My upstairs, clean and peaceful of a Sunday. People told me I was going to love my empty house. I have to admit: I don't love the empty, as in I do miss the people who made it not empty. On the other hand, this is nice, too. I ain't repining so very much.
Just getting in a quick post while my husband cooks our after-Mass brunch. Here's Camellia, meanwhile, as I wore her to church:
I'm always afraid that this dress-over-a-skirt thing is weird, but honestly, I don't think it is. I did wear a long cardigan over for the Mass itself, because I like to have my shoulders covered in church, but I really prefer just the long tunic look by itself, with a narrow maxi skirt (this one thrifted several years ago). Wore my thrifted Crocs Mary Janes for a change of pace and liked that, too. I also appreciate having an extra full-length mirror available, with good lighting, no less, when the downstairs bathroom is occupied. Again, I miss the person whose room this is, but there are always silver linings, right?
With the surge in Covid cases locally, the abbot and monks are requesting that people wear masks in the basilica, and they've ixnayed congregational singing, which I'm sad about, though the monks' chant is nice and peaceful. Hard to shift into reverse, after a summer of what felt like normality, but there it is. It is good to see students back –– we left to take our own college students to school before these kids returned, and I liked coming home to a full church again.
Also woke up this morning to the first poetry acceptance I've had in quite a while: two poems for Amethyst Review. The editor sent a lovely personal note, with links to some poems of her own, so it was one of those exchanges that felt not only like a poetry acceptance, but like a connection. At any rate, the two poems are both little meditations, in haiku stanzas, on two Japanese shin-hanga prints. One will appear in December, the other in March –– quite a while out yet, but it will be nice to see them. Another in the same series appeared sometime last year in Grand Little Things; I'd love to place them all.
Off to be peaceful now.