More home tour: our little back study/den. As the weather gets colder –– which it will, even if it isn't right now –– we'll close off the front rooms of the house and basically live in this room. Technically it's a bedroom, i.e., it has a closet; previous owners have used it as a master bedroom. The last owner, however, turned it into a den, installing this massive gas fireplace:
Here we huddle while the cold winds blow, as they do sometimes, even if they're not doing it today.
That blue recliner is a source of some pride. My son and I found it at the Habitat Restore while we were looking for a desk chair for him. He entreated me to buy it.
No, I said, I was not out to drop $30 on an impulse buy, and anyway, where would we put it? This was some time before my daughter and I decided, on the spur of the moment, in the middle of the summer of . . . what? . . . 2017, I think? . . . to repaint this room . . .
and put most of the (extremely trashed) furniture in it . . .
out on the curb.
It was after we'd done that that my son said, "You know, you really should have bought that recliner while you had the chance."
That week, my husband was out of town. The son in question was taking driver's ed, so was occupied elsewhere all day every day. I figured that the blue recliner, nice as it was, was long gone from the Habitat store, but my daughter and I went to look, anyway, figuring we'd find something.
What we found, finally, was this recliner, the same one my son had told me to buy, moved to the back of the store. We thought it was gone, hunted about disconsolately for something else that would do . . . and then, back in some obscure corner where I guess the staff had banished it, having given up on it, there it was.
We bought it, got it into the van, brought it home, and somehow, between the two of us, wrangled it out of the van, up the back steps, through the kitchen door, and into the study. If you've ever tried to lift a recliner, you know what I'm talking about. It's not exactly a sleeper sofa, but it's close. Anyway, it's an insanely comfortable chair, and worth every penny of the $30 I had originally thought was way too much to spend on a chair I didn't know I wanted.
More views of the same room. Looking across the hall into the kitchen:
And then there are a lot of books waiting to be shelved somewhere.
All this reminds me that it's a good thing I'm not even pretending to be minimalist. I was thinking about that yesterday, as I drove myself to Goodwill for absolutely no reason except that I was bored and sick of working and starting to hit the wall. This was the first time I've really thought that I'm going to find a no-buy year hard to accomplish. Sometimes, what I want to do is go to Goodwill and buy clothes; as with any other habit, like drinking or snacking, I suppose the trick is to find something else to do when that particular urge strikes. I could go to Goodwill and . . . buy housewares instead, like I need housewares any more than I need clothes.
But I digress. I am NOT doing a no-buy challenge right now, and so I bought. I am actually very pleased with my little haul. I found some good sweaters:
The oatmeal/off-white pullover in the lacy knit is a cotton-synthetic blend, but soft and light and nice. I had been wanting more items in that kind of light neutral, so I was happy to find that one. The gray-blue pullover is a wool blend, really beautiful and high-quality, more wool than anything else. The tag is torn out, so I have no idea of the brand, but it's a seriously good sweater in a color I know I will wear. Both it and the oatmeal pullover are fairly cropped, and they look nice with my Camellia, hitting at more or less a good place on my body. The green J. Crew cardigan is all cotton and, again, very soft. It will be great for Christmas wear, though I anticipate wearing it a lot even now, while the weather is so middling. The green goes well with Camellia, and it's a much less springy-summery shade than the other green cotton cardigan I own.
I also bought a linen A-line skirt –– again in a natural/off-white/oatmeal, so I'm already imagining the monochromatic layering I can do –– an olive-green narrow belt, a pink dotted-swiss-looking infinity scarf, and this billowy smock-style rayon Old Navy dress, which I am wearing over Camellia today:
I mean, it does not make me look thinner than I am, let's put it that way. But I like it a lot. It's soft and light, and all the wrinkles tumbled out of it in the dryer.
Easier to spot the Camellia in that last shot. Thought I'd trot out my tan fake Birks for a pop of contrast –– I can see wearing my tan boots with this dress when it's colder, with yellow tights, gray tights, navy tights. I can wear any of those color tights, plus burgundy, with my brown Birk Madeiras. This dress will be good over leggings, too, or even jeans. It's thin enough to tuck into a skirt if I wanted to do that. Anyway, a fun find with a lot of possibilities.
And blue. I like to wear blue.
Day 7 hair, holding up pretty well. Although I follow the Curly-Girl Method, more or less (no sulfates or silicones; minimal heat, though I do diffuse my hair in the winter because otherwise it stays wet all day), I am not at all willing to put in the kind of work some people do for their wash days and refreshes. It's nice to have some techniques in hand when I need for my hair to look good, but mostly I just want it to look healthy and to have some shape.
The best thing I've done, honestly, has been to get it cut in layers. I don't get special curly cuts. I have a daughter whose beautiful hair is so curly that she really needs a stylist who understands how curly hair behaves, but mine is a lot more forgiving than that. All I do is go to Great Clips and ask for 1) a tapered shape, and 2) lots of blended layers. My hair has been pretty long for the last several years; I've gone through phases of cutting it into a chin-length bob, but I get it cut too seldom to maintain that kind of style, and it's a lot more versatile this way. The layers and tapering mean that it holds a good shape without growing out of it, and that even when it's fairly long, it's not too heavy. My hair is naturally thick, coarse, and heavy, but for keeping length, this cut has made a huge difference in manageability. I don't bother making perfect curls or defined waves, but I do get a soft, natural style, really without trying. Keeping my hair healthy is half the equation; the cut, which again is nothing fancy, is the other half. I don't look like a hair influencer, maybe, but I'm perfectly happy with the outcome anyway.
I also feel like defying that stupid rule about women over whatever age having long hair. Nothing feels more aging, honestly, to me, than a Nice Little Bob. Just give me some leopard print, too, and then shoot me. You mileage may vary, of course. If you love your bobbed hair, go for it. If you love your leopard-print whatever, fantastic. I will tell you you look beautiful, and I will mean it. It just ain't me, at any age.
Hard to believe it's the last day of September (and happy feast day, St. Jerome!). My firefighter son is coming to the end of his summer fire season and gearing up for an EMT certification course in November –– the same course he began last year, only to have it canceled when one of the instructors got Covid. Let's hope it all goes off without a hitch this year. My former-teacher daughter is staging houses for a living and finding the creative challenge interesting and fun. She answered a random job posting about a month ago, and now she's essentially managing the actual staging side of the company (fortunately she doesn't have to deal with the finances or the hiring). Anyway, life: full of surprises, amirite? (Her Instagram is a lot of fun, too). The college students, meanwhile, are immersed in papers and midterms.
And I'm going to have my lunch and get back to work. I've spent the morning rewriting various scenes in my novel which have come more sharply into focus –– rewriting one thing casts other things into sharper and more obvious relief, as I usually realize about the time I'm getting into bed at night. Fortunately so far I have remembered when I woke up in the morning what it was I had wanted to do the night before, but not wanted to stay up all night doing. Now I want to look over my novel again before I turn to the one I'm copy-editing.
Later, folks.