Deliberately not imposing any challenge on myself this week, just wearing what's in the closet. While I have been acquiring a lot of clothing pieces lately – at least, that's how it feels to me – and looking at 2021 as something of a (necessary) wardrobe rebuilding year, this week I think I'd like simply to rest in gratitude for what I have. Other than a bin of sweaters under my bed, this, pictured above, is it. I'm happy with that.
Friends of mine have closets the size of my living room, full of clothes . . . and that's a prospect that makes me break out in a sweat. I'm also, incidentally, a person who's perfectly happy living in a small town with three restaurants, one coffee shop, and two pubs, all within walking distance of my house. That's exactly the right number of choices, for me, anyway. I can't live in decision fatigue. Now, other people can cope with more choices without decision fatigue, and that's fine. I do not begrudge my city-dwelling friends their many restaurants, coffee shops, and pubs. I do not begrudge my big-closet friends their enormous wardrobes. It's just been an important epiphany for me – not so much that I don't have to live that way, because honestly, I've never lived that way and never wanted to. I guess the epiphany really is that given my own parameters, I too can both enjoy clothes (not wrong! not materialistic!) and be well dressed (not vanity!) within those parameters. I can dress the person I am with some care and artfulness within those parameters, which acknowledge both my budget and my particular personhood, and I can enjoy doing it. My appearance can be a source of pleasure to me, rather than stress, anxiety, and overwhelm. As tiny and trivial as it might seem, this can be an avenue of grace for me.
These are my affirmations for the week of June 13, the week of the Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time.
Oh, I'm also not going to hate my body.
SUNDAY JUNE 13
If I look tired here, it’s because I am. The beach is wonderful and relaxing; yesterday’s 14-hour drive, not so much.
Sunday Mass outfit: items I haven’t worn in at least a month (except for the green cardi, which was part of my 30x30. All thrifted.
Royal blue tee, blue/green floral linen A-line skirt, green boyfriend cardigan. I've had all these pieces for years. The tee is nothing special – I think it's Faded Glory or something – but I bought it for a quarter (also the amount I spent on the cardigan), and the color is just right. This dark, intense royal blue is about the brightest blue I can get away with wearing before it's too overwhelming. The greens in the skirt, meanwhile, are really not my greens, being mostly too yellow, but as long as I'm not wearing them next to my face, it's all good. I've always thought of this skirt as bright and high-contrast, but in these photos the pattern effect seems to me to be almost watercolorish. The fabric is a very heavy linen, which makes it good to wear year-round, which I have done: sandals in summer, boots and a sweater in winter.
It occurs to me that I can wear my army-green Gap tee with this skirt, which heretofore I haven't done. There's also a little oatmeal in the pattern – I've been on the lookout for more off-white/oatmeal pieces for the wardrobe (not too actively, and not this week, but I am looking for them), including a tee or sweater which would go with lots of things, including this skirt. I could envision a winter/early-spring ensemble with maybe a merino long-sleeved tee or light sweater in an oatmeal off-white over this skirt, with boots and possibly my moss-green corduroy blazer from last winter. As the Australians I follow on Instagram move into winter, I've been liking layered pale outfits like this one, and considering how to build more of that kind of color into what I have, going forward. Yes, yes, this week I'm resting in what I have, but that doesn't mean I don't have ideas! Always the ideas! And I am attracted by this family of neutrals that I think I'd wear well year-round, and that would provide an antidote to the gloom and darkness of winter. But that's really getting ahead of myself here. How about we just stop and enjoy the season we're actually having, say I to my acquisitive nature.
What I did today:
*Mass at the Abbey
*Diocesan choir practice at the Cathedral in the afternoon. I must needs spend some time with Mr. Scarlatti and Mr. M.J. Haydn before our second practice on Friday night, for priestly ordinations on Saturday. I always love the music for ordinations: full of joy, lots of you are a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek. V. grateful for opportunity to sing this glorious music; also v. grateful not to be the one voice holding down the alto part.
MONDAY JUNE 14
On the agenda:
*a homeschool consultation FaceTime call
*painters coming around noon to start refurbishing our windows
*some fiction writing, and maybe some poetry; got things to submit to magazines
*replies to emails to which I have owed replies for some days now
*call my mother
*make appointments for college physicals for my rising college freshmen
*touch base with the one rising freshman who needs to turn in some stuff related to his fall class schedule
*practice music for Friday rehearsal
*laundry, dinner, etc
What shall I wear to do these things? As I sit drinking my coffee and contemplating it all, this is the question I ask myself. What shall I wear?
The complementary question, obviously, is What haven't I worn in a while?
Surprisingly, maybe, given the smallness of my wardrobe, the answer is: lots of things.
I reached in and pulled out, rather randomly, one of those lots of things:
This basic light-gray t-shirt dress was a Walmart impulse buy some years ago – more than five years, I think, but I'm not sure. It's seen me through numerous seasons and weight fluctuations. As I've said before here, this is the kind of purchase I'm committed to not making anymore. On the other hand, for what it is, this is a decent piece. It's 100% cotton, a nice dense fabric that's held up nicely through many, many wearings and washings over the years. It's stretched some, but not much, given time and body changes and not particularly careful care. Gray is a neutral I can wear pretty well, and it goes with virtually anything.
