Getting a little tired of taking new pictures of all the same things. Truly, I do feast my eyes on my closet a lot and take pleasure in its relative order. I like the array of colors. I know I say these things over and over, but it is a constant, however small.
The daughter started work today at the coffee shop: up and out by 7:15. I didn't get up until 8:30, having had another of a series of dreams in which we buy a new house and are doing stuff to it, and I'm wondering all the time whether I didn't like this house we live in better. Whatever work my subconscious mind is doing while I sleep, it does seem to run along the same theme. In this latest dream, I was painting woodwork different colors --- like the bathroom cabinet, while my husband was taking a shower and being dubious about my color choices, for which in any event I didn't seem to have nearly enough paint. What does it all mean?
The washing machine remains inoperable, so last night I gathered up all the dirty kitchen towels and put them in the bathtub to wash and bleach. Now they're in the dryer, and I imagine they'll be as clean when they come out as they would have been if I'd washed them in a machine. Trying not to think about the sheets and towels mounting up in all the hampers. I guess at some point somebody will need to do a laundromat run, but I am hoping that that somebody won't be me.
I spent a fair amount of time yesterday making this YouTube video for the Mater Amabilis channel --- more to come shortly, from me and other members of the admin team. More and more the website is shaping up to be something else again, especially for a free resource, created entirely by volunteers.
I also finished my Sun poetry entries for the next week, when we'll be highlighting living poets: Rhina Espaillat, Andrew Frisardi, A.M. Juster, Lisa McCabe, Dana Gioia.
And I've drafted a provisional synopsis for my novel, which reads currently as follows:
Kirsty Sain, aging housekeeper for the newly arrived young priest, assumes that despite this personnel change in her rural parish, her own solitary rounds will proceed as always. She will go to Mass, clean the rectory, go home again. She will keep herself to herself in the present and coexist in detente with the past. When a hairless, eyeless kitten is thrust upon her, an unlikely deterrent to the mice invading her house, she declares, “I am not going to love that thing.” But between the hapless Father Schuyler, who teeters on the edge of breakdown, and the crises of the Malkins, a parish family whose cheerful chaos erupts in tragedy, Kirsty finds her own wounds broken open. Drawn against her will into these suffering and vulnerable lives, she returns to an old hero, the Elizabethan poet-priest Robert Southwell, whose “Mary Magdalen’s Funeral Tears” provides a skeleton key to her own locked heart. I am not going to love has been her credo. But in Robert Southwell’s words, “love is the fire” that renders all things new.
I will tweak it between now and Monday, when it's due, but this more or less says what it needs to say, I think.
It's warming up already, though we're not nearly into the heat of the summer yet. Now is the time to wear anything I won't be able to bear once the real summer weather sets in. I've settled on my jumpsuit for today, as it's been a while since I last wore it:
Shapeless but comfortable, as you see.
I hadn't hung up my tencel chambray shirt from yesterday, so I tried tying it over:
Kind of a 40s vibe, I thought, and a good sun layer that doesn't add weight. That's really why I bought that shirt (at Goodwill) to begin with: as a light layer to throw on while hiking or at the beach. I've gotten a lot of wear out of it beyond those uses, but it is still good that way.
Washed my hair for Sunday, so I'm dripping all over the place.
I'm trying to keep up with both my wardrobe tracker and my style photo album. My record so far isn't perfect, but I still think that both of these ways of logging what I wear show me a pretty accurate picture of my habits and patterns, and suggest to me both things I HAVE worn and liked, and things I HAVEN'T worn and should consider wearing.
And now Dora's going nuts in her crate, so I guess I should let her out.
PS: Still pondering my considered-purchase exception to my no-buy year: a dress for the Catholic Imagination Conference in the fall. I continue to be fixated on the cobalt Sofia, not yet released, but am giving myself other options. One I hadn't thought about, but have been turning over in my mind today: the marine-blue or plum Maggie, in long. The Maggie has seemed like such a basic tee dress that I hadn't really had her on my radar, and I'm not necessarily looking for another swing dress. BUT if I'm considering a long Camellia (the colors I'd want are sold out), I figure I might as well consider a Maggie as well. I think I would size down --- I have a medium Camellia and like her a lot, but I think I could wear a small, as I do in the Sierra, even though I'm not that small a person and haven't lost weight. I would really want the bodice and sleeves of the Maggie to fit. The top of the dress looks too big on the model pictured. If the Camellia is anything to judge by, there's enough swing that I could get away with a smaller, slightly more fitted size, especially if I want to look polished. A long would still graze my knee, but not be really over the knee. The short sleeves would still be versatile and okay for Texas in hot September.
I'm tempted to be impatient and just pull the trigger. Makes me a little anxious to wait and hope that I can get the dress I want in time. But the Sofia IS the dress I really want: I'm fairly sure, anyway. I might get it and find that it doesn't work at all, but I guess we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.