We're not exactly hauling in a massive bounty from our container garden, but what we have sure is pretty (and honestly enough for four people --- tomatoes for tonight's burgers!).
A fun time last night seeing good friends who've moved from the Abbey to the DC area for new jobs. We didn't get home until after midnight, a fact upon which both our progeny-at-home have commented: You were certainly out late. I thought this was the sort of thing we were supposed to say to them, but nevermind.
Recovering a little this morning, rereading another Roderick Alleyn, because again, police procedure is so consoling.
Wearing another consoling default:
My good old (well, not THAT old, but she sure feels like a longtime companion) Wool& Sierra dress, with EVA Birks on my feet. I felt great last night in my Maggie dress --- she was absolutely the right choice for a mostly-outside party, and I felt cool and graceful wearing her. But today: comfort zone.
UPDATE: I just counted wear-days on my wardrobe tracker, and it looks as though, since the first of the year, I've worn my Sierra dress fifty-six times. I'll have to go back and count how many days I wore her from November, when I received her, through the end of 2021 (ETA: I wore her roughly twenty times, so total wears as of today add up to roughly seventy-five).
This is interesting mainly in terms of comparison: what does 100 days of non-continuous wear look like, as opposed to 100 days of continuous wear, as far as the condition of a dress is concerned? Of course, in my case this is an apples/oranges situation, because the Sierra is a heavier, tougher dress than the Camellia in which I did my challenge last year. But I am curious to see what difference it makes that a dress gets to rest between wearings (though I have worn Sierra days in a row plenty of times), instead of being worn day after day after day without a break.
Given that a dress like this represents some investment, you have to ask: how do you maximize that investment? One way, I presume, is to prove to yourself that you can wear that dress in absolutely any circumstance and create an infinite number of outfits around it --- but what if that makes your investment dress wear out faster, so that it's ultimately not so nice, not so versatile, not so absolutely the only thing you want to reach for (or at all the thing you want to reach for)?
This, of course, is where it's good to have ideas for mending and refurbishing. I am STILL waiting for this dye --- apparently it was out of stock, not that that was indicated on the site. Customer service assures me that they should be getting some more early next week. Again, this growth-in-virtue business . . . why so difficult? And over something so relatively trivial? Anyway, my great hope is that WHEN THIS DYE JOB SHALL HAPPEN, it will extend the life of my well-worn dress. I will get more return on my investment, even though I've had to lay out a little for this makeover-to-be. The cost of dyeing a dress I already have is certainly a lot less than the cost of a new dress, and creates a lot less waste.
Meanwhile, I am wearing my other dresses more lightly, or at least with more "rest days" between wears. Sierra is a workhorse and probably doesn't need that much consideration, but I am babying my Maggie a bit. And again, when I'm ready to invest again, Sierra is at the top of my list, because even with heavy wear and no coddling, this fabric does promise a good years-long return on that investment.
I have some housework to do, and some light hand-wash laundry, but otherwise . . . don't know what I hope to accomplish. I imagine we'll lie around until time to organize dinner, and that's just fine with me.
I feel like a bore banging on about my hair as well as my clothes, but in fact I'm pretty happy with how my lots-of-gel experiment worked out. I raked a couple of generous palmfuls of Aussie Hard Freeze through my soaking-wet hair with some reservations (nothing like saving your experiments for when you're going out to see people), and was not surprised, when it dried, that it felt fairly encased in plaster. One thing I did that I don't normally do, especially in summer, was diffuse it dry, in stages, so that by the time we were ready to leave it was reliably bone dry. My hair is the kind of hair that resists water, but, once it's taken it on really hangs onto it, so I knew if I didn't assist the drying process, it would still be wet by the evening (low-porosity hair, in other words). As it was, I could use my hands, first, to scrunch the plaster cast apart, then a wide-toothed comb, with care, to break the hardest clumps apart. It held its shape well all last night, and this morning still looks pretty decent with, for me, about the right amount of definition and volume.
It doesn't look that styled at this point --- and I really didn't want very defined, clumpy waves and curls to begin with --- but this hair texture can so often just look unkempt, even when it's cut into layers that give it some shape. The ends just sort of frizzle out into nothing, even when they're freshly cut. I definitely do not want to spend this kind of time and energy on my hair every day, but for a night out, the effort did pay off, and I hope to reap the benefits for a few days yet. Eventually it'll just go up in a ponytail, but it's nice to be able to wear it loose and have it look like something.
They do say that for waves, especially, gel is the answer, and if the shape you want isn't holding up, use more. I'd been afraid I'd wind up with crispy, wet-looking hair, but you really can break the crisp right out and still have nice waves, with a lot of shine and not a lot of humidity-frizz. When in doubt I put my hair up, and it's good to be able to do that, but it's also pleasant not to have to.
Back to Chief Inspector Alleyn, and this murder, the perpetrator of which I think I remember, but I can't remember how exactly they deduce his or her identity, so it's still all a surprise to me. And, as I say, consoling after a late night.
LATER:
I had almost forgotten, and in fact we weren't quite sure it was going to happen today, because the sensei is hard to get hold of, but my son officially received his black belt in karate, in a traditional tea ceremony this afternoon.
He'd started karate at eleven, and passed his black-belt test last summer, just after turning nineteen and just before leaving for school. It was a formative eight years, and we're grateful to Mr. Duncan for his presence and example, as well as his challenging instruction.
And of course we're proud of our boy.