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Moonlit Fourth of July, 2020 |
SUNDAY JULY 4
Today's events:
Mass
Lunch out with daughter, followed by the "Immersive Van Gogh" exhibit in Charlotte, for which we have had tickets for some months. We hope the 4th of July will mean it's not too crowded.
Cookout at home, town fireworks after dark. Usually we can see them clearly from the parking lot across the street, so the plan is to drag the camp chairs over and settle in.
What I'm wearing for all this:
Navy cotton knit sheath dress, bought on clearance at Walmart last fall. Tan sandals a Walmart impulse buy from last spring. The usual disclaimer about how I'm trying not to shop like this anymore, but getting lots of wear out of things I did buy.
With longline cardigan for church and cold indoor spaces:
This is the rare outfit that includes not a single thrifted piece, but I do happen to like everything I'm wearing. It will take me through the various events of my day without my having to change clothes, either to dress up more or be more comfortable.
Hair still damp from last night. I washed it, twisted it into a topknot/bun secured with a claw clip, and slept on it this way. This morning I took it down, combed with a wide-tooth comb to detangle and smooth, scrunched it a bit to encourage the waves, and let it go. If you're interested in my normal wavy-hair-care routine, I discussed it at some length last Friday.
While I'm waiting for everyone else to be ready to go – one advantage to both outfit-journaling and my hair-care routines is that I can be dressed in five minutes and have time to kill while other people are bathing and putting on clothes – I'll just say that one of my goals this week is to prepare for my upcoming summer fiction residency. Part of this preparation entails reading. Another part entails planning and packing for two weeks away from home. I won't be so far away from home that I can't come back to get something if I really need it, but I'd rather not expend lots of time and energy going back and forth.
Once I'm there, I also don't want to expend lots of time and energy on my clothes. I'm going to take a blogging hiatus to focus on my novel, and on a daily routine that will involve:
*morning time in the Adoration chapel
*several hours of writing and revision, with a deadline of 2 p.m. daily
*Mass at 11 a.m.
*afternoon tutorials with my editor/mentor
*Mass on Sunday
I'll be living in a dorm suite with kitchen, which means I'll need to bring bedding, some cooking things, and a coffeemaker. In addition to those things, I also intend to plan a simple capsule wardrobe that will let me get dressed quickly and without fuss every day, to look good and be comfortable for the day's line items. My spring travel capsule will be a good starting place, and I'll possibly include at least some of those elements. Fortunately, for this residency I don't have to pack as economically, since I'm driving there. Still, I don't want to give myself too many random choices. Better to have a few core pieces that I can mix and modify, put on and then not think about again. Selecting those pieces will be one more objective for the week ahead.
LATER:
Me against a backdrop of tires and sunflowers at the Van Gogh exhibit:
MONDAY JULY 5
High of 90F today, warmer but still moderate for the time of year. Working on fiction, doing laundry, and reading for my residency.
Wearing today:
My thrifted pink rose-print linen-blend shift, last worn a couple of weeks ago. I have had this dress for fourteen or fifteen years, longer than anything else in my closet that I can think of right now, besides my Vasque hiking boots. I keep thinking I'm done with it, but it always turns out that I'm not. And for an item so old, it has held up amazingly well – it's in like-new condition.
I've worn it mostly as a jumper over other shirts or camisoles, but today I'm wearing it by itself as a sundress, thanks to my new bralette, whose line is long enough to fill in the deep armholes:
I didn't buy the "mink" color (a lovely dark gray taupe) with this dress in mind, but it works perfectly. It's so nice not to have to add another layer to this dress to make it wearable. Meanwhile, I like that shade so much that I'm going to look for more of it, in layers to wear on the outside: cardigan, blazer, scarf, trousers, tights.
I'll probably twist my hair up with a claw clip before I go out walking, to keep it off my neck, but after being slept on and gently combed out, it's not bad as is. Many of the accounts I've followed on Instagram deal with techniques and products for maximizing the potential of wavy or curly hair to be beautiful in its own right – with the caveat that "natural" hair is often the result of a lot of work. It is nice to know what you can do to achieve certain results. But to my mind, the most valuable thing about the Curly Girl Method, or variations thereon (because most of the people I follow don't follow that method slavishly, if at all), is its emphasis on 1) accepting and loving the hair you've been given, 2) seeing its natural beauty for what it is, instead of as a comparison with a standard established by a completely different kind of hair as if that hair were some kind of universal norm, and 3) taking steps to care for your own hair in such a way as to nurture its health.
