovering porn addict in the process of trying to rewire his mind not to move automatically to its lust setting, where it has been stuck, then it stands to reason that God, in His merciful justice, will not hold him accountable for more than he is really capable of doing. We are not blamed for things we honestly can't help. The man in question would want to deal with that problem in confession, because that's where the grace comes from to help him move from one mode to the other, to rewire the pathways of his thought and mental imagery. But his past in this instance would constitute the kind of impairment that would mitigate against the seriousness of the sin.
If a mortal sin does occur here, whose is it?
Unless she had dressed with the conscious intent of making men mentally (or otherwise) regard her as a prostitute, just a body to be looked at in a sexual way, the sin is not hers, folks. If all she did was get dressed, desiring to look nice, accommodating her body type, her personality, and the realities of what's on offer to buy in clothing stores, then: no sin here, nothing to see, move along. Sin is the sole property of the person who makes the conscious, considered decision to sin, not the person who has unintentionally triggered something in the other person. If he has failed to see her as a whole person, with intrinsic dignity, bearing the Imago Dei, whatever she happens to be wearing, then that's his problem, not hers.
In our moral theology, intent matters. It matters hugely. And we sin against charity when we decide – looking at, say, a teenaged girl's outfit – that someone's intention was anything but innocent. Unless we know for sure, beyond a reasonable doubt, that to provoke someone to sin was what she explicitly intended, we do wrong to entertain that thought. As the mother of former and current teenaged girls, I've seen how wounding it is to be accused, implicitly or explicitly, as in your friend telling you that her mother thought your prom dress was immodest, or a pastor intimating to your parents that he would deny you communion because of your clothing choices. It feels horribly shaming to be accused of an intention that you did not entertain, as you were trying, in your stumbling towards maturity, to navigate your own body-image and identity issues. It feels terrible to have guilt imputed to you when you were innocent. God loves you when your dress makes you feel ugly is . . . well, it's not the message of the Gospel, let's just put it that way. Neither is You tell God you love Him by making yourself feel ugly.
If I sound maybe a little angry: yes, I am. I think these messages are wrong and wounding. I do not mean to intimate that someone's intent might not be to provoke. I mean that the only person short of God who really knows what her intent is is the person herself. The right thing to do, if she does recognize this intent in herself – that she's been truly clearly conscious of wanting to turn somebody on, in the knowledge that to provoke someone to sin is sinful, and deliberately dressing in order to do that – in that case, her appropriate response would be contrition and a good confession. But she would be the one to know whether she stands in need of that sacrament or not. Nobody, just looking at her, can guess her intentions. Our job as beholders is to assume, in charity, that her intentions are innocent, unless we know otherwise beyond a reasonable doubt. Otherwise, all we do is imperil our own souls.
Having said all that, I probably wouldn't wear this dress to church, at least not as is. It does feel more like a sporty, beachy, outdoorsy dress, not a dressy dress. And I instinctively wouldn't show this much leg in church, unless I were wearing leggings and boots with a shorter dress (which I have done many times). Among other things, American churches in summertime tend to be freezing. But even so, I think it's probably more that the dress, with its length, reads as a casual dress to me, unless I specifically dressed it up.
What would really make me uncomfortable and self-conscious, meanwhile, to the point of distractingly intrusive thoughts, would be the idea that people around me were looking at me and judging my clothes. I once gave a talk at a church, for which I wore a knit dress just above my knees with a cardigan and boots. The minute I walked through the door, I regretted my choice of outfit, because almost every other woman there was wearing a maxi dress. I could clearly see which way the wind blew, and I had not dressed for that weather. Oh, well. People were nice. I gave my talk and more or less forgot myself and my appearance. I had conversations with people afterwards: all friendly. Then as I was going into church, an elderly male usher handed me a bulletin – and visibly checked out my legs. Eyes down and up again. I HOPE for his sake it was just one of those fleeting moments, but I felt crawled all over, and it was weird, and I don't even remember much about the very beautiful Mass because I was so bothered by it.
And I don't think I'd invited it. Truly. What I was wearing was well within our cultural bounds for modesty. It wasn't low-cut. It wasn't tight. It was longer than the dress I'm wearing today: my knees showed, but that's all. I certainly had not dressed with the idea of being provocative, but only with the idea of being casually polished and professional. I actually think, looking back at photographs of the event, that I looked fat and schlumpy, way more than I was aware of looking at the time. I was not being a Catholic Literature Babe. Photos of myself from that event, in fact, were part of the impetus for me to start being more purposeful about my wardrobe, and to photograph myself, so I'd know how I looked in my clothes before I walked out the door. I didn't look that good in those pictures, but I certainly didn't look sleazy, either. Anyway, the idea that it was my fault that this man I'd never met in my life gave me the creepy eye is ridiculous. And the idea that I should have considered my outfit choices as potential armor against any possible occurrence of somebody else's creepy eye: that way lies my own descent into crippling scrupulosity.