For just schlubbing around the house, I'd throw on the dress by itself. It's basically a big tee, that's all. But I can style it all kinds of ways if I want. It'll never be a dressy dress, but it still has plenty of possibility. As my weight has inched up again, too, my instinct is to want to do some camoflaging. As you can see quite plainly here, I've gained a bit in my midsection. Well, I can see this plainly, anyway. Possibly my view is somewhat dysmorphic, though I'm working on that. I'm working on saying to myself, This is a beautiful body, at whatever age and size. At the same time, I feel compelled to add some kind of visual . . . interest, let's say.
So how am I going to do that? Again, I'm trying to wear things I haven't been wearing, so when I reach into my closet a second time, my hand falls on . . .
. . . this tee, which I bought at Goodwill back in the fall, I think. I was attracted to it for the color (purple for Advent and Lent, in a shade I wear pretty well), the silky drape, and the interesting twisted hemline. I did wear it, in fact, quite a lot this past Lent.
But . . . eh. Looking at it again, I don't know. I've always thought that I'd like it better if it were a size smaller. The way it drapes and falls is lovely in itself, but it doesn't actually do a whole lot for my body shape, I don't think.
I consistently end up feeling kind of boxy, or else lost in fabric. I can't decide which. It's like it's almost right, but not quite.
One of the things I have liked about this dress is that I can wear it as a skirt, with a top over it. But I'm not convinced that this particular top is right, even though technically it "goes." And I realize, trying it on now, that this is the feeling I've had about every single outfit I've made with this top. Technically it "goes." The color is supposedly a good one for me. And yet . . . it always feels off.
So I outboxed it. Mind you, the outbox isn't full yet. I'll wait till it is, then evaluate every piece in it before I pass it on. But if I have this feeling about something after having worn it repeatedly, and if it's something I find I haven't wanted to include in any challenge since the last time I wore it, then that bears paying attention to. It might be the exact right thing, but for somebody else, not me.
Meanwhile, back to the closet. What else haven't I worn in a while? This time my hand fell on an item that almost made it into my May 30x30. Then I took it to the beach with me, thinking I'd wear it – and didn't, though I could have. I last wore this item as intended (ie, as a dress), back in the Octave of Easter. I wore it again as a duster over my Sunday dress on the third Sunday of Easter. I actually prefer this piece worn as a duster*, though my husband likes it very much as a dress. Anyway, I keep consistenly almost wearing it, then at the last minute deciding on something else. I should pay attention to this pattern, but today I did decide to wear said item.
*I should probably stop calling things this length dusters. Technically a duster is mid-calf to ankle-length. This is more like a lab coat, but that doesn't sound so stylish. At any rate, it is just longer than the gray dress, which at least breaks up the line to avoid boxiness.
Maybe it's just my mood, because I tend to like lower-contrast outfits, but today the pop of teal is cheering. I think it looks better with my current tan, too, than a pinker shade does. I also like the longer line of the top layer over the core layer of the gray dress. Switched out my blue Birks for these tan sandals, to keep things from being matchy.
Up to now, focusing on getting the basics in place, I haven't done anything with hair or accessories. At this point I'm happy with the basics – it's going to be 90 degrees today, and I need to do some work outside (sketched that in after my homeschool consultation needed to postpone for a later date), so if I'm going to have a top layer, it's good to have one that I can shrug off if I get too hot, and that will also provide a little more sun protection as long as I keep it on. It's also a lot breezier than a whole other tee over my dress. I decided on a ponytail, to keep my hair off my neck, plus my usual minimal jewelry.
A statement necklace would probably be a good move here. But as I prefer to wear my Miraculous Medal, and as I'm not going anywhere that would indicate elevating the tone of this outfit, I am not going to bother. I did add my gold-glass ball earrings for an additional little pop, since gold/yellow goes so well with both light gray and teal-blue.
If I were going to go to daily Mass today, which as it happens I am not, I would probably pop on some skinny jeans or leggings under this dress for additional coverage, OR tuck it into a longer skirt. I could also wear it as a tunic over a longer gray knit narrow skirt, which is a piece I do not currently own, but if I did, &c. I am not in the business of policing anybody's clothes but my own (see my whole diatribe about modesty and women's clothing here, if you care to), but I know what my own comfort zone is in various contexts, and this would be my response for that particular context. It would be how I would feel least self-conscious and most able to focus on God, which I think is really the point.
But I'm not going anywhere in particular today, so this is it. More of a profile shot to get the ponytail in. It's nothing special, but here it is.
I am also paying attention to what happens to my coloring in the shift from pinky-grape to teal. It's a subtle shift, but it's there. I feel as though I come into bloom. This too is something to pay attention to in choosing colors. For reference, I made a side-by-side collage of my face in the pinky-grape tee and my face in the teal-and-gray outfit. The lighting is as close to the same as I could make it, though I think I held the camera closer in the pinky-grape shot, so there's possibly more color washout. Still, I tried to replicate those conditions (same room, same lighting, same angle), and:
Pretty notable difference when you see it like that. I noticed in the full-body mirror selfies above that the color I was wearing seemed to change my facial coloring, but here you go. I have the same dark circles in both pictures (headache, still tired from Saturday's long drive home, though I did get a good night's sleep last night).