Healthy hair is beautiful hair. It just is. What makes your hair beautiful isn't, for example, its color. People think that covering their grays is going to restore their hair to some former standard of beauty, but it doesn't. Colored hair doesn't look like the hair you had when you were twenty. It looks like colored hair. Often, too, especially if you go for the very dark hair you might have had when you were twenty, that color looks too harsh against the skin you currently have, in a way that doesn't "youthen" you, but ages you.
Straightening has the same effect. Straightened hair is not the same as naturally straight hair. It just isn't. It doesn't move the same way. The ends look ironed. If you have layers cut into it, and then you straighten with a straightening iron, the layers look weird and flattened out. Before long, your ends look frazzled in a way that the ends of naturally straight hair, which just hangs that way, never do. Some people are really good with a blow-dryer and roller brush, which technique produces a better, softer effect with more of the swing and movement of straight hair, but its still hard on your hair if you do it all the time. If you don't practice scrupulous maintenance with haircuts, the stress is going to start in your ends and travel up.
Why not just love your hair? Why not just accept it? Punishing it for being what it is won't make it what it's not. The better course, it seems to me, is to consent with gratitude (even if you have to force yourself a little at first out of a mental comfort zone) to what you have, to agree that what you have is beautiful, then to find out what that hair needs in order to thrive. If you have textured hair, then the first answer is always going to be hydration: water sealed into your hair via its own natural oils plus any products you use. You're looking for products that won't strip the natural protective oils.
This means, as a general rule, shampoos without sulfates, particularly sodium lauryl sulfate, and conditioners and other products that don't contain silicones or other non-water-soluble additives that build up on the hair and require a sulfate shampoo to remove. You might use some kind of clarifying shampoo or rinse – an apple-cider-vinegar solution, for example – at intervals to remove small inevitable amounts of buildup, but you're not cauterizing your hair every time you wash it.
Many of us, I think, are locked into routines we established as teenagers, when we were basically made of oil: washing our hair once a day, or even more often, with astringent shampoos and minimal conditioning, because oil – so we thought, anyway – was our enemy. I'm not sure that this is really even true for teenagers, but it's definitely not true for those of us in our eff years. I have found that I can wash my hair roughly every four to five days, and it's fine in between. Usually I can't make it quite a week, but sometimes I have done.
Then when I do wash it, I mostly wash it very gently, with a moisturizing non-sulfate shampoo, focusing on scrubbing my scalp. I follow with what I believe is scientifically known as a buttload of conditioner, squished in with as much water as I can manage. I refresh in between washes mostly with just a spray bottle of water. Sometimes, especially close to the next wash, I dampen my hair with the spray bottle and glaze on a little liquid coconut oil or avocado oil, just a tiny bit, for an extra load of moisture before I wash.
I dry it minimally, especially in the summer. In the winter I use a diffuser on low to medium heat to speed up drying time, though as I move to washing my hair in the evenings, instead of the mornings, and sleeping on it in a claw-clipped bun, I might do that less next winter. I like the volume the diffuser gives me, so that it's nice to have it as a styling option, when I want to style my hair a little more, but mostly I'm conscious of wanting not to stress my hair. Less styled but healthier seems better to me than more styled but stressed and damaged.
I've entirely given up using barettes and hair elastics. To pull my hair back from my face or create an updo, I use either a claw clip (I have three different sizes, from tiny to relatively large), a silicone coil fastener like an Invisibobble, or a fabric scrunchie (again, I have many sizes). All these options are kinder to hair and cause far less breakage.
Anyway. I last had my hair cut a couple of weeks before Easter, so I guess mid-March. I had it cut into a tapered shape with blended layers – that's specifically what I ask for these days. It grows out pretty well and thus far, though my ends can get a little dry, it's stayed fairly healthy. The tapered shape means that your hair doesn't grow in a fanned-out triangle, always the bane of anybody with textured hair. The layers remove weight, especially toward the ends, and help the length not to seem that it's dragging you down – though mine is getting a little long at this point and losing its shape. I like being able to braid it and put it up more easily, which is why I've held off getting it trimmed again, but I could go in and ask for very little length off, just more layers, and have long hair with more shape to it. I'd like to wait for the end of the summer, then lose a good bit of length while adding more layers. By then my bangs will be grown out a lot more, and possibly I could blend them in with the layers, more than they are now.
Overall, though, with the routine I keep, my hair is softer, less broken, less frizzy, more malleable. It's easier to manage in an updo than it's ever been in my life. As I get older, I'm cognizant of the need to look as though I care about my appearance, but grateful for ways to do that that don't require my sacrificing my entire personality and identity to an appropriately mature look. If any of this helps you, then I'm happy to have shared it.
Sneakers and updo for our walk:
On returning home, I ditched the sneakers for the tan sandals again, but kept the updo.