That's what all our modesty discourse is doing to our girls. It's burdening them with paralyzing worry about what other people might possibly think. It's blaming them when a man slimes them with his gaze. Or it's just making them tune out the entire Gospel, because it's become so inextricably bound up, in their minds, with these messages about their clothing and bodies as to be not good news for them at all. No wonder the world where women can just put on clothes and not worry looks so marvelously free and appealing. Yet that's a lie, too. We're called to abundant life in Christ, and He means for us to move in our world in the expansive freedom of charity – which means that at all times we must intend charity, whatever the locus of our relationship to women's clothing.
Possibly you were not expecting a treatise in moral theology as part of a blog post about clothes. But if you wanted to know what's on my mind today, here it is. You should know that I take things like this seriously. I believe in sin. I also believe in the wisdom of Church tradition, in developing a nuanced language for discussing moral culpability. I ALSO believe in a God who is both merciful and just, and in that just mercy does not hold us accountable for things that are not our conscious fault.
Gate-keeping clericalism is a problem, and though I suspect that Steve Skojec and I wouldn't agree about much, possibly including rules for women's attire, it's something of a relief to be reminded that I'm not alone in resenting the tendency of (especially young? especially self-consciously orthodox?) Catholics priests to overstep the bounds of their authority in damaging ways. Yes, there are serious problems with the opposite end of the spectrum, that place where, as a friend of mine likes to say, God loves you so much He doesn't care WHAT you do. But the kind of problem I've been describing is the one I've encountered most immediately and most often. Whataboutism, invoking ugly churches, clown Masses, and all that, does not help me with the actual problem I have, which is . . . this. Not that it's that immediate a problem anymore, because we've removed ourselves from a particular situation – sadly, because there was a lot we loved about that situation. But my residual anger is about a real problem.
Also, if you honestly can't tell, from the photographs above, the difference between me and a prostitute, then I submit to you that you have not watched nearly enough Seventies-era police drama.
Also: my husband would tell you, if you asked him nicely, that my outfit yesterday (see above) was sexy. Now, he is allowed to think that, but he might very well think it, at least fleetingly, even if I were not his wife, but an unknown woman he happened to encounter in, for example, some random oral surgeon's waiting room. All that just to say, see everything I've just said above, but additionally, I defy you to quantify "sexy" clothing for women vs. "non-sexy" clothing. I also hope you can see that to call a woman's outfit "objectively immoral" is just idiotic. Rape is objectively immoral. Clothes are clothes.
LATER:
I braided my hair first thing today because the weather was hot, but then I tried an updo in which I stuffed the braid up under my hair at the back of my head, and secured it with a claw clip, holding my braid about where the little scrunchie is. It's not all that glam, but it has held up through a long, steamy North Carolina day.
I do like the "bits" at the side of my bangs – even when they grow out, I want to keep "bits" around my face. Also, the joy of 50something hair: gleams of silver. If you got it, celebrate it.
WEDNESDAY/MAY 26/DAY 26
Today's agenda:
*clean the fridge
*send out some poems
*review/revise the novel draft
*phone conversation with a high-school friend at 2 pm
*plan and execute dinner
*not go off on matters of faith and morals and the cut of certain wool dresses
Outfit:
Basically repeating Monday's color combination: #8 Gap sage-green shorts, #21 J.Jill blue swing tee (tucked in, obviously), pink belt, Birkenstock Floridas. Day 5 hair in a ponytail again – I might wash it tonight, or I might see if I can just wait for the weekend. It's easier to decide to wear it up, and to experiment with various updos, if I haven't just washed it.
A basic outfit, and the masculine cut/weight of these shorts (they really feel like men's chinos, cut off) always makes things a little tricky. The top's graceful scoop neck and fullness balance out that masculine feel, as do the lines of the Birkenstocks. I also have light-dark-color-pattern going on in this outfit: dark shoe (but with some pattern in the contrast of the straps with my foot), color in both tee and shorts, pattern in the tee, the belt adding a contrasting, lighter detail. What could have read as staidly preppy and mannish instead turns out a little crunchy, with muted interest. Sez I, anyway. But that fridge won't clean itself.
LATER:
My day's work.
No, I'm not posting "before" photos. It was disgusting.
THURSDAY/MAY 27/DAY 27
Only three days remain in the May 30x30 challenge! After that . . . I'll probably just keep on wearing mostly the same things, to be honest.
Today:
*novel revisions
*a homeschooling consultation
*laundry
*walk
And for all this I am wearing