Here I am again, in a concerted attempt to take the least-flattering photograph possible, in poor lighting, to equal the quality of the photo above left.
Even trying, on purpose, to wash myself out with the flash, I still look better, as in less washed-out, than I do in that pinky-grape top. My skin tone is brighter. My eye color looks more intense. It's really not my imagination. I'm must less plain overall in teal blue than I am in that pinky-grape. This leads me to re-evaluate my entire relationship with purple and pink, with pale and intense color . . . but not so much today. I just will be paying attention in the future, because what I'd want out of any outfit, in terms of color, is the level of flattering that the color in this outfit achieves. Without makeup and without filter, I would want my face to look this good (at least) in anything I wear.
It occurs to me now that I might challenge myself to take more close-up selfies this week, in as close an approximation of the same lighting and angle as I can manage, to compare how the colors in my closet play with my eyes and skin tone. There's no point in hanging onto clothing items that don't make me feel as alive and vibrant as my very best colors do, so this could be a good exercise in culling back the wardrobe even further, so that it consists only of elements that work as well as the best items do. I wouldn't get rid of things immediately – my sunned post-beach face is kind of different in tone from my winter face, for example. But I would really do well, I think, to pay attention to these things, and steer my whole wardrobe in the direction of that "best."
As I've said before, this isn't – I hope – about being vain. It is, paradoxically, about not being self-conscious, because I'm comfortable in my skin. It doesn't have to be perfect skin. I really don't mind that it's aging skin. I don't mind that it's skin that reveals how I feel: tired, headachy, whatever. I don't mind that it's skin with flaws. I just want it to glow, as itself. I want my eyes to show up, and my features. I want to look like my best self, without a lot of effort, except in making choices that honor that God-given set of details that constitute my physical self. This isn't limited to clothing choices, of course. I do also mean things like food, eating habits, exercise, sleep, and general self-care. And that doesn't include what in Charlotte-Mason-education circles is called "Mother Culture:" the care and feeding of one's hungry intellect, so as not to fall into a condition of spiritual atrophy. All of this is important. But clothing choices – shape and color – are part of that whole, and not a negligible part, either. If you are going to live as if your own personhood matters, then you regard all aspects of that personhood as important. Bothering to find out what looks good on you (easier and more natural for some people than for others, but as I am discovering, not an utterly impenetrable mystery), and then bothering to wear it (also possible), are integral elements in your larger witness to the intrinsic dignity of the human person.
OK, well, now this dignified human person needs to get on with her day, but if I've given anyone permission to care a little more about what maybe she's been taught is vanity to care about (when it isn't), then good.
LATER:
Some casual, loose menu planning for the week. Yesterday I cooked a big ham, a little of which three of us ate for dinner, but there's a LOT left. I can freeze it eventually, but would like to make as many meals with it as possible. Here's my tentative plan:
Monday: more or less a repeat of last night's dinner, which was sliced ham (roasted in a marinade of balsamic vinegar and brown-sugar Swerve), applesauce, and peas.
Tuesday: cold bean salad (chickpeas and black beans, since we have those) with shredded carrots and diced ham, plus halved jammy eggs and a green vegetable, maybe green beans
Wednesday: roasted chicken thighs, for a change from ham, with maybe roasted brussels sprouts (again, I have them)
Friday: I have some big scallops in the freezer, so maybe skewers with some shrimp, which I'd have to buy, and grape tomatoes and peppers. Salmon. It was easy. But I made tzadziki to have with it, and crudités.
Saturday: There will probably be some ham left. No, there wasn't. We went out to a party instead.
Here we have, in micro, How My Executive-Dysfunctional Mind Does Menu Planning. If I'm going to do a special meal I do plan and shop in far greater detail, but mostly I know what kinds of things we like, in what kind of rotation we like them, and I shop with those generalities in mind. Out of what I then have on hand, I make meals. What I have just done above is a slightly more premeditated version of same. On Saturday, I predict that there will be ham, plus . . . whatever else is in the fridge and freezer, out of which I will concoct a meal, and it will be fine. Not company standards, maybe, but certainly fine for the people who are used to eating here every day.
Even as Covid-19 seeps out of the frame of our life (a little staining around the edges still, but the whole world's not sepia anymore), I have continued ordering my groceries online from Aldi. I began because I wanted to cut down on crowding in supermarkets, and because I wanted to protect myself and my family from exposure. I've continued because I have a basic working shopping list, all I have to do is click stuff, and I stay out of the store where I'm easily distracted and inclined to both over-buying (including impulse buying) and forgetting key things I really went in to procure.
