YES. The house is standing, the garden is exploding, the dog is glad to see us. So are the kids who have been manning the ship on their own for two weeks.
Even after days of sleeping off the jet lag, I feel bone tired and incapable of accomplishing anything, but I am glad to be here. Everything yesterday went off as smoothly as if there had never been any snarls in the American aviation machinery. We got up at 5 a.m., were out of the hotel before 6 and on the train to the airport by 6:15. By, I don't know, 8 a.m., we were through security, with hours to spare for our 11 a.m. flight. After a gate change necessitating a shuttle ride, we got on the plane, and on the ground in Charlotte, the Viking Son was there to meet us, and now here we are.
It sure does feel hot here, I have to say. I'm rather missing the freshness of the fjord summer air at the moment. But, well, having lived in this particular place for almost fifteen years, I don't know what else I expected.
I've unpacked my backpack and washed all my travel-capsule dresses, which needed it. We have a wedding to go to tomorrow --- my oldest daughter's best friend is getting married, which means my daughter and son-in-law will be rolling in sometime tonight --- and I want to wear my Brooklyn dress, which of course received a lot of wear as part of my travel wardrobe. While I was at it, I just washed everything else, too, in the machine on cold, then tumbled it partly dry before hanging on the drying rack to finish. I was wearing Fiona, and very sweaty she felt by the end of the day, so when I took a bath, she got one, too, in the sink.
I got Maggie T out and looked again at the hole I'd managed to tear, near the back hemline. It was a significant hole, about half an inch long and very gaping. I have no idea how it happened --- it looked as though the fabric had been snipped with scissors rather than caught and torn. Anyway, I mended it fairly invisibly and feel a little less sick about it than I did. OF COURSE things happen to your favorite dresses, just as it's only your favorite earrings that ever get lost. But she's pretty much good as new. I can't ever manage to stitch up a hole or tear in a knit fabric without a tiny pucker at each end of the seam, which bugs me some --- I've thought about maybe embroidering a tiny same-color flower at each end or something, to hide the pucker. But I don't think it's noticeable. It's certainly not as noticeable as the hole was, and it won't impede my wearing of that dress, which is good, because having done all this travel stuff, I really can't afford to replace any clothes for a good long while. No regrets, mind you. But I'd have hated not to be able to wear this dress any more, and am grateful that despite being a complete non-seamstress, I can at least stitch something back together plausibly and more or less unnoticeably.
Once again, looking back, I am very pleased with how my travel capsule worked for me. I've said it before, but for me, at any rate, to have a small rota of dresses, rather than one or two plus a rota of accessories, was effective and easy. My one big decision every day was simply which dress to put on, and that was made easy by thinking (mostly), Whatever I didn't wear yesterday. I did wear them in a loose rotation, as I tend to do at home, and it worked. Mostly it was dress + shoes, and then I had two sweaters to choose from in my daypack, in case I needed them.
Hoo boy. Talk about something I did not wear: that hat and mittens. I did at some junctures wish that I'd had a sun hat. And I think that when I took this photo I either hadn't decided to bring Maggie T, or else was wearing her. But I still love this color palette, just as something to gaze upon. The blues, teals, and greens harmonized so well together --- and although I hardly wore them, the red leggings were a fun note with blue. I will look forward to those this winter as a hit of bright color.
The whole time, I felt comfortable --- not too hot, not too cold --- and put-together and cute. It was fun to walk around cities and countryside in whatever fun dress I had chosen for the day: a color and shape that suited me and worked well with whichever sweater I might have needed to wear. My little belt pack was a good, useful accessory. I kept anything valuable in the belt pack --- wallet, passports, phone --- and just used my daypack to hold extra layers in case I needed them. Norway didn't feel especially like a place where you had to take precautions, but I took them all the same.
And I'm glad I brought my Birk Balis, because wow, I wore them literally the whole time. They were perfect for walking, of which we did a lot. The big street-style trend in Norway, as in New York (as I now have reason to know) is dresses with sneakers, so I was not completely au courant, but as I've determined that I'm not a sneaker person, I really didn't care.
