Well, back to our more normal February settings, just in time for the end of the month. The week is going to warm up here, and in fact it's not really that cold now –– just dank.
The back steps a little while ago. I'd scattered kibble in the kitchen garden (less muddy) for Dora to sniff out, while I sat on the top step under the back-porch overhang to play Wordle and read the Mass readings.
We went to a lovely birthday party last night for a colleague of my husband's, who's just turned forty. It's a little startling to think how young he was when we came, nearly fourteen years ago. We saw all kinds of people we hadn't seen in ages –– friends, especially, who'd come the same year we did, and with whom we'd socialized a great deal in our early years here, but then everyone's lives got complicated for a while, with children, work, and other things. And then there was Covid. Anyway, we were all remarking how exciting it was to stand around talking to actual people in an actual physical space. There were children in pajamas running around everywhere, playing with the big mylar "40" balloons, and babies in arms, and beer and spirits, and it just seemed like the most normal Catholic party ever, with all the ingredients that make Catholic parties fun.
Also, it was a surprise party, and the birthday man was surprised. I think his wife was a little startled that she'd actually pulled it off.
Today: on our way out to Mass in a minute, in the rain and general dankness. I always have the feeling, in the days leading up to Ash Wednesday, of being on a very slow but inexorable train approaching a tunnel. Not that I don't appreciate Lent –– I really do. But it still feels like going into a tunnel and buckling up and bracing myself for a long hard ride before we come out into the sun on the other side.
Still trying to wear my way around my whole closet, especially as I'll be doing more of a purple-themed capsule for Lent. Today I'm wearing my secondhand blue men's WoolX merino tee, the softest of the merino tees I own. If the cut were more like the pink micro-striped Icebreaker tee I was wearing the other day (the one whose brand I couldn't think of), this tee would be perfect, but it's pretty nice even as it is. The drape is lovely, and the "men's tee" sleeves are easily hidden by a cardigan. I adore the color and think it looks marvelous with this secondhand 90s-vintage skirt that I bought on Ebay at the end of 2021, plus my thrifted emerald-green J.Crew cotton cardigan. I'm also wearing leggings underneath for more warmth, and my camel boots, which are also cozy for weather like this.
I really love this skirt, with its drape and colors. It might very well be part of my Easter outfit this year, especially as I likely won't wear it at all during Lent.
As you can see, I've been using my drying rack as a dumping ground for clothes I take off. I really need to sort that out this week before I leave town. That's just one of the things . . .
The rest of the day, after Mass, I plan to spend reading and cocooning. Sausages and applesauce for dinner, I think. I am going to put the ham in the deep-freeze –– I think I'll get it out and cook it while the kids are home for spring break, since they like ham, and it can serve for sandwiches between meals. It's a lot easier to exist on beans and eggs when it's just the two of us.
Time to collect my coat, crate the dog, and be off.
LATER:
At work on a poem that began as a "rainy-random-November-day" poem, but then paper poppies on people's lapels turned up, so it declared itself as a Remembrance Day poem set in England. Now it's a parent and child walking home from school, seeing poppies in the rain on Remembrance Day, while (at least the parent knows, if the child doesn't) guns are firing somewhere in the world. So in other words, it's a war poem. Can't imagine why the idea of war going on elsewhere, say in February instead of November, might have intruded on my nice little melancholy toothless Remembrance Day poem.
Of course, though it's not a real memory, it channels plenty of dark afternoons walking children home from school and the ubiquity of Remembrance Day poppies. All of this is out of kilter, timewise, from the war happening now. And who knows what will be happening in the world by the next Remembrance Day? But while we were there, September 11 happened, then Afghanistan and the Iraq War ––sadly, there are always guns firing somewhere. I thought it was all right to let all of that just float as a backdrop to the very small action in the poem's foreground.
(also, it's kind of calming and ordering to keep up this wardrobe spreadsheet daily)