In some ways, ordering groceries means that there's a certain sameness to what's in my cupboards and fridge, week to week. On the other hand, there's a certain sameness to what's in my cupboards and fridge, week to week, which means that I know what I have to work with, without thinking about it too hard, and can make meals that mostly get eaten. If this becomes a little boring, well . . . it beats not eating. It also beats 5 p.m. dinner-decision fatigue. I can just reach into the fridge, the deep-freeze, and the cupboard, pull out some things, and make up a decent dinner, even if I haven't thought about it beforehand.
All this, and I can tip a person who's depending on their Instacart income to get by. I don't tip massively, but I do tip 20%, which on an order of usually around $250 winds up being reasonably generous. I can't always afford to do this, and when I can't, that's when I go back to the store myself. But as long as I can, I'll do it.
While I'm thinking about planning (having written, mind you, 1000 words of fiction, returned a couple of emails, and done some laundry), let me consider what things in the closet I'd really like to remember to wear this week.
*it's warming up, so at least one pair of shorts would be good. Maybe my yellow ones, which I wore once at the beach, but that's the only time I've worn them so far.
*This thrifted rose-patterned pink linen shift jumper, which I bought secondhand in 2007. I keep outboxing it, then getting it back out again. With 90s dresses coming in hot this season, I guess I'm pretty glad to have kept this one. It's been an all-year-round staple for me, with sandals and a tee in the summer, boots and a blazer and scarf in the winter.
*My rose-brown jumpsuit, which I wore once, maybe twice, during my May 30x30. It was a fast-fashion buy (Old Navy) last fall, so I want to be sure I get lots of wear out of it.
Other than that . . . whatever I feel like. I'll just put my hand in the closet and pull something out. But it's nice to have a few goals, just to make sure things get worn. And nice to contemplate a week with some pink added in deliberately.
TUESDAY JUNE 15
In the pink, as it were.
This pink suits me far better than the pinky-purple of the tee I was wearing yesterday. I don't even know what to call it – it seems to fall somewhere between dusty pink and coral, maybe.
But you can see that my skin responds to it in much the same way that it responded to yesterday's teal blue.
I guess, looking at this photo (no makeup, no filter), I can see that the pink in the dress corresponds pretty closely to the pink in my lips. I've been thinking I had a bluer undertone than I do, but really my lips look almost coral-pink. This is not a great picture – in fact, as I noted yesterday, I'm actively trying to take bad close-up selfies here, so as to push myself past the possibility of any delusion about how things look on me.
Green bead earrings made by my oldest daughter many years ago. I took off the Miraculous Medal (though I could just have reversed her, so that the silver side was out . . . ) and am wearing only my silver Sacred/Immaculate Hearts pendant on this chain.
As I mentioned yesterday, I have put this dress in the outbox repeatedly, and always gotten it out again. Really I don't know why I think I want to outbox it. I bought it in a thrift store almost fifteen years ago, and it has held up remarkably to a lot of wearing. I can't remember what the label is, but the quality is just beyond excellent. I guess at certain junctures it's seemed maybe kind of dated, but dresses like this are back with a roar this summer, which makes me glad I've hung onto it. The midi length is flattering and versatile. The loose sheath fit and empire waist are forgiving of weight fluctuations. It's a whole English summer garden party – give me a straw hat and a Pimms, and I'm there. I could wear it with my fisherman's sandal wedges to dress up a bit more, and in fact I might do just that on Sunday. In the winter I've worn it with boots and a cardigan or blazer, with a long-sleeved blouse under.
I am on the lookout for off-white, light taupe, or oatmeal tees or blouses, which I'd wear with any number of things including this dress. Here are the colors I'm thinking:
The taupe-ish lighter gray surrounding the center of this rose is one color I'm on the hunt for. I should wear this dress the next time I go to Goodwill.
And when I say "oatmeal," or even "off-white," I'm thinking a shade like this scrunchie:
Again, this shade of off-white would look good against my skin, would go well with this dress, and would complement virtually anything else in my closet right now.
Thinking through my relationship with color is interesting, not least because it's making me look at myself, to see myself with some clarity. I don't think I'm necessarily a great judge of color. I can't tell, at a glance, what color something really is, especially if it's on the line between, say, pink and purple, or pink and apricot. I don't really see undertones. I could never be a color stylist for that reason. But through trial and error, I can figure out what looks good with my particular coloring (fortunately my trials never cost that much!), and this does help to clarify my vision.
Speaking of error and that pinky-purple top I tried yesterday, here's a shot of me wearing it, one day last winter:
I'm not sure when I've taken a worse photo. I was not ill at the time, but boy oh boy. This color is doing nothing for my face here, even paired with a blue cardigan that was a fairly flattering color. Maybe it's just the lighting, but I dunno. I've taken far better pictures in poor lighting. Part of it is the glasses, which are a spare pair that mostly go unworn, for reasons that should be obvious. Still and all: no. Not really. It's not awful, and I actually like the colors as colors, but I just look kind of dead-ish.
