More orchids, including one snaky-looking bloom stem. I don't know that I'm especially good with orchids -- the ones I repotted last year all look distinctly iffy -- but they do rebloom for me, which leads me to think that getting orchids to rebloom is not that hard. If it were hard, believe me, it would not be happening here.
My weekend plans have gone kaput, which I don't especially mind. This winter storm system that seems to be making its way down the East Coast is due to hit Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, on Saturday, and the director of the retreat house where I was going felt that the combination of the weather with the graveled mountain roads would not be a felicitous one. So now I'll be home to greet my college kids when they appear on Saturday afternoon. Again, I'm really not crying.
It's another cloudy, moist, dank kind of day, more like real March weather here than what we had been having. All day I've been doing this and that in a desultory way: pecking at my Lenten sonnet crown, taking Dora outside for some exercise and brief training lessons, answering many emails. I've just been invited to present at the 2022 Catholic Imagination Conference, which will happen this September at the University of Dallas -- convenient, that -- and have responded with an enthusiastic yes. I still need to draft a publisher's description for the poetry anthology, which has gone out to potential endorsers this past week, and to write my brief biographical statement for the same. Finally, we're going out to dinner tonight for our anniversary: 32 years today.
Here we are, our 20something selves:
Looking sort of equal parts happy and nervous, which was probably fitting. Anyway, we were young. What did we know, what did we know, &c. But somehow, Deo gratias, here we are.
I will dress up for dinner, but meanwhile, I am not dressed up at all.
I cut my head off here, because I'd washed my hair (co-wash with Suave this time, since I only just washed it on Tuesday), and it was still up in a turban, not exactly a look. I'm wearing: yesterday's secondhand navy Patagonia merino-blend tee, with secondhand grape/berry Ibis merino tee over it, plus my old charcoal-gray ponte-knit skinny jeans and purple Xero Oswegos. It's a little thrown together, but it'll do to walk the dog in. I am comfortable, and it's nice to give the dresses a little rest. I like the lightness and warmth of the layered merino tees a lot -- these have been some of my favorite purchases from the end of 2021. And I like the grape/berry/whatever shade the top shirt is and navy together. The whole thing feels a little more form-fitting than I'm normally happy with, but I think it's okay. It's something different, at any rate.
Hopefully I'll have time to post the evening outfit.
Meanwhile, here's a poem by my friend Jane Greer, posted the other day at D.S. Martin's excellent Kingdom Poets blog.
LATER:
The date-night look.
