Kitchen window view, with statues and red-blooming camellia.
It's wet again today, and not really cold, but not really warm, either.
Last night we went to see Little Women: The Musical at the Abbey. And I have to say: they did this show ten or twelve years ago, and I remembered not liking it then. Not the fault of the cast or the direction or the production, which were all fine –– I just thought it was a bad musical, as in a poorly conceived and poorly written adaptation of a nineteenth-century novel. It's with regret that I confirm that my impressions of that show have not changed at all in the intervening decade.
Of course I read Little Women as a child. It wasn't my favorite book, but I certainly read it more than once, and loved Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy, and the imperturbable Marmee. What's terrible about this musical adaptation is that it takes a Civil War setting and a group of distinctly 19th-century girls and turns them into flattened-out 21st-century grrrrrl-power figures. Not surprisingly, Jo comes in most for this treatment, so that everything that's charming and complex about her as a character in the novel becomes all you-go-girl in the play. She even uses the word hell, and not in the sense of the place Pilgrim is trying to avoid in his Progress. It's all girl-against-world stuff, and it's awful. It's boring. Worse, the music is boring, and it goes on and on and on. I can't imagine why they did this show once, let alone twice, in a nearly-fifteen-year time frame.
But anyway, it was a night out. We had dinner out beforehand, which is always fun. I wore my good reliable Sierra with gray merino tights and a blue shrug cardigan which I've had for fifteen years and still like for dressier occasions:
I felt nicely dressed but not overdone. And I was warm and comfortable.
Wearing today:
I'm not sure I'm going to stick with this, because already my feet are cold, but I wanted to wear a combination of things I haven't worn in a while.
Again, it's wet but not that cold. If the sun came out at all, it would be a really nice day. I thought I could get away with bare legs if I wore a longer skirt, but we'll see. I have here my pink micro-striped secondhand merino tee (I'm already blanking on the brand, but it's not WoolX or Patagonia or Ibex . . . Smartwool? I can't remember!) with my thrifted long sage-green cotton twill skirt, my thrifted silk/cashmere gray cardigan, and my Xero Colorados, one of whose virtues is that I can just hose them off when I come in out of the mud.
I'm not sure how comfortable I really am, and I might change. I feel a lot more like cocooning than I thought I would. This is the kind of outfit that's not exactly cold when I go outside, but not exactly cozy, either.
I do like this skirt a lot, but I definitely like it with bare legs and sandals more than I like it with tights, boots, etc. I wish it were warm enough to shed the cardigan, because I like it just with a simple tee and a belt (that's my thrifted braided-leather belt from my trip to Texas Thrift in January, and an exception to my no-buy rule). I like these colors together, though, and imagine I'll wear that combination a lot once the weather really does warm up. This sturdy skirt is great for throwing on to do just about anything my daily rounds demand, and I love the soft, grayed green, which feels very fresh and springlike. I've worn it a lot with blues, but had been looking for pinks and purples to put with it.
Today's high is supposed to be 70F (!), so I hope I can shed the cardigan. That inspires me not to put on something heavier, too.
Back to work.
LATER:
The sun has come out, my cardigan has come off, and I'm sitting in the sun in the backyard with Dora, who has helpfully climbed all over me with her muddy paws. RIP my outfit.