Morning kitchen window.
After a long practice last night, today's the day --- we aren't going for the whole Congress, but will drive in for choir warmup and the closing Mass, where the diocesan choir will sing.
So it's a slow morning, drinking coffee, waking up. I slept in my Audrey and am still wearing her --- might just keep her on until it's time to change into choir dress. My husband wants to go out to dinner in Charlotte after Mass, and I'm vain enough, and hate wearing black enough, that I think I'm going to roll up a spare dress in my purse and change in the bathroom at the Charlotte Convention Center before we go out.
Meanwhile, here's a mystery, a thing that's happened a couple of times now. Last night, after I left for choir, my husband decided to go and see a friend of ours who's been having a rough recovery from back surgery and was in rehab, in a center about five minutes from our house. I'd crated Dora with her supper while we had ours and not let her out before I left. He left her crated when he went out.
When he came back, she was waiting for him at the kitchen door. Clearly, while he was gone, she had clawed open the study door, jumped up on the kitchen counter to eat some leftovers that I had put together for her, anyway, and then hung out on our bed until she heard him drive up.
Here's where the mystery comes in: I had put her in the crate. I had carefully latched the crate door. When my husband got home, Dora was out of the crate --- but the crate door was still locked. The crate showed zero sign of her having escaped from it.
This has happened once before, just the other day. We came home from church, I think it was, to find Dora loose in the house and the crate, in which I had left her confined, still securely locked.
What the heck? We've examined the crate minutely and still have no idea how she's managing to get out. So we'll see what happens today . . .
It looks like being a nice day today, with a high of only 81F.
I took a bath and put on Maggie T-for-teal afterwards, because I'd decided to give Audrey a quick handwash. I'm not sure she really needed it, but the refresh is always nice. When I change for choir, I might just roll up this dress and stash her in my purse, to pop on again for dinner out, maybe with a cardigan. I'd been thinking I'd take Fiona to change into, but I've already got this dress up and rolling, and I'll be wearing my longer silver necklace as an accent, and I always think that looks better with a no-waist dress somehow. I'll also have on my Xero Jessie sandals.
Of course I could just wear my black choir-dress outfit out to dinner, but bleah. I really don't want to. That's probably dumb, but there it is. Changing clothes will be a matter of two minutes in a bathroom stall, and to me it's worth it, to wear something I really want to wear and feel good in when I'm out on the town.
This morning: I'll give the dog a good walk, switch the laundry over, and piddle around until it's time to go. Yesterday was a 3-mile/1-hour walk day, which was good from the exercise standpoint, and I spent some time yesterday afternoon doing sitting arm and leg workouts with resistance bands while I read my latest (rerun) Roderick Alleyn. I've taken a couple of recovery days after an intense workout (for me, anyway --- the old-lady version of "intense"), but need to get back around to some abs exercises. I've been doing standing crunches, as well as toe taps, lying on my back --- you elevate your bent legs, toes pointed, and then take turns lowering each leg to toe-tap the floor, for however many reps. Sometimes I do this while holding weights straight above my chest. Sometimes not. Anyway, I might or might not do more of that before I have to change clothes and go.
I've done a revision of the first chapter of what might or might not be a new novel, and am fairly happy with it --- getting partway into a story means that I know more, when I take another run at the opening, and can sow more of the coming story into that opening, which then makes it easier to keep going. There's a whole section I now can move up to the second chapter, also tweaking to account for things I now know that I didn't know before. We'll see how far forward I can press before things break down again. This, as I remind myself, is the process by which I wrote Works of Mercy --- it did not fall right out of my head onto the page, but took a lot of figuring and fiddling, and a lot of reruns of the opening chapters, before things came into focus and I could see my way to an ending. I tend to panic, of course. The downside to finishing anything is that you're more or less convinced that you'll never be able to do it again. So any progress at all is life-giving.
LATER:
OK, so Dora and I walked for nearly an hour. I've come back, eaten something, done the dishes, and --- gotten dressed, as in the dreaded choir black. And you know . . .
I kind of don't hate it as much as I thought I would.
Granted, one way of dealing with a color that's not really your color is to have your hair in your face so much that other people can't actually see how you look.
I hope I don't look like some kind of old-age miracle pregnancy, but really, I do like the tunic-over-a-pencil-skirt shape. This dress was always going to be a tunic --- it's shorter even than my Willow, which is short enough --- and the swing shape is fun over a narrow bottom, whether it's leggings or a pencil skirt. I'd really appreciate an outfit like this in some color that I actually love --- the teal of my Maggie dress, above, for example, would make for a nice separates outfit in these shapes.
But for an occasion when I just do have to wear black, I think this is nice. It's flowy, swingy, unstructured, but not inappropriate for church. And for very inexpensive items --- a Poshmarked Piko bamboo swing dress, which cost under $20, and a Kosher Casuals knit skirt --- these are both nice pieces. The skirt is especially nice, in a heavy mostly-cotton knit, which just a little spandex for sproing. I ordered an extra-large skirt, because the reviews said that the sizing runs small, and I'm not entirely sorry that I did, though I think a large would have bit me as well, if not better.
Anyway, I might actually not take a change of clothes. It might not be worth the bother. This isn't my favorite outfit ever, but I think it works all right. I am glad I cut my hair, though, because somehow having shorter, livelier, vaguely art-deco hair seems to make this outfit better than it would otherwise have been. And I think the softness around (if not actually over) my face really helps mitigate the harshness of the black. It's nice, too, to have a haircut that looks pretty effortlessly "together" even when it's kind of a mess --- and doesn't need to be pulled back (though it can be).
I do also have black heels, but I don't think I'm going to wear them. I like the subtle light contrast on my feet, and I think said feet will thank me, since I'm going to be standing on them a lot.
Here's the simultaneous close-up/rear-view shot:
I think I'll do. I'm grateful for the blue glasses, which always support my coloring, no matter what I'm wearing. I might put on a little red lip balm, which is as dramatic as I get in the makeup department, but on the whole, it's all really okay.