I'm also glad I packed the pashmina. I only wore it on the plane, but I was very glad to have it on the plane. It was incredibly warm and soft when I was cold (which again was literally only on airplanes). I was admiring it with my Fiona yesterday on the plane --- I don't think I'd ever thought to wear it with that dress, but the silver with the teal was really pretty. I think one project I'm going to tackle is thinning out my scarf/shawl collection, so that I do actually remember what I have and wear it. That's a situation where I do really have too many choices. I've been loath to get rid of things, because so many of them were gifts from my husband. BUT so was this pashmina, and it's the best of the lot. He's so sold on wool, too, at this juncture, that I think I can gently ask him not to bother with synthetics, even in a scarf. Like yes, I love scarves and you pick good ones, darling, but you know what I'm really looking for . . . please don't just buy something to be buying something for me. He tends to want to buy a lot of things for any gift-giving occasion, which I appreciate very much. He derives great pleasure from seeing me unwrap a lot of parcels. But I think I can (again, gently and with gratitude) suggest that I'd rather have one really good thing . . . we have talked about why I don't thrift shop the way I used to, and this has been a theme on which we are in agreement. Anyway. He gave me this pashmina (70% pashmina, 30% silk, I think), and I realize how much I love it. Again, I think I need to thin things out so that I see and wear it more. It was the perfect piece to have on the plane, at any rate.
In hindsight, four dresses was a good number for what was supposed to be twelve summer days but became fifteen. It was neither too few nor too many dresses. I never got bored. I never felt that I needed to figure out how to make my outfit more interesting, and I wasn't stressing over a bunch of accessories or separates. I never once thought, I wish I had brought X. I was really happy with what I did bring.
****I have to say, too: I just spent the last two days in Fiona, and this has rekindled my love affair with this dress. I had acquired her last fall, as part of my birthday, in a spirit of some dubiousness. With Brooklyn, this was the style of which I had been most critical, mostly on the theme of a thing which seems better in concept than in execution. But then my eye just kept being drawn to this dress, as people were wearing and styling it, and I thought, Maybe? So I gambled, and I haven't been sorry. This is the dress complete strangers have complimented --- somebody on the greenway a few weeks back stopped me to tell me my dress was gorgeous. I always feel pretty and graceful in this color and shape. While she's a bit warm for the weather currently, she's honestly not too bad --- I walked the dog twice before dark yesterday, and then we went out for pizza and sat on the patio, and although I was definitely hot, I wasn't dying of heat stroke. I might really wear her to Mass Sunday, just because she'll be clean again and ready to go, and I still feel like feeling what she makes me feel like.****
It might have been nice if I'd needed the leggings more, since I did bring them. And who knows --- the weather might have been really different, and I might have needed them, in which case I'd have been glad I had them. They didn't take up so appreciably much room that I resented their being there. Mostly I just thought, Welp, didn't need those, did I? Better safe than sorry, though. If I had been cold and not had layers provided for me, I'd have wound up splashing out enormous money for a pair of leggings in Norway, just to get by, and having seen Norway prices, I'm just as glad that I was never in danger of having to do that. My one pair of wool socks makes me very happy:
I won't wear them between now and December, mind you, unless I meet Marly in the mountains again in the fall, but I am happy I have them. The brand is DeBolt --- there was a DeBolt outlet at Stranda, where we had tried to take a scenic ferry that turned out not to be running. My husband bought a long-sleeved merino top that was marked way down, and he wore that top for most of the rest of the holiday, so it was a good purchase. In New York, on the way to the train, he managed to drop and lose an old thermal synthetic shirt he'd brought to wear on the plane --- I'd been kind of silently hoping that that shirt would go away, now that he has a fair amount of merino to keep warm in. The old thermal shirt was a favorite, and he wore it a lot on hikes, where it always got really sweaty and gross. But now that he has some good wool replacements, I doubt he'll miss it much. He had really wanted to buy an actual Norwegian sweater in the DeBolt outlet, but those were full price, over $200, and bulky to boot. I don't know how he'd have packed a big sweater if he had gotten one. So I've promised to watch Poshmark for something like that for him for the winter, and instead he got this really nice lightweight long-sleeved merino tee, which again he wore for much of the rest of the vacation.
