Neighorhood giants last night. Must have been some weekend over there.
It was a chilly, almost frosty night for dog-walking, and today is cooler than yesterday. Currently 48F, with a high of 57, and cloudy. No rain, though --- we really need some rain. Everything's been very dry, and the county continues under a burn ban. Too bad, because the weather lately has been perfect bonfire weather: cool, but not so cold that being outside in the dark is a misery.
Shoutout to my son-in-law, who turns 30 today --- the Texasgirl will follow in January. They're traveling to California today to spend Thanksgiving with his parents (as is the Fire Son, with his girlfriend, the son-in-law's sister, for whom maybe I should come up with some snappy name, since she seems to be sticking around). But on Friday night they celebrated, per his request, with a dinner party for fifteen friends, for which he made Beef Wellington and they used up every last one of their dishes, which is notable because the dishwasher is broken. The aftermath was maybe a little rough, but she said it was a great party.
Hearing about this party, I was reminded of a tradition that developed in the church mothers' group I belonged to in Salt Lake City, when the Texasgirl was little. One day we were all sitting around drinking coffee in the church parish hall while the children played, and a friend of mine remarked that her husband had asked her that week why she never seemed to wear evening dresses anymore.
"WELL, George," she reportedly said.
We all laughed. How many of us had ever really worn evening dresses all that often to begin with? But more to the point: where exactly were we going now, that we could wear evening dresses?
"We could have a party," somebody said. "We could have an elegant dinner and all wear evening dresses. And maybe go in together on babysitters?"
And so a thing was born. One couple had a house with a big open front area --- it was a Craftsman bungalow, but probably walls had been knocked out between the living-dining-double-parlor (it was rather like our house now) and the kitchen. So there was room for multiple tables. Everybody who had nice dishes and silver donated it to set the tables. I guess we got some extra tables from the church, because this was a sitdown dinner for roughly thirty people. We planned a menu and divided up the cooking. And we all made some plan for our children, with a lot of families doubling up on babysitters, since we collectively knew only so many teenagers. I think possibly the hosts' children spent the night at our house with a sitter, but I don't remember now. And we all wore evening dresses.
These are great memories. We did these dinners yearly, at least for as long as we lived in Salt Lake. I think the group carried on doing them for years after we had moved away. We always did it in the late spring or early summer, so the weather was pretty and it was fun to dress up --- no slogging through snow in your fancy shoes. We ate a lot and drank a lot and laughed a lot, which really pretty much sums up our life in our late 20s and early 30s as young parents. I also remember, at least once, moving our kitchen table into the backyard to have people over, with kids, and sitting around it with our friends, drinking far too much, but having a good time doing it, while our kids were also having a good time being basically feral.
And now all those kids are turning 30, if they hadn't already, and that's wild.
Wearing today:
Not an evening dress, though I did wear her out to the symphony in Memphis at the end of September. My dear Audrey has gone unworn for the last month, thanks in large part to the 30-day challenge I did. But here she is today, in her guise as a maxi skirt, with my favorite thrifted green merino-blend pullover and a very old (I got it when the Artgirl, almost 20, was a baby) silk velour scarf which I've always loved. The scarf was an afterthought, but it makes the outfit, I think, with the lovely hit of teal against the soft green. I'm wearing my cut-off Snag merino Silver Lining tights with socks under my dress and thrifted Birk Melrose boots. I'll add a puffer jacket to go out with the dog and be warm and happy in the chilly weather.
I do, by the way, like the rule that says to wear a shoe that contrasts with your lowest hemline --- but I view it as permission, not a rule to live by. Obviously, since today my boots do not contrast, and I like the look. It's nice to know what you can do, that might feel edgy or outside your comfort zone, but it's also nice to remind yourself that truly, you can do what you want and please your own eye. You're dressing primarily to please yourself.
This only makes sense, as you are the one who will live in the clothes you choose as in your skin. Absent some pressing need to wear a uniform, you shouldn't feel at odds with your outward appearance. That outermost skin of yours, your clothing --- the skin you get to choose, if you want to think of it that way --- shouldn't chafe at you in any way, either physical or psychological, any more than you can help. There's a reason why we don't generally wear evening dresses every day. Most of us aren't, in our inner selves, that glitzy and high-drama. It can be fun to assume as a costume for the night, but the idea of dressing that way, day in and day out, is exhausting --- at least in part because we'd be stressing about ruining a fancy dress in the course of our ordinary lives, but also because the cosplay isn't us. Even Princess Diana couldn't stand being PrincessDianaTM. The rest of us? Well, we weren't Princess Diana to begin with, were we?