On the other hand, here's a fairly similar shade, a shirt that's been hanging next to the shirt above in my closet all this time, with a cardigan in more or less the same color:
The lighting may be better here. I'd just gotten my hair cut and was trying to be all glam about it. I can't decide who it is I'm trying to look like here, but I think she's about to win a Dove Award. My skin tone is hard to read – certainly paler in this shade than in either blue or the pink I'm wearing today, which I guess is not that surprising, since I was at the beach three days ago. At least I don't look sick. Again, I'm fairly sure I was using some kind of filter, so that doesn't help with comparisons. But also, the colors are genuinely more grayed than the color of that tee. That seems to make a difference, whatever color I'm wearing. My eye color, for example, isn't a clear blue or green, but a sort of gray-toned blue-green (though when I wear teal, my eyes are REALLY teal). The color here seems to bring out my eyes, instead of making me look sort of featureless, as in the photo above (the glasses I was wearing in that shot don't help much, either).
More pink/purple shots for the sake of comparison. These are mostly from last Advent, though some are from Lent. Here's me in what I guess might be royal purple, with my pinky-gray-purple cardigan.
The light in my bathroom is so weird – I love linen-white walls, but in some of these shots it looks so yellow, and makes me yellow. Like, hello, I'm your friendly neighborhood cholera epidemic, and I'd like to talk to you about public sanitation. I think I might have put on lip color in this photo, and I'm wearing my better glasses, but it's hard to say what this color is really doing for me.
On the other hand, here's me in shades of periwinkle and grape from a couple of weeks ago:
Not the world's best shot, but I think I look a lot less washed-out here. Maybe it's just that I've been giving myself a backdrop that isn't the linen-white bathroom door, so that the light ends up being more natural? I don't know.
And here's my other purply top from the other week:
It's not that different a shade from the tee, above, that I outboxed. I don't know why my coloring seems better in this. Maybe it doesn't. Maybe I should give the tee another chance? On the other hand, the fit of the tee isn't that great, so there's that strike against it, too. But I still don't quite understand why this top seems to work, color-wise, if the other one doesn't Why, here, do I have actual lips, when the other shirt basically eliminated my lips from my face? Why? Why? Why?
So, the answer is, I don't know. Whatever. I begin to wonder why I'm writing a whole blog about these things. It would be easier in most ways not to think about them.
But all of this reminds me that I do want to wear that royal-purple smocked-yoke top sometime soon. It's another thrifted item I've had for some years, and like my periwinkle Loft smocked top, it's developing some holes. I love the feminine smocked detail, and it goes so nicely with greens – I might wear it with my green Gap shorts this week.
I started out thinking about pink, but really this became a meditation on purple. People have remarked to me that I should wear purple all the time, but I'm not sure I was necessarily wearing these purples at the time. Anyway, I have work to do, but unraveling why some things just make me feel plain the minute I put them on, while other things do not . . . well, that's always the quest, right? Some days I think I've found it. Other days I think it's just a hopeless cause. Well, I know blue is good. Maybe I'll just never wear anything but blue, ever again.
In the meantime: boy howdy, is it ever useful to take pictures of yourself, mostly because you go back later and look at them and think, NO. You kind of hope that if you left the house like that, you didn't run into anybody you knew. Fortunately this last year has been more than usually safe in that regard.
I'll leave you with a wintry me in the mountains last year, on my thirtieth wedding anniversary, in grapey purple, squinting into the sun:
It's going to be a pleasant 86F today, and I think I'll go for a walk. But first I want to write some more fiction. Adieu for now.
UPDATE: Upon reflection, I really think I shouldn't discount the effect of lighting and of the bathroom door as a backdrop. Again, I love linen white in real life, but in photos it doesn't do great things for me. The lighting is a lot more natural, less yellowed, when I leave the door open behind me. I'm going to give these purples more of a chance, with better lighting. But I'm still going to take them under advisement.
WEDNESDAY JUNE 16
On the docket:
*college physical with one child
*review and edit anthology MS, which is almost complete
*consider whether I have any poems to send out (sent out a batch of 3 yesterday)
*review short story/chapter for novel-in-stories, which I've written over the last couple of days – my view of this whole batch of stories has changed since I started just thinking of it as a novel
*have clothes on in time for arrival of painters
Here's what I do have on:
*favorite thrifted sage-green twill skirt
*braided silver belt
*blue EVA Birkenstocks
*Day Whatever hair in a ponytail with a little scrunchie. I'll probably wash it this afternoon or evening, but don't want to deal with it this morning.
A closer view:
The lighting is definitely weird. Maybe one day I will invest in a tripod for my phone and take pictures outside, but today is not that day. I did "enhance" it, whatever exactly that filter in Google Photos does, hoping to make it a little more natural; not sure it really worked.
Maybe a cool filter? Let's try that:
A little more like daylight, maybe.
And a final shot, unenhanced:
Pink and green are pretty delectable, as I am discovering, having been turned off that combination in the early 1980s by the preppy combination of hot pink and lime green, which did precisely zero for me in any way. Here, though, to my eye, there is something so restful and pleasurable in the rose-pink of this tee and the dusty, washed green of the skirt: soft and un-self-announcing. I could elevate this look a little more, if I wanted, by the addition of a necklace like this one –
– to fill the rather large neckline of the shirt. I really wish I just had a second silver chain to wear with the one I'm wearing. I found an old four-way medal this morning and added it to my Sacred/Immaculate Hearts pendant, just for fun.
