Dishes on the butler's pantry, which I use as an old-style kitchen dresser.
Friday, Friday . . . the end of another week. We had a fun night out with the Viking Son at the pub, missing the Artgirl, who had to work. They're both off today, then the Viking Son has 12-hour shifts all weekend --- he's working in a newspaper print room, which is loud and boring but fairly remunerative, as shift work tends to be.
I finished my Sun essays for next week yesterday afternoon, but hope today to knock out at least one for the week after. Copy-edited the first twenty pages or so of a new poetry book and need to continue that work. Wound up walking roughly 5 miles, between walks with Dora and walks to and from the pub --- my husband and I took a longish turn with Dora around the neighborhood last thing last night, when it was cool and pleasant.
I think I love the change of seasons more than I love any one season itself. There's a point in the summer when, if you go up into the mountains, it's still warm but you feel the tang of autumn in the air, and this is the most utter delight. I feel the same way about warm days in February, the breath of spring at the end of winter. Of course, I actually like both spring and fall, and I don't mind a little summer and winter, though I get tired of the same old thing all the time. Summer here is more like that than winter --- our winters vary between bone-cold and t-shirt weather, and you never know, when you wake up in the morning, which it's going to be. Summer, on the other hand, is predictable. One might even say it becomes monotonous.
Of course there are things I enjoy about it: having my children home, chiefly. We have this summer and next summer, then college is over, and who knows what will happen next, so I am making a point of enjoying their company while I have this much of it. And it's nice to have my husband around all day. But there does come a time when I start to be ready for the party to end, for people to go back to school and work, for me to set the house in order so that it can stay that way, and to pick up with my own rounds of work and walking and whatever else it is that I do all day long when I'm not trying to keep the upstairs bathroom in clean towels.
One change of plans for the coming year: my Homeschool Connections courses were massively under-enrolled, with one student registered for one course. I've opted to teach them as direct-to-recorded classes, more like Great Courses programs than actual live classes, though I might get some friends to have their kids participate for free, just so that I have something of an audience. I am actually happy about this --- I was starting to feel a little panicked about being tied down to a time slot for a live course, and this way I can do them in bunches and then have my flexible time back. I want to go to Dallas sometime this fall to see the 3/4 of the children who will be congregated there --- if I go late enough in the fall, I might catch the Fire Son, too, which would be lovely. Not having to work around a class time for travel is a nice prospect.
So although part of me is disappointed --- though I don't know what I expected --- part of me is relieved at this turn of events. I had a hard time filling the last live classes I taught, in the 2014-2015 school year, but over the years people have used these courses in the recorded archive, so that there's always been a steady little drip of income from them. It'll be nice to keep that coming. And I could imagine doing more straight-to-recorded classes . . . I'd like to do something using Christian Poetry in America as a text.
And I'm hoping that this leaves me more breathing space for my own work. As much as I feel compelled to make some money, I feel even more compelled toward the work which is not actually making me any money, but is what I do.
So . . . Friday toward the end of July. Here we are. The sun is shining, and the air quality is actually good. High of 92F, with 83% humidity --- not Houston-level humidity, but we're not exactly arid here. Still, it's looking like a nice day for being outdoors.
Wearing today:
Sierra: I might melt. But here she is, freshly washed and dried and about as shrunk-up as she's likely to get. More and more, I prefer her belted rather than loose, which does give a much-worn dress a new look and life, I think. Today I opted for this linen scarf as a sash --- it's one my mother gave me years ago, if not actual decades, and I've never worn it all that much, although it is nice, a very subtle pink-and-blue check. I thought that it would lighten up this gray dress. I also like that a sash like this gives you a little belly camouflage, if like me you are a less-young person with some of the baggage of middle age and no hormones to speak of.
This is generally my not-good side, but in this outfit I don't mind a shot from this angle so much.
I could do with a more supportive bra, but I simply do not care. I'm wearing one of my Boody bras --- I forget what they're called, but they're the cheapest ones, and maybe have "support" or "shaper" in the name. They are not actually all that supportive, not all that shaping, but they are comfortable and not totally un-supportive. I have two and switch them out a lot, though I do also wear my various longline bralette/crop tops a good bit, depending on my choice of dress. Anyway, one disadvantage of setting your waistline higher is that then your bustline potentially sits at what you have defined as your waist, and that could be problematic for some people, but again . . . I just can't get worked up about it. I only notice at all because I've taken photos, but that just gives me some space to think about what I'm doing and how I feel about it, and then get on with life.
Meanwhile, I like Sierra as a more fitted dress. I'd be really drawn to a dress with this neckline, which I find surprisingly graceful in its simplicity, and this basic shape, but with a set-in semi-empire waist, that made it more fit-and-flare. BUT I can create that desired shape now, using this dress and other things I have lying around the house, so that's a win. I imagine that in the fall and winter I'll be doing a good bit of this: Sierra with belted waist, maybe a shirt under, a cardigan or jacket over, tights and boots. She'll be heading into her third winter of wear, and I anticipate that she'll figure significantly in my wardrobe choices, as she's done for the last two cold seasons.
But I'm enjoying her, too, on this day in late-ish July, with my new kicky shorter hair, which I'm also having fun with and might keep. This could be one of those years when I trend toward short hair . . . we'll see. It's been about five years since I did that, and it could be fun to go whole French-lady-bob for a while. I got up today and did an easy little refresh with some gel on my wet hands, just slicked over dry hair and scrunched upside down. I worked in a tiny bit of gel at the roots, too, for a little second-day lift. This LUS gel smells lovely, and I like its light hold --- it doesn't create a huge amount of crunch and is easy to break up gently once it's dry, with my fingers or a wide-toothed comb, without losing the curl or wave too much.
