And then my heart with pleasure fills
And dances with the daffodils.
I wasn't wandering lonely as a cloud, mind you –– I have Dora with me always and am seldom lonely. Right now she's standing beside my chair with a ball, mouth-breathing noisily and suggestively. She hasn't gotten the memo that playtime is over for the moment, and the Mistress is Drinking Her Coffee.
Anyway, it was a lovely, albeit still frosty morning in the backyard, and the daffodils are bursting out everywhere.
The reading went off yesterday afternoon –– I was last in line and had time to be good and nervous and talk really fast in my remarks about Pearl, probably because I knew that of all the people there, I knew less about it, and about translating, than anybody. I think I read well, though, and it was fascinating to listen to translators talk about their craft. Makes me want to take up translating, though the times I've tried, I felt defeated very quickly and gave up. I've thought about trying to find Peguy's Portal of the Mystery of Hope in French –– I have it in a free-verse English translation which I don't love, and would like to see whether the original is in form at all. At any rate, I was way out of my league intellectually with all these other people, but I learned a lot from listening to them talk.
Today: Mass, finish reading/line-editing my parts of the anthology MS another time to turn in tonight, and a reading sponsored by Presence Journal at 4, for which I'm definitely not reading, so (to be honest) I'll probably listen with one ear and my video off while I continue to do my editorial work.
Me sitting outside with my coffee in the sun. Twenty-five degrees, but even in my jammies with my coat on I was comfortable. I'll say one thing for Dora, she gets me outside in all the weathers, and I mostly enjoy it.
My secret for looking presentable when you get out of bed? Don't wear makeup, so you never look any better than that. This is what the world has been waiting to know.
The high today is supposed to be 53, so warmer than this, but not actually all that warm. For Mass and after, I think I'm just going to repeat yesterday's Sierra with gray-on-gray tonality and camel boots. Easy, warm, done. Maybe I'll bother with a scarf, since I have so many and haven't been wearing them, as the wardrobe tracker clearly indicates.
LATER:
I have indeed repeated my Sierra. My cardigan from yesterday needed some spot-cleaning on the sleeves, so I wound up with a different ensemble from the one I had been envisioning:
This blue-gray wool pullover is becoming a regular Sunday feature. It's warm, which is the main thing, but I also love the color, and it goes with so many different items in my closet. It transforms my Sierra into a gray A-line skirt instead of a dress, which is fun and makes me feel that I'm not wearing the same dress again and again, even though I am.
NOTE: I think the heft and cut of the Sierra make it work better with a sweater like this than my more fluid, less A-line Camellia does. I have worn Camellia with this sweater, but only once, as far as I can remember. I didn't feel that the shapes together were flattering, but I really like how the fairly cropped sweater and the wider, stiffer skirt make more of a fit-and-flare look here. Or just flare. Anyway.
I also tried this thrifted dotted-Swiss infinity scarf in a peachy pink:
This was okay, but I decided that what I was really hungry for was my favorite old (as in just about as old as my 18-year-old daughter) silk velour scarf. Add Snag merino tights for further warmth and comfort and my fur-lined camel boots (ditto), and it's a blue-on-blue-on-gray thang, with a pop of contrast in my boots to frame the outfit. And I have made myself wear something off the scarf list, as I'd challenged myself to do.
So easy, so comfortable. The nice thing about having my hair cut is that I can wear it down, and even though a lot of the wave has fallen out, since the weather's cold and dry, it's not too long or straggly or shapeless. So that's easy and comfortable, too.
Had my coffee, read the Mass readings, ready to go. The bathroom lighting's always a little wonky, but on the whole, these colors make me feel good in my skin:
While I'm sitting here waiting:
I ran across a social-media conversation last night in which a young woman was saying that she had some big event to go to next weekend, and that she technically had a dress to wear, but that she didn't feel pretty in said dress. At the same time, she didn't feel she could go buy another dress, because she HAD a dress already.
I don't even know her, but sometimes you just gotta wade in and be a Mom Voice, so I said to her: Your time is too valuable to waste on clothes you don't feel good in. Donate or resell the dress you have, and get something you actually like.
Of course there were men going, "You will be pretty no matter how you feel," which was probably true, but there are some essential things that men often don't get, one of which is that if you don't feel pretty, you will not in fact project prettiness, because you'll be too self-conscious. You won't be glowing and at ease in yourself. You may have the good bones, features, hair, etc, which this young woman certainly does, but in something that makes you uncomfortable on some level, you will not be radiant. And there's no reason not to be radiant. There's also no reason, moral or practical, to bind yourself to an article of clothing you've realized is a mistake. It's taken me my entire adult life to realize this, and I'm happier having realized it. If I can help a 26-year-old, somebody literally half my age, realize it today, then I will have done a tiny little unofficial work of mercy.
Also, inevitably, some rando dude accused her of vanity. I figured my time was too valuable to waste explaining to some rando dude that vanity is really just crippling self-consciousness, and the way out of it is to feel good about yourself. He was probably also 26, and I doubt I'd have gotten through. If SHE worried about that, though, I'd tell her.