These more buttery pinks seem to suit me better than the more blue-toned ones.
As for the past two days, here I am in my kitchen, which gets virtually no natural light in the mornings. No makeup, no filter. The rich pink of this tee – soft pink, I guess, rather than rose? in Nat Tucker's Brilliant Colour Combinations – really picks up my skin tone, which I can see clearly in closeups like this. Whiter or bluer pinks/purples seem to wash me out a lot more. Possibly I need more intense color to balance my relatively dark hair – it will be interesting to see to what extent this changes as my silver grows in and my natural color fades. And it's interesting to me that blue works so well with my coloring (because it's a direct contrast, and also an element in my eye color), but blue-pinks or pinky purples seem not to . . . though maybe it's just that they're too light and delicate for my skin tone, which is not at all porcelain.
Things I think about myself, based on this:
*pretty sure my skin tone is pink – though I do better in creamier, more saturated pinks like this tee, as long as they aren't too bright. Hot pink just makes me disappear.
*She talks a lot about contrast, and this resonates with me a lot. I'm not a high-contrast person. A really bright color or a loud, high-contrast print just makes me disappear. But there's some contrast in my coloring: darkish hair with fair-to-medium-toned skin, dark-brown brows, dark lashes, some natural color to my lips. I find some of these paler, monochrome color schemes (like my grayed pink/purples) really restful sometimes, but it occurs to me that maybe the saturation or intensity of the color isn't enough. I don't want it loud, but maybe what's off is that there needs to be more balance with the saturation/intensity of my own coloring.
That might be the key to wearing purple for me, or really any color that I can wear at all (yellow, orange, peach, black . . . I just don't think there's any way, at least not next to my face). Balancing the saturation of the color with the saturation of my own coloring!
Pretty happy, anyway. Shapes and colors feel good. Onward. Excelsior. &c.
UPDATE: Style inspiration of the day. It's winter in Australia, so a little weird to be looking at layers and scarves when we have a sunny, balmy high of 84F here today. But I always love what Bronwyn wears, especially her color combinations. Though we have opposite body types, so that the shapes she wears are probably exactly antithetical to the shapes I should wear, her coloring seems very close to mine. All the colors she wears look like a great sigh of relief to me, like coming home. And while I can't really successfully copy her style, I learn a lot from the way she puts things together, day to day. I don't think I need as much going on in my outfits as she seems to have – I look and feel better in far simpler lines – but the flow and fluidity feels right, as well as the color scheme. I do like this winter outfit, though, and probably could put together something similar, in casual outdoorsy layers, out of things I have in my wardrobe right now. It's too hot today, of course, but I hope that in writing it down, I'll have committed the idea to memory.
UPDATE #2: Went for a long walk this afternoon, came home sweaty, took a bath, washed my hair, and changed clothes because some of us in this household have a beer date tonight. Decided to put on my yellow shorts – didn't I say I wanted to wear shorts this week? and didn't I maybe say I'd only worn these once? because if I didn't say it before, now you know – and this ivory gauze sleeveless top, both recent thrift finds.
I don't ordinarily wear yellow, but if you have even minorly tanned legs, it's a good choice. My hair is all wet and snaky, and I didn't even try to make a pretty face, but when I step out with the man of the house, I promise I'll smile at him.
Here's more of a profile view, which I don't often think to take, for reasons which might be apparent:
I am actually tracking my food and drink, now that I'm back from the beach, though I have sworn to myself not to obsess and to give myself grace. I had to input goals into the tracker, so I went ahead and put in the weight I'd wanted to achieve when my weight was moving in a downwardly rather than an upwardly mobile trend. But I'm not going to be married to that number, or to the date by which the tracker app thinks I should attain that number. I'm going to live my life. But I would like, at the very least, not to keep packing it the heck on.
FINAL WEDNESDAY UPDATE: Walked 10,759 steps today. Feeling a little tired. I need to get to a place where that number of steps doesn't exhaust me. There's a goal!
Also, find you a shade of white that makes you glow without a filter, and wear it.
THURSDAY JUNE 17
Began the day with a 3.5-mile walk, in my bid to habituate myself to walking 10K steps a day. I have a lot of work to do today – reading and making editorial comments on the anthology MS, fiction writing, a reckoning with Messrs. Scarlatti and M.J. Haydn before tomorrow night's rehearsal – but it was good to get outside first thing.
Here's a view of the greenway down the street from our house:
We're still in the freshness of early summer. When I got up this morning, the temperature was 55F; by the time we went out, around 9, it was up to 64, still very much like a morning in the mountains. By the time I came in I felt quite warm, but not unpleasantly so.