And I am, again, happy with my socks, especially as they also were marked way down. I might watch Poshmark for another pair or something similar, once I'm out of my purchasing pause. As I say, I'm hardly in a hurry to acquire more wool socks just now.
Socks, too, were something I hardly wore on this trip. I took something like five pairs and bought one more, which ended up being the one pair I wore at all. But how could I know? Just as I didn't know about the leggings, and would have been in trouble if I had needed them and not brought them, so too with the socks. One more argument for packing economically is that you are going to have to lug around all the stuff you thought you'd need but didn't, so there might as well not be that much of it. I feel that I took too much that I didn't need, but honestly: I took nothing that I couldn't carry literally on my person (carry-on-sized pack on my back, daypack worn on my front like a baby carrier). I did not take my entire wardrobe. I left things out. I took only what I could easily carry without having to check a bag. And although I wound up not needing a lot of it, it wasn't a nuisance to have it with me.
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All my travel dresses are resting, and I have a choice of well-rested non-travel dresses to wear today. What will it be, what will it be?
I think not Sierra. The last time I wore Sierra, I felt really hot, and the weather wasn't even as sultry as it is right now. That leaves Audrey, Maggie B, and Willow. Which, O which, will I choose?
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LATER (putting off doing actual things):
It doesn't feel so hot out there, though it is muggy. Hasn't quite hit the high for the day. The main thing, though, is the air quality. We noticed yesterday, on landing in Charlotte, how hazy it is here --- which was funny to us, because New York had been crystal clear once the sun came out. Crystal clear for New York, anyway. But now we're right in the haze zone, and even though I don't belong to a "sensitive" group, I really found it uncomfortable to be out walking for more than a few minutes. So we're back inside. Bleah.
On the other hand, Willow is reasonably comfortable, even in the heat and humidity. Not as comfortable as a sleeveless dress, but definitely wearable --- the loose swing is nice and breezy. So there is that.
ALSO:
Because I'm tired and bored, but too tired to do anything really productive to stop being bored, I keep paging through my 2023 Style Album to date, casting my eye back over the last six months. This, as I am fully aware, is the living end --- could I navel-gaze more? I doubt it. But I'm bored. And tired. And bored. So here we are.
And . . . man, once again, I look back at my winter outfits, day to day, and I think, "Really? I wore that?" It's the combinations. I'm good at "put on a dress." I'm less good at "put on a dress and then some more things." And I'm even less good at "put on a dress and more things, especially on your legs and feet, because it's cold out there today." I really don't know what to do about this. There are outfits I like a lot. But then there's everything else, too much of which just looks weird. I think I really do not know what to do with my legs and feet in a dress in cold weather. I guess I felt cute at the time, but looking back, I don't get the same vibe at all. I get that was nice once, maybe.
So I'm on this purchasing pause, which is fine, because until the first of November it'll be fairly smooth sailing, which is to say: warm. I have plenty of time to figure out what to do with my legs and feet on cold days. Knee boots seems like an obvious answer, because they cover up so much and keep you so warm --- a pair of knee boots that I can walk in, just as I can walk in my hiking boots and Taris (both of which I do like, both of which figure into outfits I like), is going to be a priority. Like over another dress, even --- another really good pair of boots would be transformative for the selection of dresses I currently own.
My three new pairs of leggings will be good, because they're all long enough to tuck into my Taris without visible socks. I still have plenty of tights --- need to mend a hole in the toe of my navy Snag merino tights, but those are otherwise in great shape.
Many of my favorite winter outfits involve my Audrey dress --- winter is a good time to have a dark longer dress, though I'm looking forward to wearing her in hot weather, too. Actually, if they made an Audrey with sleeves, I would buy the heck out of that dress. But she's great as she is.
I like many winter outfits involving longer skirts over dresses, too. Making a note of that.
I dunno, the weather was just so weird all winter, cold and warm and everything in between. It was hard to know what to do. But I'm taking stock of it all now, because I think that's useful (and it's not like I'm doing anything else with my brain at the moment). I think last winter's outfits were actually better than the previous winter's, so my goal, I guess, is for the coming winter to be even better. Or at any rate, less weird.
As I say, it's not like I'm doing anything else with my brain right now.