Current reading: Joan Silber's As Long as It Takes: The Art of Time in Fiction. Also finishing a reread of Dorothy Sayers' Whose Body?
LATER, having finished Joan Silber:
Considering my "residency capsule" list to cover two weeks. I don't want to be too minimalist, because I don't really have to be, but I do want to take items I will wear, without overdoing it.
I. Core items (mostly dresses, because it will be hot & dresses are easy). I might prune this list, especially since I wonder how many blue dresses one person truly needs for two weeks, but if I think I want it, it goes on the list for now.
1. navy sheath dress I wore yesterday (?? do I need two navy dresses??)
2. navy fit-and-flare dress last worn Friday and Saturday of week before last. (?? I repeat: do I need two navy dresses?? If one, which one??)
3. blue swing t-shirt dress worn this past Saturday
4. rose-brown jumpsuit worn last week as well(??)
5. this pink dress I'm wearing today (?? do I really need this many dresses??)
II. Bottoms
1. Sage green twill skirt
2. One pair of wide-leg drawstring pants – I wore both last week. Probably I'll bring the off-white, since I'll have sage green in a skirt already.
3. Sage-green shorts??
4. ADDENDUM: navy knit paper-bag-waist pants
5. ADDENDUM: gauze patterned maxi skirt (??) &/or floral A-line skirt?
III. Tops and top layers
1. navy embroidered scoop-neck tee (?? do I need two navy tops? the v-necked tee might be more versatile, since it's closer in tone to my navy knit trousers & can be worn with them as a mock jumpsuit).
2. flowing white gauze sleeveless top worn twice last week (with camisole)
3. Collarless duck-egg blue pintuck shirt, worn with shorts last week (should I bring shorts? Would I wear shorts? Adding to "bottoms" list for now)
4. Collarless denim shirt
5. Long blue cardigan I wore yesterday
6. ADDENDUM: jean jacket
7. ADDENDUM: navy v-neck tee
IV. Shoes
1. Birk Floridas
2. Blue EVA Birks
3. Tan sandals worn yesterday and today
4. Sneakers for walking?
Looking forward to pulling the actual clothes out and making some outfits, to help me revise this initial brainstorming list down to a manageable capsule for the time.
I'll need groceries as well, because my dorm suite arrangement comes with a kitchen. My grocery list will need to include:
eggs
Greek yogurt
almonds
coffee
protein wraps
avocado
grape tomatoes
frozen mixed berries
chicken (tiny pack of thighs/bag of frozen thigh, bag of frozen grilled strips)
frozen ground turket
beef (tiny steak)
salmon (1-2 fillets)
. . . ???
My mind is running out of ideas for things I'm going to feel like making to eat by myself. But then it's always running out of ideas for things I feel like making for four people to eat, so I guess that's normal.
TUESDAY JULY 6
Drinking coffee, waking up, gearing up to go outside before it gets too hot and dig up some Solomon's Seal and hostas to move to a shadier spot. It's not a great time of year for transplanting, of course, but our big pecan tree has died, a former shade garden is getting scalded by the sun, and the tree men who'll be coming to take the tree down tend to tear things up pretty badly. If there's anything I want to survive that cataclysm, I'd better move it now.
Dressed for gardening:
Old Walmart t-shirt dress, bought at least five years ago, 100% cotton, really not bad as cheapo impulse buys go. I'm wearing a pair of old charcoal-gray leggings cut off to bike-short length underneath, so that I can bend over in the garden with impunity. Extending the gray-on-gray monochrome look with a charcoal-gray stretch headband over . . . what day is it? I washed my hair Friday night, so I guess this makes Day . . . 5? I didn't use any product in my hair when I washed it, so it still feels pretty clean, and it's got a nice little wave in it from being twisted up in a bun so much. It will certainly do for gardening and walking and reading, which are the line items in my day.
A view of the dead pecan tree:
This tree was one of the great selling points when we were looking at our house, thirteen years ago. It was huge and beautiful and lush, and it eventually became our treehouse tree. Well, vale, tree and treehouse and children who played in the treehouse. Time moves one way and takes everything with it.
BUT there's a lot to transplant. I had a shade garden underneath the tree with hostas, ferns, and Solomon's Seal, and I've just spent the last hour moving a good bit of it to other shade spots.
Filled in an empty spot in the shade garden by the back door with some Solomon's Seal. The enormous camellia tree there was another selling point; it blooms white at Thanksgiving.
Sticking more Solomon's Seal and hostas into this rather chaotic shade bed in the middle of the yard, under some volunteer laurels that I encouraged to grow into trees:
TUESDAY JULY 7
More packing thoughts for my residency, where I will have an unequipped kitchen:
*If I bring one medium-sized cast-iron pan, then I can cook on the stove or in the oven, either way. I will probably want to do a lot of very simple one-skillet meals.
