Gloating privately at the moment (well, not privately anymore) because things I ordered from Poshmark which were slated to arrive tomorrow arrived today. One of those items was the orange Icebreaker merino shirt on the left, a birthday gift for my husband. I'd ordered the shirt on the right, also a Poshmark buy, back before Christmas and decided to hold it back for his birthday. It's a Lands End shirt in a cotton/wool blend, and quite heavy and nice.
Then a few days ago it came to me that I ought to give him another merino tee as well. For Christmas I'd given him a Wool&Prince button-down shirt (blue and white check; he wears it to work), plus a Smartwool tee in a sort of avocado green that's pretty close to the more olive/avocado tones in that plaid shirt. One merino tee deserves another, thought I, so I went trawling around Poshmark again and found this Icebreaker one, which again was supposed to arrive tomorrow, but came today, in time for me to add it to the pile of birthday gifts at dinner. I hadn't really thought about its going so well with the plaid shirt, but lo, the plaid shirt has an orange stripe as well as an avocado-green one, so now he has Outfit Possibilities. I will have to point these out.
So far I'm not sure he's worn the first merino tee. He's been a little wary about the Wool&Prince shirt, like I have to save this for nice. I keep reiterating that wool is for wearing, so maybe having some more items will help. Trying to convert the man –– who despite being sixty is NOT but a paltry thing,/A tattered coat upon a stick. Not on my watch he isn't a tattered coat upon a stick, no sirree. Not paltry, either. Or a thing. I love you, W.B. Yeats, but you can kind of suck eggs on that score.
Meanwhile, the Lands End shirt is one he can wear to work. He doesn't always wear a coat and tie. Its blend is more cotton than wool ––
–– but it's a super-nice shirt, very soft. He likes green, and I hope he will wear it, with or without the merino tees.
In other news, the children went out last night with a couple of their oldest friends –– they've known each other since my youngest daughter, now 18, was 4. One of these friends has the same birthday, though she turned 20 this year; for years we had joint birthday parties, alternating houses each year. I still think of that day as R & K's Birthday, sort of like Frodo and Bilbo. Anyway, they went out and came back in around –– 3:30? 4? –– this morning, setting off Dora in her crate like the burglar alarm she was clearly born to be. I hadn't been sleeping all that well anyway, because there they were, out, but man. We don't generally impose curfews or restrictions on people college age and older, because they aren't children anymore, but dang, folks. No hard feelings and all that, but have pity on my poor nerves.
Dora waiting for the next intrusion. Normally at night she's silent as the grave in her crate, and it's a very great blessing. Sometimes she protests when I send her there in the daytime –– this was when I was about to take a bath –– because I don't want her roaming around unsupervised, but in the main crate training is a miracle. Our last dog did not use a crate, and one of my resolutions as his death approached and we began to talk about the next dog was that that next dog was going to be crate trained and like it. Fortunately for us, what with all Dora's other quirks and oddities, she did come to us already acclimated to the crate. In fact, she came to us with this crate, which was a boon. Last night it was a boon in that she only barked at the kids, didn't mistake them for burglars and get up and bite them. They were lucky. They were also way more apologetic than they would have been if they hadn't woken the whole house up.
But again, no hard feelings. People have to see their friends when they can see them, and last night was when they could see these longtime friends. As homeschooling parents, we always tended to keep our kids on much longer leashes than just about anyone else we knew –– one of our continual frustrations was that other families in our orbit either didn't believe in children's social needs outside the family circle, or else thought there was something wrong with us and spiritually dangerous about our house, because while we were always happy for our kids to go hang out with their friends, getting friends to come here was like . . . weirdly hard. For years. One thing that strikes me now is just how miraculous it is that these friendships have endured in the face of a certain amount of parental discouragement. Anyway, I know people who ask about rules and curfews for college students and young adults in their homes, but my own position is and has been: the fewer people whose time I have to police, the better. Getting woken up at four a.m. is the occasional negative consequence of this position, but I can deal with that.
Tonight we'll celebrate both my husband's birthday and their last night at home with a fancy dinner in the dining room. Then in the morning we get up, load up, and head west.
Wearing today:
A repeat of yesterday's purple bamboo swing dress, which I'd previously worn as a tunic over a skirt. I'm a day late in twinning (a little) with Juanita, who wore the duplicate of this dress yesterday with a blue pullover. I admired the color combination and decided to try it for myself. Alas, I don't knit and have not made my sweater –– I also really prefer the cropped length of hers. But I do still love this thrifted Liz Claiborne blue cotton ragg pullover, which is soft and heavy, a good outer layer over something more thermal like bamboo. My husband always comments on this sweater when I wear it, so I thought I'd put it on for his birthday. Also wearing my secondhand striped cotton-bamboo leggings, yesterday's wool socks (aired out overnight, but I've been reading about how people in Scandinavia wear their wool socks all winter and wash them at the end of the season), and Doc Martens again. I may be a little tired and strung out, but I'm also warm and comfortable on a bright-but-chilly day, when I need to go out for dessert ingredients that I forgot to buy on my last grocery-shopping foray.
Wet hair with earrings my husband gave me at least fifteen years ago. I'll let the hair dry some more before I venture out into the cold –– though in fact I have been out, with Dora, early this morning. A dog is a good impetus to spend time outside when you might otherwise feel that you're perfectly happy there by the fire, thanks very much. I have walked over a lot of frost-stiffened grass lately, and looked up at a lot of winter stars. I'm planning to do another round of leash work today, as well as some attention/focus and sniffing exercises outside. She's going to be spending more time in the crate over the five-ish days when I'm on the road, so I need to be sure we have a pretty active, outdoor kind of day today. Good for her, good for me.
I need to shake the late-night/early-morning progeny and get them busy with laundry and packing. AND I need to do my own packing. My Sierra wool dress is definitely coming with me, but that's about as far as I've gotten. Not that I really need to get that much farther, because as I learned on the before-Christmas round of this trip, Sierra is pretty much all you need. It's a lot colder this go-round, though, so I'd better go decide what I'm going to take to cover my arms and legs.