On the other hand, we can cosplay as a non-person --- someone for whom it's not even worth putting on clothes at all --- and that's not good, either. It's good to bother getting dressed, even if that feels, some days, like a big old LARP: me as actual person with body and being. It's a little too easy, sometimes, to slip into a sense of ourselves as a sort of disembodied set of functions --- Hello, My Name Is Cleans-Bathtub-Grout. Dances With Wolves? Try Takes Out Garbage. How does Takes Out Garbage dress? Like the noun in her name, that's how. Because she thinks that's who she is.
All of this brought to you by some Instagram reels I happen to have seen: woman wearing ballgown to take out garbage, as joke, followed by entire comment thread of redpillers incapable of understanding said joke, because they say there's no laughter in hell, and some people have dedicated their lives to proving that hypothesis. Also brought to you by my husband's complimenting me this morning, saying that he appreciates that I get dressed every day and bother to try to look nice. I said, "You know what makes that possible? Finding a way to look nice that feels like wearing pajamas." Whatever works, he said.
I am glad this makes him happy. Chiefly what makes him happy, I think, is being married to somebody with some measure of self-respect*, so that it's not his job to keep inflating me. It's honestly exhausting to contemplate supplying another person's sense of personhood all the time, on top of maintaining your own. I mean, also, he likes to look at me, and receives my bothering with my appearance as a compliment. But (sorry, redpillers) that's not my primary motivation. If he weren't here --- perish the thought, but if that were the case --- I'd still get dressed in the morning. If I didn't get dressed in the morning, that's when I'd need an intervention. I'd have lost my sense of my own dignity, and that would be trouble.
*Well, I mean, also: somebody who loves him and likes to do things for him and does said things all the time, even when she draws the line at wearing clothes that make her uneasy in any way.
So anyway, I'm warm, I'm comfortable, I feel no more un-at-ease (or at-unease?) than if I were wearing pajamas, but I can go out and walk the dog looking as though I had tried. I can be pleasurable company for my husband --- since he is here --- as a matter of course. I don't consciously dress to please my man. But I'm glad he's pleased. I guess this is a sign that I married the right person, who is simply pleased by me, without my having to put on an effortful performance or cosplay as The Desirable Wife. I can just show up as myself, and it's all good.
Relatedly, yesterday's first reading at Mass was Proverbs 31. At the bit about wool and flax, my husband elbowed me. Granted, I haven't supplied him with much flax as of yet, but in the area of wool, I excel. I had ordered him another pair of black Darn Tough Socks for work, and wouldn't you know it, the package arrived yesterday. "Look at you being that Proverbs 31 wife," he said. Yeah, yeah. Ideally I'd have raised the sheep, spun the wool, dyed it, and knitted these socks myself, but life is short, and the people in Vermont do a better job of it than I ever would. I guess what I am good at is bidding for it in the marketplace (read: ordering it on Amazon and having it delivered).
Meanwhile, I know this business about dressing to show up as yourself is a constant theme here. I write variations on this theme all the time. But I do keep marveling that I can look as though I've tried when I really haven't tried that hard at all, because I've managed to choose good things to be my available choices on a daily basis. It's taken time, and it's still a work in progress, but I marvel at how much easier my life is since I started paying attention to my wardrobe as an organic whole and figuring out how to make it work for me. I spend a lot of my time here talking about that, but the reality is that I don't have to think about my appearance that much because I have done the pre-thinking. I do find the thinking pleasurable and interesting, obviously, or I wouldn't go on about it all the time. But what I also find pleasurable is getting up, going out, and not being hamstrung by self-consciousness and the feeling that I probably look all wrong. That's the part I really like.
And speaking of going out, I have a dog who needs a walk. Then on with the day.
BEDTIME UPDATE:
What a lovely day, albeit chilly and gray. I wrote two essays, had a long phone conversation with my esteemed colleague, chatted and laughed with my kids, drank sauvignon blanc with my husband over a dinner of cajun cream chicken, and walked the dog in the dark.
Still happy at rosary time in my old but beloved silk velour scarf. This scarf, picked up at TJ Maxx in 2004, at a time when ANY clothing expenditure was pretty much a panic attack, has made my winter outfits for years and still does it for me. It's instant luxe, no matter what else I'm wearing. I'll never get rid of it. Maybe I'll ask to be buried in it. I love it that much.
At the end of the day, meanwhile, I'm happy and comfortable in the clothes I put on this morning. I've done my work, I've walked the dog, I've cooked meals, and I've worked out with weights and resistance bands, all while wearing the outfit pictured above. Granted, I did take off my sweater and scarf while I worked out, because I got hot, but everything else stayed on. And here we are at the end of the day, fresh as when we started.
And now it really is rosary time, so a good night to you all.