It's starting to look a lot like summer. The lamb's-ears are furry and pettable again:
And the little boy of the shade garden is happy, since I freed him and his fern friends from the nefarious clutches of the English ivy.
Tonight is pub night, calloo callay! I do love me a good Thursday. The agenda leading up to that outing is pretty much the same as always:
*walk dog
*write essays (today: Louise Bogan and Edgar Allan Poe)
*peck a little at own writing
*look at magazine slushpile
*pack up and mail a Poshmark sale (hooray, although it was a tiny item and I probably made 37 cents)
I've helped my husband, who is not on a purchasing pause, pick out two Poshmark pairs of Kuhl brand hiking pants for Norway. He has a pair of Kuhl shorts that he bought off the rack in an outfitter store in Blowing Rock (so . . . NOT discounted, shall we say) last summer, when the shorts he'd been wearing to hike, an old pair of cotton khaki ones, were starting to disintegrate as he wore them. He paid top dollar and then some for those new shorts, but he loves them. So I found him two secondhand pairs of trousers in the same brand, one in a heavier twill-like fabric, one in a quick-dry lightweight nylon-based fabric --- not ideal, but I don't think we could have found a wool equivalent for anything under the cost of our mortgage --- and those are on their way.
He has some thermal base-layer bottoms that he can wear under the lighter-weight trousers, which I talked him into because his primary objective is to stay dry in all weathers. They're a tropical weight, and would be good for hiking here in the summer, but I think they'll potentially work well for him in Norway with a base layer. If it rains, they'll dry very quickly, while he stays warm underneath.
He has some thermal base-layer bottoms that he can wear under the lighter-weight trousers, which I talked him into because his primary objective is to stay dry in all weathers. They're a tropical weight, and would be good for hiking here in the summer, but I think they'll potentially work well for him in Norway with a base layer. If it rains, they'll dry very quickly, while he stays warm underneath.
Wearing today:
The blue sage's cobalt spires made me want to dress as a cobalt spire. So here's my trusty old Camellia, veteran of a hundred straight days of wear, redyed last summer to this vibrant royal blue that sends me every time I put it on.
This style is truly a workhorse --- no wonder the company is sold out of so much of it right now. I hope they never retire it, because at some point I know I'm going to want another. The drape is so fluid and easy that it feels like putting on summer. It's the perfect hot-weather tank, lovely on its own, though you can wear a belt, a cardigan, a tee under or over, a sweater . . . in my Norway packing, Camellia has graduated from maybe I'll take her for a nightgown to I could just wear this dress every day while I'm there.
I might opt to change clothes to go out tonight, or I might not. I feel pretty great in my blue dress with Birks, just simple and breezy.
Day 3 hair damp-hand-refreshed with a little Treluxe serum and a little gel. This seems to be the ideal system: wash but don't use styling agents until it's dry. THEN use the stylers to hold and shape the dry results. I've ended up with hair that feels cleaner longer, with more of what we used to call body, but now I guess we call volume. It's less slippy and weighed down, and maybe less defined, too, but I prefer the fullness --- the feeling of having a lot of hair. I don't have as much as I used to when I was younger, so this is something I appreciate now.
Still a little damp and crunchy from the refresh (which took all of three seconds), but I like how the waves have a little definition without being all separated. I actually think that on wavy hair this can look better than having the hair too clumped. The main thing is for it to have some shape (which is as much a function of how it's cut as anything else --- I always ask for a tapered shape in the perimeter with long layers), and for the ends not to be all dissolved into an undefined frizzle. Some finish on the ends makes it look as though you "did" your hair, even when you really didn't.
Again, the look I'm going for is natural, not overtly styled. The experience I'm going for is natural, not a lot of time-consuming techniques. I never want rain or wind to ruin my day, after I've spent hours on my hair. Life is just too short for that anxiety.
I'll leave you with some Nat Tucker advice, sparked by the email digest I received this morning, on how to wear prints. I'm not wearing a print at the moment --- all my pattern today is in my shoes (which don't contrast with my lowest hemline, but whatever). But it's always good to know.
What Kind of Print Suits You
Mixing Prints
Prints in One Place
This last, I think, was actually the theme of the email digest, but I thought it would be nice to have a little roundup. I don't wear a lot of prints, but maybe I should consider them more . . .
Mixing Prints
Prints in One Place
This last, I think, was actually the theme of the email digest, but I thought it would be nice to have a little roundup. I don't wear a lot of prints, but maybe I should consider them more . . .
Anyway, time to walk the dog and get on with the day.
POST-WALK:
A nice shot of Dora with my upgraded phone camera.
Got a phone upgrade so that I could do an esim card in Norway, which seems about the cheapest, easiest way to have a phone signal, GPS, etc, while we're there. My old cheapie locked Straight Talk Moto phone has been in a slow death spiral, so now I have a not-entirely-the-latest Google Pixel, which I think I like a lot. It's the same Google/Android-type platform which (obviously) syncs easily with my Chromebook and is easy to set up and use. As newer phones go, it was a good deal, far cheaper than an iPhone. And it has a really nice camera, at least comparatively. We definitely wanted that for our adventures. I bought an unlocked phone directly from Google, but it's compatible with my bottom-of-the-line Straight Talk plan, as well as with various European esim-card plans. I bought it carefully with that capability in mind --- it's a dual-sim model, which lets you have a physical sim card (Straight Talk), but also add a second plan via an esim. This seemed like the best and easiest deal for traveling --- I can set up the esim account before we leave, so that all we have to do when we get off the plane in Bergen (at least in theory, but I hope in actuality, too) is switch to that and be on our way.
And now to eat lunch and buckle down to some work.
LATER:
One essay down, one to go. Took a break to walk to the PO with Dora to mail this Poshmark parcel. As of now (3 p.m.), we've walked over 4.5 miles. Walking to and from the pub should put us handily over 5 miles, especially with our late-afternoon and evening dog-spins around the neighborhood. A good day for sure. After a couple of hairy encounters with other dogs last week, Dora has been walking well and calmly. She navigated several blocks of Main Street with ease today, even passing other walkers (fortunately no dogs) at close range. It's lovely and breezy today, not too hot at all, but I still think that the warmer weather takes the edge off for her. Warmer weather=chiller Dora.
Now we're back and crashed in the study, so I'd better get on with the next essay. It's the first of the final three that will take me through the third week in July.
LAST CALL:
Two essays done. Back from the pub. Fun night with husband and college kids.
Pub night outfit: just add waist pack and fluff hair.
Random Viking sighting. We kind of spread out in one corner, until more people started to filter in. Then we just all joined him at that table. Fun trivia night with much 80s music. Now we're back, about to say the rosary, then walk the dog one last time.
My miles so far today: a whopping 6.54! And it'll probably be 7 by the time I go to bed. I just need to mail a parcel more often . . . and then go out for drinks. That's the secret to more miles here.
ABSOLUTE LAST CALL:
The bedtime walk brings our miles today to 7.36, a personal record since I started keeping track.
Good night!