Because it felt so cool, I pulled out these purple joggers – relatively lightweight, but I won't want to wear them much in July – from my recent Goodwill haul. Wearing them with my basic white tank and blue EVA Birks to walk in:
It occurred to me, as I was taking these daily photos, that I have friends who would just about rather be dead than have a body the size and shape of mine:
Now, I don't think I'm particularly grotesquely proportioned, but truly, I have friends who hate themselves in a size 4, who talk about their fat butts, who work out, and work out, and work out, so as not to attain the horrendous weight . . . that honestly would be my ideal, i.e., twenty pounds lighter than my current weight. These are people who find excess weight (on other people) disgusting and comment-worthy, who believe that to be fat is to have failed somehow, on the level of character. There's something about putting on joggers, maybe, that makes me think about all of this.
Again, I don't actually think I'm fat. I'd also be lying if I said I didn't care whether I ever got that way. Why do you think I went out and walked 3.5 miles this morning? Why do you think I've broken down and bought a fitness tracker? I do not, as it happens, want to keep buying bigger pants. I'd like not to have to donate all the ones that fit me last year. I want to continue, into my old age, to hike in the mountains, to walk anywhere I need to go, to be not impeded by my own body, lugged around with me all the time like an oversized suitcase I can't put down. I also have friends who are or have been obese, and the ones who are not any longer have remarked how nice it is to, for example, fit comfortably into an airplane seat. There are reasons why a person might want to get a handle on her weight gain and reverse it.
But – all this to say that when I took that second, head-on shot of myself in these joggers, my first thought was, ew no. I thought that because I kind of have some thighs. I thought that because the feeling I had after walking, of being light and strong and carefree, even beautiful, did not correspond with the fact of my body as the camera handed it to me. The longer I look at that picture, mind you, the more I think I look just fine, but that's one reason why I take all these pictures: to confront my own physical reality and not be ashamed of it. I want to take care of my body. I want it to be nourished. I want it to be strong and capable. I want to love it – now as well as last year, or later. I want to be grateful for it, unconditionally.
Anyway, after going on the other day about purple, can I just say that I really like having some purple trousers in my wardrobe? These are a nice heathered shade, muted enough almost to be a neutral, and I enjoy wearing them. The white tank is a little brighter white than the ivory top I wore out last night, but it's okay. I still have some color in my face. The white seems to correspond reasonably well to the whites of my eyes, which according to Nat Tucker (though I can't find the exact video just now) is the key to choosing a white that will flatter you.
Again, not a fabulous picture of me, but I wasn't trying to look fabulous. No makeup, no filter. You can see the flaws in my 56-year-old skin. But – admittedly, it helps that it's warm and I've just been walking – that flawed skin does glow. I don't look sick. I don't look tired. Do I look like a million bucks? I guess that depends on what you'd want for your money. Do I look like I'm twenty years younger? No, but then I'm not twenty years younger, and I don't see any point in pretending. It's just kind of fun to realize that even wearing something extremely basic, not having tried all that hard, I can look good enough.
Also, what's fun about these joggers is that you can either fold the waistband down, or wear it as a paper-bag waist, with the drawstring tucked inside. The label is Wish&Whim, which I'd never heard of, but if one brand makes a style like this, maybe more will do the same.
(close-up detail of actual paper-bag effect, with my top exaggeratedly tucked in)
FRIDAY JUNE 18
Got me a fitness thingy.
Having had it less than twenty-four hours, I can't say too much about it, but so far, so good. It records my steps. It informs me that last night I got 8 hours 26 minutes of sleep, 3 hours and 12 minutes of which were deep sleep, 5 hours and 14 minutes of which were light sleep. No recorded REM sleep. Its little alarm woke me at 7. I have another alarm set for the Angelus at noon, which means I can turn off the loud alarm on my phone. I have 98% blood oxygen saturation, and a resting heart rate of something like 63 bpm. I guess all of this is good?
I woke up not feeling that I had slept particularly well, so let's see what my clothing choices do for me today, in the area of not-looking-tired.
I had said I wanted to wear my purple smocked tank, pictured above with a big cardigan in the winter. Today's high is supposed to be 90F, and we were planning a long walk (3.2 miles, which we've now just returned from), so it seemed a good day to pair that tank with some shorts.
How did this perform in the "make me look like I got some sleep" category?
I mean, no worse than anything else I might have worn, and better than something paler. Purple, as a complement (or direct contrast? I'm never sure which is which) to green, always makes my indeterminate eyes tilt greener.
I wore this top with a pair of shorts I haven't yet worn this summer: thrifted Columbia outdoor/hiking shorts in an off-white. You'll see just WHY I haven't worn them so much this summer:
Maybe it's not quite so obvious in this shot, but they are a little tight in the waist and hips. It's depressing, because they're a size 12, but on the other hand, they've always been a small size 12, and this isn't the first season when they've fit on the tight side. But this summer they're tight enough to be just a little uncomfortable: ride-up/wedgie tight.
Here I've changed into my Crocs sandals, which I thought made a better line (and I did walk 3.2 miles in them just now), but I mean, yeah. I did wear these shorts to walk, but I think I'm going to have to set them aside for a while. I don't think I'll outbox them just yet, because they'll be a good measure of any progress I make in the pounds-and-inches department this summer. They are excellent shorts for hiking, and very flattering when they do fit, so I'm loath to get rid of them . . . let me give it a month or so of walking and keeping a closer eye on my food-and-drink intake, and then see where we are.
