A quickie, because the day's jam-packed. Trying to wear things I haven't been wearing, so while I'm repeating my newly-rediscovered thrifted Izod jeans, I'm also wearing this J.Jill cotton knit top (very soft and flowy), which my mother bought for me on a shopping trip four or five years ago. I can't remember the last time I wore it. Certainly not any time this calendar year, until today. After some deliberation over cardigans –– I think it's going to be more a cardigan day than a coat day, which is lovely –– I settled on my secondhand duster-length gray/off-white one, which I haven't worn in a while. Thrifted Birk Madeiras again, with navy/green cotton-blend socks from Target. The cardigan's a heavy, nice cotton blend as well, so I guess this is a mostly-cotton kind of day.
Driving my husband to pick up his car at the mechanic's, then back here to work. I've finished Pearl and need to make definite selections for this reading, then back to proofing the poems in the anthology against the books I have. Tedious work, and there's a lot of it, but it's going pretty fast.
And of course going out with Dora to throw the ball in the backyard, with I hope a decent walk this afternoon. Generally we play fetch in the yard and maybe do some sniffing, then put the leash on, get into "side" position (essentially ready to heel), then go to the front yard in this position on a loose leash to do some counter-conditioning –– look at cars, people on the street or in the parking lot, cats, etc, and scatter-feed/sniff as a response to those triggers. THEN we might walk for 20 minutes to half an hour. We generally go out once mid-morning for about half an hour of fairly intense exercise in the yard, playing fetch with a lot of running until she's obviously tired and ready to be quiet in the house. Then another session like that sometime in the afternoon, either before or after our counter-conditioning/walk session. These periods break up my otherwise very sedentary work day, and are one more reason to dress the way I'm dressed. It's still wet and muddy out, and I'm so tired of thinking about tights and leggings and the whole problem of what to put on my legs when I'm wearing a dress. I hadn't thought I'd want to wear jeans again, but they come as something of a relief this week.
This I guess is the let's-get-to-it face.
The neckline of this top is really wide and open –– I like the gracefulness, but it needed a little something to fill in, hence the bead necklace. The necklace also makes me feel a little more as though I'd tried to look nice. I love the color of this top and really don't have anything else in it, so I'm glad I've hung onto it all these years. It's a little breath of springtime.
I've just learned that my 40th high-school reunion is the second weekend in April –– cue a lot of reflexive adolescent panic about what to wear. I don't know why I care, because probably nobody else will, but somehow these events, when I honestly look forward to seeing women I've known all my life, just trigger all the teenaged fitting-in angst.
Expect to see that theme revisited over the next six weeks.
LATER: Thought I'd touch the novel before getting down to the other work. 915 words, and I'm not sure how I feel about them, but I'm glad I did that first. Yesterday I didn't touch the novel until late, and only wrung out about 420 words. Better than nothing, but not as good as doing it first thing.
EVEN LATER: I have bought three more pairs of Snag merino tights. Tights were one of my exemptions to my no-buy rule, though I think I might cross that exemption off the list. As with belts, I now truly will have enough.
Meanwhile, I have worn and worn and worn my one pair of merino tights, and they're starting to show the wear. They're pilling around the ankles, and the fabric is thinning a lot in the crotch area, so that I'm afraid it's going to spring holes before long. I will mend them and keep wearing them, but as they're the only pair of tights I have that I wear really consistently in cold weather, I thought they could use some backup. I'm not complaining, incidentally –– for the price, I think they hold up reasonably well. And they're certainly the best-fitting, most comfortable tights I own.
I had been contemplating this for a while, but then I learned that Snag has added some new colors to their merino line: a navy, a darker charcoal gray, and a sort of light brown that I think would go really well with, for example, my rose-patterned linen jumper, which I like to wear year-round, but have never really had the right thing to wear with on my legs. Gray doesn't quite do it somehow. I have burgundy tights, which work, but they're microfiber and not that warm. Things I will not buy again anytime soon: more microfiber tights. I'm glad I have the ones I have, because they are pretty good in transitional weather, and they're fun to wear for dressing up to go out, or whenever I want to be more polished, but still fun. But they're not warm enough for me to want to wear them every day.
Anyway, that seemed like a sign, the addition of these colors, which I will really wear. We might be almost through with merino-tights weather by the time they get here, although who knows? Takes forever to cool off in the fall here; takes forever to be reliably warm in the spring. Going into next winter, at any rate, I'll have a rotation of tights, so that no one pair has to wear out quite so fast. And it is good to have them. For years tights were the kind of thing I never thought to buy, or when I did, I couldn't find colors I really wanted. And then they'd be not that comfortable. The waistband would roll down. I'd be walking around with the crotch between my knees. No wonder I wore jeans a lot more often than I typically do now, especially in cold weather. Merino tights are such a gift, because they make dress-wearing in winter pleasant, warm, and comfortable.
So, yeah, I bought something, but something I had told myself going into this year that I could buy. Now I think I can reasonably tell myself: no more of that. I'd felt that I didn't have all I needed in that particular category, but now I do.
ALSO: I've gotten through nine of the fourteen sets of poems I have to proofread. I can finish the last five tomorrow and work on the index we had almost forgotten we wanted to include with this anthology. Not a bad day's work, if I do say so myself.