Suddenly it's November: chill and rainy. Today is my oldest daughter's fourth wedding anniversary –– they're going to Las Vegas this weekend to renew their vows in an Elvis wedding chapel,with some of the original bridal party in attendance, and I'm already breathlessly eager to hear just how all this goes off.
The wedding itself was beautiful, and although, holy cow, I'm glad to have a good long breather between weddings, it's lovely to look back on that day.
In Texas that day, it was not cold and rainy, but golden and glorious.
Today, as I have intimated, is considerably less glorious in the weather department. I forgot to bring in the outdoor-couch cushions ––
–– so now they'll just stay out there until the sun comes out again and they dry off.
The mood in the house, especially in north-facing rooms like the dining room, is sort of pleasantly melancholy. Here's a little partial wall collage in said dining room, consisting of a hurricane lantern and a heart-shaped wooden butter mold (I think, though it's kind of big for butter) scavenged from my mother's old house when she was moving, plus some medieval seals: the city seal for the German university town of Göttingen and a seal depicting the image of Our Lady of Walsingham.
Don't know what to do with stuff that piles up in your house? Hang it on the wall, is my rule. Oh, at top right is a replica of a medieval misericord, in the form of a crouching monk. Somebody gave him to us for Christmas one year, and here he is, also on the dining-room wall.
Maybe the heart thing is a dough mold? I feel as though at one time I knew exactly what kind of mold it was, but I'm having trouble accessing that precise information right now. I should probably have fiddled with the lighting in that photo, so the patterns of things would show up better, but I didn't, and this is pretty much just how they look at the moment.
According to an email this morning, my
Sierra reward dress is out for delivery and scheduled to arrive tomorrow. I suppose I'm still hoping against hope that it will beat the odds and be early, but in the meantime, I have gotten dressed. It's pants again today: this time a pair of what I think must be pajama pants left here by my older son, owner of the blue-and-orange flannel which I'm also going to hide at Christmas, because out of sight out of mind, and also, we all know what possession is 9/10 of.
These are a kind of gray quick-dry fabric, with a drawstring waist. He's 5'10, so the rise of the waist comes up to basically empire-waist level on me, which is a good thing. They're a little long on my 5'4 body, but not really too long, as in not dragging in the mud when I go out to bring the trashcan in from the street. They're not that warm, but if I needed a thermal under-layer, there would be plenty of room for one.
Here they are in slightly better lighting:
I had assumed that these were some kind of outdoor brand, but a quick fact-check told me that they're actually Fruit of the Loom. Whatever. They're comfortable and flowy, but they feel a little less sclumpy than sweatpants. You can dress them up with, say, a vintage-looking pullover whose tag is gone, so you don't actually know the fiber content, but it sure feels like a lot of lambswool. Today is actually cool enough to make this sweater welcome and comfortable –– just what I've been waiting for. It's maybe my favorite piece from my last thrift haul, several weeks back, and I anticipate wearing it a lot over the winter. The wool is a little itchy, so that I miss the softness of merino, but it is warm and breathable, and the color is perfection for me:
Day 7 hair in a luxe velour rose-pink scrunchie, which feels like a real indulgence:
I was going to crop out the detail of my gray hair, to focus on the ponytail in the mirror, but you know, day after tomorrow I will be fifty-seven years old, and I might as well get used to it. My friend Marly, who's a decade older than I am, keeps saying that just being as close to seventy as she is comes as a continual shock; I have the same feeling about the nearness of sixty. Where does the time go? Away, that's where. In this elegiac spirit, I've been taking all kinds of masochistically unflattering selfies, which I haven't posted but haven't deleted either, as –– well, not exactly as a memento mori, because I'm a long way, I hope, from that far gone, but as a reminder that the road does go one way, and I am on it. Of course I'm a believer in what I think they call age positivity. What's the alternative? Age negativity doesn't sound like that much fun. And denial of obvious realities seems both dumb and also the kind of thing that one day will come back to bite you hard.
Oh, but wait! Stop the presses! Change the mood! I stepped out to get the mail, and LOOK!
Be right back. Gotta go try something on. Fingers crossed that it fits.