I did first try them with my J.Jill swing tee, which seemed like a NO.
Actually, it looks better to me in this photo than I had originally thought when I took the photo, an hour ago. But the feeling was boxy.
I actually feel better in the purple top, in terms of color, than I did in the blue. I'm not sure why that is. Blue is so reliably good for me. Again, maybe it's just the lighting, about which I need to be more carefully consistent if I really want to make useful judgments. But I'm happy to feel this good in this shade of purple. Gives me something to look for in my thrifting forays, to build a capsule for Advent and Lent, as well as purple to wear on an everyday basis. Now that I've recovered from this past Lent, it appeals to me a lot more!
Today's agenda:
*Walk (DONE)
*Meal planning and grocery order
*Wash my hair – won't have time in the morning before I have to leave for the Ordination Mass
*Fiction writing
*Reading the anthology MS and sending an email with a permissions request
*Reading (I want to dip back into George Saunders' A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, which I began at the beach last week), plus Dorothy Sayers' Have His Carcase for fun
*Choir practice at the Cathedral tonight for Ordinations tomorrow
*Complete 10K steps – so far today I've walked 7, 588
LATER:
Placed my Aldi order, took a bath and washed my hair. I decided – since I wasn't going to keep on the wedgie shorts – to try out my Easter dress (Ebay, vintage 90s Liz Claiborne linen, last seen in the lineup of my favorite May 30x30 outfits) in a more casual guise. It's maxi length, but here I belted it a little tighter than usual and bloused it up to shorten the skirt and make it more of a shirtwaist.
Wet hair, didn't even bother showing my face, since you've seen it enough already.
It feels more casual this way, and fun and summery. I love it as a maxi, but am glad I can adjust it for different lengths and looks and moods. I love this blush-pink floral print, and the linen is so light, cool, and nice. I am wearing a full cotton-jersey slip underneath, because the fabric is sheer, but I don't think it's going to add any particular heat. I bought this dress – at $25-ish a bit of a splurge for me, though of course that's a fraction of what it would have cost new – hoping to get lots of wear out of it. I haven't yet worn it as an everyday dress until now, and I think it will be a good, useful addition to the rota.
Wearing with blue EVA Birks for a dark frame to the outfit. I'll probably take a light-blue cardigan with me to choir tonight, since the room will be air conditioned and cold.
LATER STILL: The Aldi order is here. There's very little in this vale of tears quite so satisfying as a clean, organized, well-stocked refrigerator.
I had a delicious Friday lunch, incidentally: one can of garbanzo beans drained and tossed with about a teaspoon each of avocado oil and balsamic vinegar, a dash of garlic powder and dried oregano, and roughly a half-ounce of crumbled feta. Dinner tonight is salmon, possibly with a side of yogurt-based chilled cucumber soup.
SATURDAY JUNE 19
Sang some Scarlatti – really, bumbled and lip-synced my way through some Scarlatti – at this morning's beautiful diocesan ordination Mass. Congratulations and blessings to the two new priests of the Diocese of Charlotte.
There wasn't a dress code today, no "concert black," so I opted for dark monochrome in a neutral that suits me better. If you've been hanging around this blog at all, you've seen this exact outfit before, on Tuesday of Easter Week. Later this afternoon we're going to a housewarming party – a party! – and I'm wearing the same dress, but without the sweater, because it's 91F, and with my fake tan Birks.
Not to be confused with fake-tan Birks, though I guess that works, too.
Some silly selfie shots that maybe do show up the bodice of this dress more than other photos have done.
I bought a cheap crop top to wear under it, because the v-neck is a bit plunging for ordinary wear. If I want more coverage, I can turn the crop top around backwards, but here I'm wearing it right-way-round. I was lucky to be able to match the navy as closely as I did; that can be a gamble, but mercifully it worked out, or I wouldn't wear this dress nearly as often, as a dress-up/dress-down staple, as I have wound up doing.
Here I'm sitting on the front-porch swing in high humidity:
With this view, when I'm not goggling into a camera:
The clippers are there to remind me of all the yard work I'm not doing.
I am glad my bangs are growing out. The long-bang look feels a lot more like me.
Wearing my rescued Miraculous Medal, plus my Immaculate-and-Sacred Hearts medal, and fixing to take a Mary statue and a bottle of wine to warm a house with.
Also, my beloved Crocs thongs broke this morning. I hadn't planned to wear heels for this event. They don't make those thongs anymore, either, so although my first impulse has been to track down a suitable replacement, I think I just won't. I have, for example, three pairs of Chinese canvas Mary Janes that I've hardly worn, so I'm thinking maybe I should try wearing them more, instead of buying another pair of sandals. Also, if I am going to buy shoes, what I really need are some walking/hiking shoes, so that's what I should bite the bullet and do.
In the meantime, resting in gratitude, friends. Resting in gratitude.
RETROSPECTIVE COMMENT: I really don't know what my point was with all those selfies. I'm not sure I look that different from one to the next. I'm not sure they illustrate or prove or disprove anything at all. But there they are.