*Maybe I will also bring one very small pyrex dish. Gotta recalibrate all my cooking ideas as menus for one person.
*I can bring one spatula, leaving the family the rest.
*One kitchen knife
*One plate, bowl, mug, glass, set of utensils
MEANWHILE
Today's outfit:
Thrifted teal collarless shirt dress, bought a year ago in the fall, I think. Or maybe two years ago. I begin to lose the thread of time.
This dress has belt loops, and I've frequently worn it belted (also as a top layer/long jacket), but I'm not bothering today.
I am learning that the only way I can really stand button-up shirts is if they're collarless.
EVA Birks aren't exactly matchy, but they're awfully close. This would probably look better with tan sandals for contrast, but I think I'm going to go dig in the garden again this morning. It's supposed to rain, starting late tonight, and I'd like to get plants moved and settled so that they can be rained on in their new spots.
Day 6 hair, combed out. It still looks and feels basically clean, though at this point I need to pay careful attention to my scalp's signals. If there's any itching, that's a sign that I need to go ahead and wash. If not, then I can get another day out of it, which is always helpful, as I can use the time productively in other ways.
I've already worked some today on a new story in my novel-in-stories – the fictioncraft reading I've been doing (currently Charles Baxter's The Art of Subtext) has been concretely helpful to me in moving forward with that story, piece by piece. It's a story that takes place in the span of about an hour in the middle of one summer day, though it moves back in time to conversations in the marriage the protagonist has just left, and to the day of her father's funeral. In fact, I need to consider more the relationship between the present moment and that moment, since in the draft I've just finished, it occurs as a reference only once, except that the protagonist's child keeps singing a song that the protagonist had learned from her father. I don't know yet what that's all about.
It's going to be tough to set this project aside next week, to get my head back into my other novel. On the other hand, perhaps my preoccupation with this set of stories and how they are beginning to function together as a novel will turn out to be a good palate cleanser. Certainly some of the same concerns apply in both circumstances: the relationship of the protagonists to time, both the past that keeps haunting them and the way the present moment both does and does not offer absolutions. In the novel I'll be returning to next week, the possibility of absolution is far more overt and overtly sacramental, as that protagonist is a practicing Catholic. She goes to Confession repeatedly in the course of the novel, though as an older believer who has been going to Confession for years, she finds that she has run out of serious active sin, and is just confessing minor variations on original sin, of which she can never completely rid herself in this life. That in itself drives a good bit of action in that novel, as she is seeking ways to work out her salvation, and having ways presented to her in guises she would not have chosen, because they break open old wounds. The characters in my novel-in-stories, meanwhile, are not believers and don't have the obvious grace of the sacraments. They don't even think in terms of grace. Yet it is there on offer, all the time, in the world around them, which is something I want those stories to bear witness to.
You came for the daily outfits; you stayed for the literary meditations. Right? Even writers have to get dressed. And some people who get dressed have to write.
PS: I did use the "enhance" filter in Google Photos for these and some others this week. Not sure about the golden glow that appears to bathe my bathroom, though the paint does look like that in lamplight or candlelight – which I know because other rooms are also painted that color, not because I have ever introduced mood lighting into my bathroom. In real life that glow is one of my favorite things about Benjamin Moore's plain ol' Linen White, but it's funny to see it show up as a filter effect.
LATER:
Post-gardening, post-post-gardening bath:
Trying to smile more in these photos, or at least not to scowl squintily at my camera screen as a default facial expression. Varying mileage so far. Heading out after dinner for a quiet beer at the neighborhood pub – at least, we hope it's quiet. It's raining, so we can't sit outside, and Wednesday is generally karaoke night . . .
Shots from the garden-rearranging project:
Outside the back door.
And the garden in the middle of the yard, which used to be all shade, but now gets a lot of sun.
I moved a number of rather sunburned hostas and ferns not only from the garden under the now-dead pecan tree, but from the front of this garden as well, where you now see Black-eyed Susans. The hostas and ferns I transplanted into the shade of the laurels – though some of them do still get some direct afternoon sun. Hopefully it's not too much, since it only strikes them fairly late in the day as the sun's heading down, and in future years the spirea sticking up there in the middle, marking the dividing line between all-sun and some-shade, should grow more to screen the plants behind it. Meanwhile, I thought the sun side could just basically be ornamental grasses and Black-eyed Susans.
Hostas which I hope will be happier in deeper shade:
This is pretty boring, honestly, but I am comfortable, and navy is a very good dark neutral for me, which gives me a lift on a day when I don't feel great.
