Well, no, really, there's no reason in the world not to keep posting pictures of forsythia while it lasts, which will be all too briefly. Here's some of the hedge I planted along the bottom of the front yard, by the curb, the summer our big front-yard oak came down. The tree men had left the whole yard a sea of churned-up mud, and I wanted it not to wash off the slope and into the street in the rain, so I planted this border as a kind of rain/runoff garden. Five years later, it's kind of a mess, like all my borders, but for a brief, piercing moment in the early spring, it's just glory.
It's a lovely Saturday morning, with the clouds blown out on yesterday's wind and the sun shining. It's also 26F, and I'm putting off going out for at least another hour while my hair dries. Just sitting at the kitchen table drinking my coffee, reading Dombey and Son, enjoying my red-checked tablecloth which will soon go away for Lent --- weirdly, that's the thing that feels like a penance. I love the cheer of my red-checked tablecloth. I dread replacing it with purple. But it'll be fine, and that's honestly about the right level a penance should achieve. It doesn't injure me in any way. It takes no toll on my health. It's simply not my preference, that's all, and a tiny enough thing to sacrifice. We do observe other austerities as a matter of course, but my mind keeps coming to that one as actually the central one, the one that's going to bother me just a little.
Today: the main thing on is a Zoom reading this afternoon, the launch reading for this year's Able Muse literary journal, whose staff I've just joined. I didn't have anything to do with the issue launching today, but I volunteered to read in place of the featured poet, Mary Jo Salter, who can't be there. So one thing I need to do this morning is read her poems and practice with them, so that I can make a good job of it.
Otherwise, and apart from the usual dog-walking and laundry-folding which comprise my Saturdays, I really don't want to work but probably should, a little. My progress with this novel thesis feels excruciatingly slow. I have written up some notes for the first hundred pages which I need to review and send to the student --- that's mostly what I did yesterday. But it feels so slow, and I remain glad, at least, that we agreed that she'd sent me the MS by the first of this month, not the 24th, which is the actual, official deadline. No way could I have turned it around by March 10, which is my actual, official deadline (and is my wedding anniversary, so I want to have this done well before then, so that I don't have it hanging over me on what's always a holiday for us). And I want her to have time to do substantive revision by the next deadline in April. So here we are, plugging away . . .
Wearing today:
In the house edition: Wool& Camellia, yesterday's thrifted merino cardigan, thrifted stripey bamboo-cotton leggings, some old cotton ragg socks from Target, thrifted Birk Floridas.
This is a look I was mostly trying to avoid this year, which is why I bought ankle boots for the winter, but today I like it. You can see how worn these secondhand Birks are. I debate whether it's worth it, for the non-leather Birki shoe, to plan to have the cork footbed replaced, because that's clearly what is going to need to happen at some point, to extend the life of these shoes. For leather I wouldn't hesitate. We shall see. My new (no-buy fail) secondhand Birk Balis, on their way to me now, are actually leather, I think.
I am rationalizing my no-buy fail to myself, because I think I'm about to commit another one . . . because I'd thought to make Lent a no-buy season as well, and something has come along, at a good reduced price, that I think I'd get a lot of Lenten wear out of, particularly. Rationalize, rationalize, rationalize . . . think I'll just block Ebay and Poshmark starting on Ash Wednesday to strengthen my resolve.
Anyway. Here's the outdoor/dog-walk edition of today's outfit:
I am happy every day that I took the plunge and bought these Birkenstock boots. They are so. exactly. what I needed and wanted. They fit better every day. The leather is giving exactly as I had hoped, so that the pressure on my left-foot bunion has eased up a lot. There's plenty of toe room. They fit well through the heel. By the time we're really ready to hit the mountain trails, they'll be well broken in, and should stand up to a hard day's walking and climbing. Meanwhile, they're just kind of cute. I don't mind wearing them with dresses --- they don't look nearly as weird as a pair of funky-colored lightweight hikers would have looked.
Meanwhile, I'm liking the blue-on-blue of the cardigan and dress. I haven't worn this combination before, but I think it works great and will look particularly polished on Zoom, where nobody will see that I'm wearing striped leggings and some form of Birkenstocks.
More and more, I'm convinced that there are two kinds of shoe I want to wear, and no other: minimalist shoes (I now own five pairs of Xeros, in completely different styles) and Birkenstocks, of which I currently own three pairs and counting. I like alternating the two kinds of shoe: the minimalist, barefoot shoes to strengthen my feet, the support of Birkenstocks when my feet get tired of being strengthened. I think both options are good and warranted. What I'm really not interested in, like at all: heels, any kind of fashion shoe, tapered flats with no toe room, etc. And sneakers, because I just don't feel right in them.
Meanwhile, I feel suddenly as though I have a lot of shoes. And maybe I do. But I have been considering just how much the right shoe can make an outfit, and just how much the wrong shoe can throw things off, not only in terms of how the shoe feels on your foot, but in terms of the overall aesthetic. It's important to me to wear shoes I could walk miles in at the drop of a hat, or at least stand up in for a long time. I have no time for anything that makes my feet hurt --- which increasingly is most shoes. Once my feet start to hurt, then my knees hurt, then my hips, then my lower back. Shoes are the key to feeling either really good or really bad, and all the more so the older you get. But you know, I also like them to look good with whatever outfit I'm wearing.
Anyway, as much as I keep thinking about dresses I'd like to buy, I think I should stop and think about everything else that goes with dresses. A number of my favorite shoes are getting pretty worn (see Birkenstock Floridas, above, but also my EVA Birks, which eventually are going to split right apart). The discovery that I can buy Birkenstocks --- which for years I'd thought were just way out of my reach --- decent Birkenstocks, on Ebay, has been kind of lifechanging. I can actually own shoes I've always dreamed of owning and wearing, without bankrupting us. Of course, if I bought every single pair that caught my eye, I would bankrupt us. But I haven't done that, and I really don't intend to. I'm just glad my feet can celebrate a little, far more affordably than I had ever dreamed.
I think I've about decided that I'm not going to consider an Easter dress . . . I have enough to wear, and I think I should consider, instead, how to wear a dress I already own creatively for what will probably be a pretty chilly Easter Vigil anyway. I think I should, instead, buy the pair of transitions sunglasses I have been thinking about, because that's the kind of thing I have put off and could really use (as I was thinking while walking in the bright sunshine earlier). And of course I have these shoes I've just been discussing, so what I should do is make new outfits with them and enjoy them. I have six dresses, and I have cardigans, skirts, shirts, belts, scarves, and other accessories to work with. This really seems sufficient. Time to rest in it all for a while.