So here we are, ready to go. I might or might not have remarked over the last couple of days that my longer-sleeved dresses,
Fiona and
Willow, have turned out to be far more wearable as summer dresses than I had ever imagined. I'd really thought I wouldn't be reaching for them in July --- yet I have been reaching for them. Sierra is much the same way. I was surprised, last summer, to find myself wearing her as much as I did, and while I have more choices this year, which means that most dresses are getting fewer wears (which I actually think is a good thing, with regard to a given piece's longevity), I
am continuing to wear all these dresses day in and day out.
What I'm not wearing so much are tops and skirts --- again. It's hard to imagine putting a skirt over a dress in the heat of the summer, though I might actually do that for church this Sunday, for a change of pace. OR I might get really radical and wear an actual top with a skirt, and freak everybody out. Or I might not. I know what's easier to do, and that might well be what I get up and do. I have thought about doing a whole linen outfit, shirt and skirt, but . . . again, I know what's easy, and that's what I tend to default to doing. Nice to have the options available, but also nice to have a reliable default mode.
Now that I am dressed in that default mode, on with it.
WORK BREAK:
I've been out for a 2-mile walk with Dora, then done about an hour's copy editing. Looked over the next
Sun poem I need to write on (William Blake's "
The Fly"), wrote a work email, then went out with Dora to pick many tomatoes and a few apples. I'm about to buckle down again, but first ---
During a work break yesterday, I cleared and organized this under-bed bin, which holds leggings, tights, and my tiny collection of winter headwear. Those are two caps, top right --- the aqua-colored one has mittens inside, too. Here's the inventory from the top row down:
Top row, left to right:
1. caps & mittens
2. red cotton leggings
3. patterned 100% merino leggings
Second row, left to right:
1. bamboo/cotton teal striped leggings
2. Allbirds merino/cotton/lyocell navy leggings
3. bamboo/cotton marble-patterned leggings
4. a really old pair of teal microfiber tights that I'm not sure even fit
Third row, left to right:
Snag microfiber tights in
1. burgundy
2. slate
3. rainy day
4. navy
5. thicket
Bottom row, left to right:
Snag merino tights in
1. silver lining (feet cut off)
2. navy
3. sand dollar
4. charcoal
This is a pretty nice collection of legwear I probably can't do anything but look at until the end of October. Those old teal tights . . . I need to try them on. I can't even remember how long I've had them. I bought them, probably at Walmart, for the obvious reason that the color was
en fuego, and they must not have been too horrifically uncomfortable, because I did keep them. But I have no idea whether they fit me now, or where they'll fit in my existing wardrobe. Assuming they fit, I could see wearing them with both
Maggies, in marine blue and Aegean Teal, and with
Fiona, for sure. And
Brooklyn. And today's Sierra. If they don't fit, there are a couple of Snag Tights colors I have my eyes on, in lighter and darker tealy blues that I think would be pretty with my whole wardrobe.
It's nice to contemplate that I have enough leggings. Truly I do. (ETA: I have decided to outbox the old purple synthetic leggings I've worn so much for the last few years --- they really aren't serving my outfits that well, and it's just time). If anything, what I want to push myself to do this winter is wear more tights, especially the Snag microfiber ones that I own, like, find comfortable, and would honestly be plenty warm in at least 85% of the time, especially with taller boots.
While there are little holes and gaps that I hope to fill in, what I want to remind myself of, as I organize and examine and . . . well, tread water because it's going to be a long time before I can wear any of these things . . . is that I have basically enough. The goal is to 1) remember what I have and 2) wear it.
And it is pleasant to plan it out now, rather than waking up one day at the end of October and going, Hey, wait, I'm cold! Right now it's hot, and I don't need to wear much. A dress, maybe an accessory like a belt, a pair of shoes, and I'm good to go. But that makes this a good time to think ahead to days when I will need more layers, and to envision what those layers are going to look like. I'd like to reduce the number of obviously experimental outfits I wear, day to day, and increase the number of good ones. A little forethought can go a long way --- I hope.
Now, having thought some about "The Fly," even as I was writing this update, I guess I should return to my regularly scheduled job of writing about poems.
WORK BREAK 2:
Finished "The Fly." Going to return to copy-editing anon, but first ---
I tried on the teal tights. Much to my surprise, they fit --- like really well. The waist goes all the way up to my waist, the way Snags do, so that they don't ride down. And they feel pretty nice.
Obviously I'll enjoy them as a pop of color with this dress I'm wearing right now. I did hold them up to my Fiona and found that that combination is maybe not as great as I'd hoped --- the teal of the Fiona looks really dull and green against this more vibrant color.
Of course colors don't photograph that well, but you can see what I mean here, I think. It could work, but it's not the love story I had envisioned.
With my royal-blue Camellia, though:
And marine-blue Maggie:
And teal Maggie, which I think is my favorite combination:
I forgot to take a shot of the tights next to Brooklyn, but as the crop top I wear with that dress is pretty much this color, I feel confident that the tights will look good, when vibrant legs are a look I'm going for.
I think they're way too bright and vibrant for my wisteria Willow, but that's okay. I don't have to wear them with absolutely everything, just most things. I think they'll be fun with my red Cassie Mary Janes --- which makes me think they'd be fun with a red dress, but we're not going down that road, no no no.
Anyway, it's a lift to realize that in fact I have something in my wardrobe that will work so well with so many other items.
Now back to copy-editing . . .
MUCH LATER:
It occurs to me that this "woolly natural" thing gets looser and looser every day. What I think it means is that my
main outfit is a natural fiber. The rest? I'm doing my best.
